The downfall of immediate feedback

So, Kevin took some parental abuse last week when his science test showed up online as a C-.  He was stunned; couldn’t understand how that happened.  We were stunned; couldn’t understand how that happened.  A few stern words…let us know what went wrong when you get the test back.  This was on a Friday.

On Monday, Kevin comes home and reports that the teacher screwed up entering the scores in the system…they are fixed now.  All is well.  Apologize to Kevin for the stern words and we move forward.

I was doing my random check on Kevin’s facebook activities and saw that the teacher’s screw-up created a huge discussion there; it made me laugh and I decided I’d save it here.

AM

Mr. williamsss, i want to hurt you.

RP your just out to get everyone aren't you?

MF hey whatd u get on ur science test?

TL Does it say on powerschool that you got an E? It does on mine...I can't believe it...

AS it said i got a D-.... what the heck?

AS maybe he just only put in the multiple choice, because mine is 30/50, and there were only 30 MC Q's, right?????

TL I thought the test was all multiple choice...was it? Mine is 25/50...

AS no, remember how there was the short answer part? well that has to be graded by the teacher...aka mr williams

AM IKIKIK TIFFANY. I GOT A E.

AS really do NOT him right now.... but i still have an A!!!!!! :) ur jealous. hahaha

AM I HAVE A B!! UGH. I HAD AN 94!! I GOT A 55 ON THE TEST.
AND I STUDDIED.
AND THOUGHT I DID GOOD./

AM yeah annika thats probably what happened/

AS you got a 55? it was out of 50... i thought that you and tiffany would do better than me... me and my dumb little brain

AM I GOT AN E!!! omg, i felt i was gonna cry.
no the percentage was a 55

AS oh. my percentage was a 60..... really mad right now, and i feel the same way

AM ikikik, but im gonna check and see what number it wz

AM I GOT 27.5

AM wait i know what happend, he probably graded them by hand, (hence the .5) and he hasnt done the scan tron.
that or we are all insanley dumb.

AS not bad, i guessed on a lot of them

AS i think we are all insanely dumb. hahaha JK!!!

AM theres no way, we all got d's and e's.
its gotta be a mistake.... you 2 are the smartest in the class soo.

AS me? no way! tiffany is really smart though.. i don't want new seats cuz whenever i have a problem i turn aro d and ask her about it.

AM HAHAHAHAH ME OTO!

TL Really? I'm that helpful? I still got the worst grade out of the three of us. :P

AM tiifff.
i have an e too :)

AS so? you always help me, and maybe we both fl ked the other part, and you aced it.

TL Maybe. but I have a sinking feeling about that...I don't remember that there was a part that wasn't multiple choice.

AM it was the back page...

AS uh oh..... there were quite a few of them..... i myself had to look for the because he didn't really say where they were

AM tiffany. do u remember the electronic configurations? 1s2, 2s2........

AS or looking at the periodic table to find facts about certain elements?

AS or drawing atoms?

AM yeah.

AM ions and stuff

AS tow of the questions were really long, they had parts e and f on them

TL Oh no...I don't remember seeing any of those on the quiz!! Was I missing a page or something?! I'm going to freak out.

RP HAHHAHAHAHAHHAAHA!!!!!! You all got E's on your tests!! You make me feel so smart. I've never gotten an E on a test! :D

KH I feel your pain, I got a C-, I'm not sure how that's possible but I'm hoping that he just hasn't graded everything yet

KH Ravi, laugh while you can, what's your grade in that class right now?

RP I take Chapman and I have a C-.....but thats okay because Chappy is a MEANIE.

TL It's looking bleak right now. I only have a B+. But really, if I fouled it up I think I did, this is the worst test grade in my school history.

AM im so frighteneddd

CJ it says i got a 12.5/50

AM chevelleeee..... we aall got at least 25s :P)

KH was the Scantron broken when he graded our tests?

AM yeah probably.

