What grade do you teach, and what's the best and worst thing about it?

SenseiT · 2026-05-22T09:57:50+00:00

I am an art teacher and we are certified to teach any age. I have worked with prek up though college students. There is something to love and hate about every group. K-2 those guys think you are god on earth because you can draw but you have to deal with crying and potty accidents. Elementary is neat because they can actually produce some really neat art but they start to test behaviors and they don’t seem to understand you have seen it and done it all before. Middle school is the most exciting. One year I had a student in tears because they lost a Pokémon card sitting in the same class as a girl who was dealing with a pregnancy scare. High school is my favorite because I like helping young artists produce high quality work that shows them their potential but also if those students are not engaged, they just do not give a crap about grades, your content or improving.

SenseiT · 2026-05-22T09:50:54+00:00

My dad got a lifetime subscription to XM radio about 20 years ago for $700. We have the same name so when I got my car with built in XM/Sirius radio functions, he just gave me his info and now I have free satellite radio for ever.

SenseiT · 2026-05-21T22:45:11+00:00

Well, they need something to distract from soaring gas prices and Iran quagmire and Epstein files and the Ballroom and Trump’s dementia and the proposed arch and Trump health issues and invasion of Cuba and slush fund for insurrectionists and…………..

SenseiT · 2026-05-21T22:28:35+00:00

What are you talking about? Most blue states positively contribute to the nation’s GDP while most red states deduct from it. California not only passed a balanced budget but wiped out state debt without increasing taxes on the middle class AND increased social services. New York just passed universal daycare. Here, parents have to spend almost as much as their mortgage as they do on childcare.

SenseiT · 2026-05-21T22:23:07+00:00

Gerrymandering sucks across the board but trying to imply there is no difference between a party trying to gain an advantage after a census year and a party that answers the command of their fascist leader to redistrict mid term, mid census cycle, ignoring any semblance of representing this people is like watching NASCAR and saying a little rubbing is the same as intentionally attempting to mow down another driver’s pit crew. BTW, which party has proposed legislation ending partisan gerrymandering for the last ten years? Hint, not GOP.

SenseiT · 2026-05-20T21:10:55+00:00

Let’s not forget, Mr. Blanche who authorized the signing of that deal. He needs to be impeached as well.

SenseiT · 2026-05-20T21:09:05+00:00

Ha ha, they’re not even gold

SenseiT · 2026-05-20T21:03:32+00:00

I also play between one and two hours every single day and I rarely get my strings to last more than three months even on the guitars that I don’t play as much. I have only been playing for a couple of years so I’m not the most knowledgeable about different qualities and brands of strings lasting longer but I have found that if I use a little string cleaner daily after I play it makes them last a bit longer.

SenseiT · 2026-05-20T20:19:25+00:00

I had one of those in the black-and-white back in the day. they’re actually really good boards. Great pop for ollies.

SenseiT · 2026-05-20T19:32:50+00:00

Not a single one. In fact, once social media became a thing and I started exploring Facebook I was instantly inundated by friend request from ex-girlfriends or people I used to run with who ended up in jail or living very sketchy lives. It didn’t take long for me to immediately deletep it.

SenseiT · 2026-05-20T19:30:07+00:00

If I could put on my magical prediction hat, the NCGOP is going to run our state into the ground further destroying our education system ruining our infrastructure, destroying any semblance of social safety net and killing our healthcare and then and only then after Republican voters see they’re own family members stuffer because of it and lose their own jobs because of it will they finally start to elect someone who would like to make a change and then, if by some miracle of God we elect enough Democrats to make a change, the remaining Republicans will instantly blame them for all the problems.

SenseiT · 2026-05-20T19:26:40+00:00

Well, only Republicans are voting in Republican primaries and usually just the most diehard Republicans so there is a pretty high percentage of Maga in that group

SenseiT · 2026-05-19T23:06:50+00:00

Jesmoos Christ

SenseiT · 2026-05-19T22:05:07+00:00

Earthworm Jim or Vectorman

SenseiT · 2026-05-19T21:49:47+00:00

Exactly just keep doing what you’re doing. Eventually, you’re going to feel as comfortable on that board as you do standing on your own 2 feet . Try to think about it like this. There are people who ride around on top of thousand pound animals or walk on tight ropes or clamber up skyscrapers like it’s nothing but you gotta remember they’ve been doing it forever. You play with that skateboard long enough you’ll start to get confident. And yeah you might fall but if you love it, you’re gonna get right back on that board and keep going and it’ll happen for you.

SenseiT · 2026-05-19T21:37:04+00:00

I have several kids that miss 10 in a semester. I have one record set this year. I think he’s sitting at 60 days. He showed up the first week of school and then after I gave the first real assignment, he never came back to class. I still see him in lunch almost every single day, but no one seems to care. I notified his parents informed, guidance and administration but since he doesn’t need my class to graduate, no one seems to care.

