Summertime at Camp Nickleby

It’s quiet at the camp this Sunday morning, only the sound of the wind blowing through the pines and the occasional squirrel chirping. All of the campers have headed home for the summer. Most of the counselors have packed up and left. My car is packed and I’ll be leaving too, as soon as I finish my bowl of low-fat granola with soy milk.

Friday night saw 48 Camp Nickleby seniors graduate. For some, it was a miracle. Even though all of them passed the Exit Exam, supposedly ensuring to the business world that schools are no longer graduating students who can’t think their way out of a paper bag, many still wouldn’t be able to tell you what 15% of $20 was or when to use ‘their’ or ‘there’ in a sentence. But when it came time to guess right on a standardized test, they got lucky.

On Wednesday, I was given an end-of-year gift by a student in art class. Three months ago, the students were given an assignment, based on the work of artist Andy Goldsworthy. They were to create a work that changes over time and incorporates a principle of design. They were to document their work with photos. The main caveat was that I didn’t want pictures of ice cubes melting in a bowl! Only a few of the students bothered to do the assignment. And of course, I received pictures of bowls of ice melting, some pictures of plants growing in pots, and photos of rotting fruit. But the most curious submission was Marianne’s project. Three months ago, she was given a new puppy for her birthday. She decided to take photos of the dog as it grew during the past three months. To help me with the grading of this project, I asked her what principle of design she used in the creation of it. She looked up at me and replied tentatively, “Repetition?” I gave her an A minus!

Camp Nick will be closing down for the summer. In order to pay the bills and keep the place open for next year, the directors have decided to rent the place out for the next few months. Tomorrow, the camp changes hands. An organization called Pastor John’s Hunting and Fishing Christian Academy and Institute for the Study of Biblical Prophecy will be taking over. A truck drove into camp Thursday and dropped off a load of bibles, rifles and fishing gear. Some of our regular Camp Nick students are planning to attend. I just hope they don’t leave the place a mess. They expect Somebody else to pick up after them.

I’ll be posting occasionally on this dopey thing, whenever I get the urge. It will be interesting to hear what the candidates have to say about NCLB. Have a great summer!

Jayson Blair Excellence in Plagiarism Award for 2008

We have a winner! Each year around this time, all of the counselors submit their entries to the Jayson Blair Excellence in Plagiarism Award committee, hoping their camper is chosen for the prestigious award. This year’s award goes to 9th grader, Duane Daryl Pigwhistle.

Young Duane’s writing endeavor pushed the envelope and went well beyond the norm in the art of plagiarism. Here are some of the reasons why the committee had an easy time selecting this year’s winner:

The paper was one month late. Even after he was told that his paper would not be accepted, he persevered and turned it in anyway, fully expecting to get full credit because, “I turned in my work”.

It was a verbatim download from Wikipedia. He didn’t even bother to cut-and-paste.

It still contained every hyperlink embedded in the original Wikipedia article.

But the pièce de résistance was the fact that Duane left the caption of the illustration to the original article in his paper. No photo, just the caption!

Thank you Duane. You make teaching exciting and fun!

Happy Memorial Day

Navy jets fly overhead the camp, in honor of those who have given their all for freedom and access to the world's natural resources. We take solace in the fact that we have not lost a Camp Nickleby alum to the wars yet. But we anxiously wait. We are now in the sixth year of a manufactured war, brought to us by BushCo., with no end in sight. Wars are easy to start, but a bitch to stop. A few years ago, when the U.S. death toll was only 1025, I had a zealous, war-mongering student in my class who remarked that 1025 deaths was nothing to defend our freedom and punish the Iraqi people for flying planes into the World Trade Center. He is now serving with the Army near Sadr City. I think about him all of the time.

Many people think that we need to stay in Iraq until we 'win', whatever that means or looks like. I believe we extract ourselves like you would out of any alcohol-induced mistake; wait 'til they're asleep, then just sneak out around 2:30 in the morning. And don't call them later! Bring them home now! Please vote accordingly in November.

I came upon the following poem by Mark Twain. It was written in 1904, but it still rings true today. Although some people might consider war 'romantic', it is anything but.

The War Prayer

"O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle -- be Thou near them! With them -- in spirit -- we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it -- for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen".

--- Mark Twain

It's Good Though!