AM hes so screwed for quarter grade.ssss

TL If he doesn't fix it, let's gang up or something.

AM YES.

KH Seriously though, this better have been a mistake. I can't believe that no one got a C or higher. Imagine what the principal would think if she saw that the average score for the test was a D-

AM YES IKIKIK!! FIRED!!! :))

AS hahaha a better teacher at last!!!!

AM omg. annika. yessss

AS remember when he said that there was a really bad acne medication that he used and people died from it? i said to tiffany "too bad... JK"

AM HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHHAA :)

Puerto Rico – Tourism

Suzanne asked me at one point if PR was as nice as Hawaii….and the answer for me is ‘no, it’s not even close’.  Granted, I haven’t had a chance to see much of the touristy spots, but, what I have seen hasn’t really overwhelmed me (two of the other guys down here from CH have been to Cancun and parts of Mexico and say it’s really similar to that…).

Arrived late Monday night.  Up early on Tuesday; nothing really touristy going on until we went out to dinner that night.

  

Yeah, it’s not San Juan, it’s Atlanta out there in the distance….thought I would at least try and snap a picture as we landed

The view outside the restaurant we ate at in Old San Juan.  Narrow cobble-stone streets.

After we finished up at the alternate site on Wednesday my buddy and I headed out for the “Pork Highway”; an exit south of Caguas where the Lechonera shacks are legendary for the pork that’s slow-cooked on the spit and carved up for meals throughout the day.

Walk up…in broken english and spanish make it clear we want a lb of pork to share with arroz y gandules (rice with pigeon peas…the local side dish) and the guy grabs his machete and chops us off some pig.  Oh man was it good.

From there, we decided to take the long way back to San Juan; head south until we hit the coast and then drive back on a different highway.  The drive across the mountains was stunning and really reminded me of the road to Hana in Hawaii….large bamboo forests, switchback after switchback, the drop-off from the road was at least 1,000 ft down at some points.  Since I was driving, there aren’t any real pictures of this.

Made it down to the coast and stopped at a rocky beach to look out on the Caribbean Sea.

 

Yes, it was that dark and cloudy. 

Thursday was our “just-in-case” day; since we were done it turned into my “get to see some things day”

 

Looking east along the beach in front of the hotel

Looking west….red flags were up so I didn’t go in…did walk along in the water a little bit.

  

This is the Plaza del Quinto Centenario; which my poor spanish skills tells me celebrates an anniversary long long ago.  That’s what I assume this totem pole like structure commemorates

 

Fort San Felipe Del Morro – this panorama looks east across the esplanade (a fancy spanish word for “grassy plain which gives me an opportunity to shoot you”)

 

looking west from the Fort

 

This view is out at a sentry box that overlooks the ocean…more on this later.

           

The main entrance to the fort; the site is a US National Park and admission was free when I visited on Veteran’s Day.

Another panorama looking back to the south west.  you can see San Juan Bay on the other side of the esplanade; almost straight ahead at the end of the ‘walk’ is where Old San Juan begins….on the other side of Old San Juan is where the cruise ships park and two were in town on Thursday

 

Directly across the bay to the west is this small islet; another fort (providing crossfire with El Morro at the bay entrance) is there

 

View of the lighthouse and the flags that fly here (Burgandy..part of Spain at that time, Puerto Rico, and the United States)

 

Looking down at the main sea defense level of the fort

   

View back west at that sentry box I mentioned earlier….that sentry box image you see here is on most of the license plates of the cars in PR….

a daylight view of the typical street in Old San Juan….San Juan Bay is at the end of this street.

The only other touristy-highlight was I encountered some success at the PR casino’s Wednesday night (I stayed at the Marriott the other CH guys stayed at the Conrad down the road; both had casino’s) I played with two buddies at the Conrad from work after dinner on Wednesday and we all walked away winners…..which is certainly better than walking away a loser, my usual modus operandi.

