Ahhh! Good old Saint Patrick’s Day. Since the 17th century on March 17th millions of people worldwide gather to celebrate. They have parades, feasts, & funny green hats. So why is it that we do this every year? Well, St. Patty’s Day is an example of one of those holidays that really only exists in order to remind us & point toward a bigger & more important holiday approaching. Examples of other days like this include Ash Wednesday & Palm Sunday, both of which point towards the culminating holiday of Easter.
(See, he’s pointing towards something! I’ll give you a hint, it ain’t the snakes!)
St. Patrick’s Day is marked at this time every year to remind the world that two days later, on March 19th, unto us a child was born. 26 years ago two angels appeared to Mary, who was also called Kathy. The first angel spake saying, “Mary you are with child.” Then saith the second angel, “You shall call him Samuel, for he shall be awesome.” Frightened Mary asked, “Who are you?” The first angel replied, “My name is Doctor Max Baldwin & I am your family practitioner.” Then spoke the second angel, “and my name is Stacy Peters. I am your husband, & this child is the fruit of my loins.” Nine months later on March 19th, 1982, the prophecy was fulfilled & Samuel Peters was born, just as the angels had said!
So now you know that every year we celebrate St. Patrick’s Day to remind us of the more important holiday that is but 2 short days away. It reminds us that we need to be preparing our hearts & minds (by purchasing expensive gifts) for the 19th day of March, when we will celebrate the birth of Samuel Peters. We wear green things because green is my favorite color, & we pinch people because Samuel Peters Day is so amazing & we have to make sure that we aren’t dreaming. So happy St. Patrick’s Day everyone! Let us celebrate with gladness, but let us not forget what its all about. As the saying goes around this time of year, “Samuel is the reason for the season.”
For those of you who are not math geeks, Pi is a number. Oh, but its so much more than a number! It is a mathematical constant that represents the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter. It is constant in that it is always the same no matter what the size of the circle. It is always approx. 3.14159 (Hence, 3/14 being International Pi Day) for folks like you & I. However, to those who have very deep & passionate feelings for the number, rounding it off to merely five decimal places would be sickening. Every year at Pi day celebrations across the globe, aspiring mathematicians young & old finally arrive at the day that they have been training for. You see, Pi’s decimal expansion never ends & never repeats. It is not only infinite, but there is no pattern to it. You can see how it would be a source of pride for a mathematician to be able to flex his brain power by memorizing it to as many digits as they possibly could. People spend months, some even years, memorizing for just one day & one chance to recite the number in front of their peers & colleagues. The current world record is 67,890 digits by Lu Chao. So in celebration of Lu’s accomplishment & to pay my respects to Pi day, I give you “Lose Yourself (In the Digits)” by the one & only Pi Diddy (to the tune of “Lose Yourself” by Eminem).
I’ve been saying it for years. Education in this country will never get any better until teaching as a career is given respect, both culturally & economically ($$$). Teaching as a career will not get that respect culturally or otherwise until teachers are willing to meet much higher standards & expectations. Teachers have no incentive to do that until they know they can get the pay that such rigorous standards & expectations deserve & the schools have no reason to give them that pay until they meet those requirements. Its a vicious cycle. Finally, The Equity Project Charter School in New York is heeding the call. It is scheduled to open in 2009. The salary for a teacher at the school? $125,000. However, the application & hiring process is very demanding. Applicants who do not meet the rigorous qualifications need not apply. Once hired, the teachers will be expected to meet very high expectations & stand to receive up to a $25,000 dollar bonus for outstanding classroom performance. The New York Times did an excellent piece on the school & its founder/principal (who will only make $90,000 btw). You can read it here.
What do you think? Is this the way to go?
Today is one of those rare days. Here in the great state of Arkansas, we’re not what you’d call real comfortable with frozen precipitation. While it does get quite cold, or “butt” cold as my sister used to say, we just don’t see frozen matter falling from the heavens that often. On the off chance that we do, it is typically some mixture of sleet, freezing rain, or hail. This is a mixture that I affectionately refer to as “crap.” The average winter day in Arkansas then could be forecasted thusly; “Today will be butt cold with a 10 percent chance of crap.” Since we aren’t real comfortable with it, we usually panic at the first sign of crapfall, cancelling schools, stockpiling bottled water & canned goods, making sure we have plenty of batteries, & wetting our pants (maybe that’s just me).
When I woke up this morning & saw actual snow on the ground & still falling gently from the sky, I was stunned. “What a strange & magnificent occurrence!” I thought. So, imagine the utter shock that I felt as I turned on the local news & did not see my school district’s name among the others that scrolled along the bottom of the screen. Could it be that it was actually snowing instead of crapping & my employers were not flipping out about it? Yes friends, it could. I decided that such a lovely & rare convergence of events warranted a morning romp in the snow for my students & I. Here are the pictures. Just click on the thumbnail to enlarge.