It’s a sad day at The Nick. I started my Sunday morning by tuning into Across the Great Divide on KPFA. Robbie Osman, the host, was playing a Utah Phillips song early into the show, and I knew something was wrong. I checked Utah’s blog and learned that Utah made the transition from is to was Friday. Needless to say, I unplugged the big screen and put the Indy 500 on the back burner. For a KPFA archive of Robbie’s show, go here: http://www.kpfa.org/archives/index.php?arch=26487

For those of you ‘Nicksters’ who don’t know anything about Utah Phillips, he was a folk music legend, peace and labor activist, and a favorite ‘curmudgeony’ raconteur of mine. In 1956, he joined the Army and did a tour in Korea, which would motivate him to become a peace activist. Go to http://www.theunion.com/article/20080524/NEWS/459535358 for a complete article about Utah.

I first discovered Utah Phillips in 1980 or thereabouts. I lived and worked in the San Jose area and listened to the very iconoclastic radio station KFAT. We ‘FATheads’ were fed a daily dose of Phillips’ Moose Turd Pie, a hilarious retelling of his times as a cook while working on the railroad. To this day, I know every word by heart.

Seeing Utah Phillips perform live was always high up on my ‘bucket list’. I was able to scratch this off my list about six years ago, when I traveled to Fresno to see Utah perform at the Forestiere Underground Gardens, an ‘earthy’ venue to say the least, a cross between an art farm on steroids and the catacombs of Europe. Although a physical condition prevented him from playing his guitar most of the night, just hearing the guy tell his endless stories was well worth the admission price. Being a ‘foamer’, I also enjoyed Utah’s train songs. Utah Phillips should be considered a national treasure. He will be missed.

“My God, that’s moose turd pie! (pause) It’s good though!”

For further info, go to http://www.utahphillips.blogspot.com/

Real fuzzy math!

A new study from researchers at the University of California at Davis and the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities suggests something we in this crazy business have known for some time, that "state requirements that students pass exit tests to graduate from high school appear to do nothing to improve achievement on federal reading and mathematics tests." According to the study, comparisons of math and reading scores "of children in states with exit examinations to the scores of children elsewhere in the United States...concluded that there was no evidence that requiring passage of such tests improved academic achievement in those subject areas." No @$#& Sherlock! And I am reminded of this fact on an almost daily basis.

Yesterday, I started my ceramics class on a glaze testing assignment. Each student is to mix a dry glaze with three different percentages of a glaze stain, apply to three individual test tiles, and fire them in the kiln. The percentages used are 2%, 4% and 6% of a 50 gram test batch. Of course, to ascertain prior knowledge, I made the mistake of asking them what would 2% of 50 be? Mind you, this is a class made up primarily of soon-to-be-graduating seniors. They have ALL PASSED THE HIGH SCHOOL EXIT EXAM. I found out, much to my surprise, that 2% of 50 is 25!!! How is this possible? Bet the folks at ETS just laugh their way to the bank everyday.

What we've got here is failure to communicate!

Yesterday was just wonderful! I gave each camper a printed progress grade for the semester. As expected, there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth. Some were even close to tears. A great way to start the week! And as usual, I feel like I’m in a remake of Cool Hand Luke, and I’m cast in the Strother Martin role.

It never ceases to amaze me how many campers still haven’t learned how to actually listen. I can only imagine what it sounds like in their little skulls. How much of what I tell them actually gets through the barricades. My most recent guess is about every fifth word. Could be less.

There was a steady pilgrimage to my desk yesterday, each camper asking when projects were due and if they could still make up work, even though I gave each camper a very nicely printed end-of-the-year calendar for them to keep, with due dates clearly showing. As a back up, I have a large calendar posted in the room. Didn’t matter. They don’t read either. Would take up too much of their time.

And of course, I was the one giving them an ‘F’. Their performance was nowhere in the equation. Two more weeks to go. Dear gawd make it go faster, please!

If you're flunking and you know it, clap your hands!

You can almost smell it. Like blood in the water to a shark, the scent of the end of the school year is in the air. And the kids are falling apart. Three weeks away. They can’t wait. The staff can’t wait.

How come I’m flunking, I do all my work?!?

Today, in a few hours, I will hand out progress grades. I can almost hear the shrieks of pain and hopelessness coming from the seniors. Always my favorite time of year. And I will get the usual question, “how can I be flunking, I do all my work.” Not really sure where this phenomenon started, but I hear it over and over. Somehow, in their little academic careers, they learned to equate just turning in an assignment with automatically receiving an exemplary grade. They don’t understand the concept of a ‘spectrum’ of performance.

Of course, most will be in denial. They can’t possibly be flunking an art class! Then comes the anger. They will hate me for giving them an F. It’s all my fault, of course. Then the bargaining. There will be last-minute negotiations. Maybe they could clean up the room for a bunch of extra credit??? Next comes the depression. They will mope around for the remainder of the semester, digging themselves even deeper in a hole. And finally the acceptance of the fact that they won’t be graduating this year with their friends. That cap and gown purchase was all for naught.

I love this time of year.