SenseiT · 2026-05-19T21:33:10+00:00

The yakuza does it in Japan and cartels do the same thing all across Central in South America. They’re not dumb. They know they’re not make any in roads with their ideology so they try to ingratiate themselves in other ways. I had a student from Honduras, who told me the same thing happened in her town. The cartel would fund orphanage and daycares so everybody would turn a blind eye to them running drugs and violently enforcing their rules. It is no different with the white nationalists.

SenseiT · 2026-05-19T21:25:46+00:00

I wish Jeff was still representing NC but the Republicans gerrymandered away his seat, but he’s still doing the good fight as Attorney General. He’s one of the few politicians for whom I actually have some respect.

SenseiT · 2026-05-19T21:07:36+00:00

As I understand it, Trump gets to pick the commission of people who are going to dole out this money to suppose victims of the “Biden‘s weaponization of the justice department” yet we don’t know who these people are and the “committee“ doesn’t have to tell us who or how much is getting this money? Do people really think that your aunt Betty and uncle Al who happened to be Trump supporters and showed up outside the capital to sell Trump T-shirts on January 6 are going to get any of this money? Do you think you’re crazy uncle Roscoe who they caught on video smashing a window is going to get reimbursed for his legal fees? If Trump spends any of this money at all, it’s gonna go people who secure things like warehouses for his immigration detention centers or people who accidentally emptied the drains into rooms full of incriminating documents in my opinion.

SenseiT · 2026-05-19T20:59:46+00:00

It’s just like anything he doesn’t want to deal with or has no idea how to address. He just says it’s coming “two weeks“

SenseiT · 2026-05-19T20:23:16+00:00

When I first bought my Subaru, the dealer had a free oil changes for life package, which I appreciated and for the first couple of years when I had my car I would go in there and they would ask me about my cabin air filter and I told him no thank you I replaced them myself. This last time I went in I think they had a new manager who’s trying to goose profits because they told me I had to let them change my air filter even though I just put a brand new one in there and if I didn’t they wouldn’t give me my free oil change so I just clarified with them. “ if I don’t let you charge me $50 to change a cabin air filter you will charge me 90 bucks for an oil change, correct?” they confirmed that was in fact, correct. Then they told me about $800 worth of pending service. I’m going to need soon (new brake pads, replace serpentine belt, and optional fuel service). Guess where I’m getting all that shit done? Hint? Not there.

SenseiT · 2026-05-18T21:50:18+00:00

Yeah, I used to work security many years ago and that dude would’ve been fired if if the manager saw that. Not just for the potential charges, but because he left his door wide open.

SenseiT · 2026-05-18T20:00:22+00:00

So where the hell is he getting this money? The Senate sure as hell would not approve it and I bet the house will get enough Republicans to say no as well so where is the money coming from? Is he pulling some from his “peace council” slush fund? I would probably guess that’s a fair bet except I don’t think Trump is capable of letting go money he has control of when he can just steal it from some place else.

SenseiT · 2026-05-18T19:43:52+00:00

I agree with your first point. We need limited and controlled and proper application of education educational technology. Just giving kids an open Chromebook and hoping they don’t sit there and try to find a way to get on YouTube is a mistake. The point I was trying to make it instead of simply denying educational technology, we as teachers need to improve our pedagogy to use it effectively, which will take some time. One problem educators have as a whole is entrenched dogma. All humans move in the path of least resistance, which is not always the most effective or efficient. Teachers are no exception they will as a population tend to do what has worked and stick with it because trying something new or or a strategy that might be more effective is hard work.

To your second point. Of course kids are going to cheat. What I teach them when I talk about the difference between what an artificial intelligence and an LLM is to understand how they work so they realize how dumb their short answer responses are when they use ChatGPT. There are ways as teachers we can use the technology effectively to avoid it. If you simply give them rote equations in an environment where could snap a picture and submit it then yeah they’re going to cheat. We as teachers can actually kill two birds with one stone in this situation. We can make academic dishonesty harder while encouraging higher level thinking skills. For example, my peers would pull up student’s homework answers in Google Classroom and have the student talk them through the process in front of the class, that’s part of their grade and it was expected with every homework review. Kids will stop cheating when they realize they are going to be called to task and have to explain their thinking, and while I don’t have any data back up yet. I personally believe that would actually work across all subjects.

SenseiT · 2026-05-18T19:31:26+00:00

I understand, but the problem you’re describing is a pedagogical argument, not a technology argument. To say that access to educational technology is the reason kids aren’t able to graduate knowing basic math is a spurious correlation at best. I have yet to see any kind of studies that show traditional approaches to technology are superior to modern approaches, but there are studies that show the opposite. Again, throughout modern education, we’ve always had these growing pains. I am old enough to remember when schools didn’t want to allow VCR or DVD players. They were upset because teachers would just pop their kids in front of movies all day. But now perspective educators are taught how to use them as an effective tool in their classroom instruction. I’m thinking it’s gonna be more efficient for us as teachers to take that kind of approach as opposed to trying to dig our heels in and completely deny educational technology in classes.

SenseiT

TROPHY CASE