Puerto Rico – Work

So, you may ask, why did I get an all-expense trip to San Juan?  The short answer is that the Army wants to build a readiness center, and, to comply with federal law, has to do all of the environmental due diligence before they buy the property to build the readiness center.

The Preferred Site:  So, we have to do environmental reports for two sites, the preferred site and the alternate site.  In this case, at the end of the visits, we’re pretty sure that the real estate office gimmick’d the selection process because the alternate site was so bad there was no freakin’ way that it would/will ever get chosen.

Anyway, the preferred site is in the town of Las Piedras; it’s about a 25-acre site bordered by a freeway, a strip mall (what’s in a shopping mall in Las Piedras have?  this one had a Burger King and a Church’s chicken out front….movie theatres were the big tenant along with a Subway and a Coldstone Creamery……the brutally poor parts of Puerto Rico aren’t around here…), and a gated condo community. 

No lie, I’ve never been on a more heavily vegetated site in my life.  Jungle Fever.

 

those weeds are at least waist high….

there’s a creek that borders the site

it’s the end of the rainy season; I’m not sure anything here ever turns brown, but, everything is completely green right now.

This site is the best of all worlds for me; my job down here is to look for environmental impacts from current and former use; if the site was never developed, and it’s so heavily vegetated that getting into the site (to dump stuff, for example) is an impossibility, my report gets very short and simple.  I love this site.

The Alternate Site:  This site is about 20 miles away.  I am not at all sure how the Army ranked this site second and shudder to think about what caused sites 3 and 4 to be ranked lower.  It’s about 15 acres, five of those acres have a variety of buildings on them.  These buildings will doom this site to never never ever be considered by the Army for acquisition.

 

Ten of the acres are undeveloped farm land.  The Army wants to buy only these ten acres but the land owner has said, if you want these 10, you must buy the other five.  I can’t even begin to describe the other five; nothing I do below will do it justice.

it’s not a farm, but there are chickens, cats, and dogs, wandering everywhere.  There is a part of the site that the property owner said that we couldn’t go up to that are without him because the dogs weren’t tied up and would bite us; they were mean because they were there to protect his cocks that he kept up there for cock fighting….

There are more vehicles parked on these five acres than at some supermarket parking lots.  All in some sort of disrepair; they ranged from a 1950-era sedan to, well, this beauty.

part of the property was an engine repair shop.  This is what I will refer to in the report as “recognized environmental concern  (rec) #1”.  The short version is that the Army can’t buy this property until there’s a soil/groundwater investigation to see if there are any impacts from the engine ship….

I got tired of taking pictures of rubbish (which was strewn everywhere) and this guy was colorful….

This is rec #2 and rec #3….the diesel engine for backup power and the tank of diesel fuel.  The owner of the property was quite proud of this tank; it’s dual contained (leaks inside are contained inside) and then he has a concrete foundation around it for even more containment.  These are all great things; he jut had it installed four or five years ago.  The building has been there for 50 years….the unasked (and unanswered) question is “What happened to your old tank to make you decide that triple containment was necessary?”

 

Two different sets of horse stables on these five acres..this guy was tied up so that he could snack.  The one stable was the best-kept area here; they raise these mini-horses that prance back and forth….

Rec #4 – all of this dirt was dumped here and graded into place…no idea where it came from and if it has impact or not…concrete chunks are not a good sign though.

The owner runs a print shop on the property; he very proudly points out they are chemical free now for 90% of the processes.  Of course, that’s only for the last 4 or 5 years and I don’t even want to think about the chemicals that have been disposed of before then (to be fair, it seems they have records that they have done it correctly).  But, these drums, located under the a/c unit, are fun, because.

they say this.  This label is not the end of the world, but, it provides enough suspicion to create Rec #5.  I haven’t even mentioned the five other rec’s that are out here.

So, I mentioned above there was that area we couldn’t go too….two other guys when they came out to do their part of the work (wetland and wildlife identification…the preferred site took them a lot longer!) made it out there later on Wednesday and got the two-cent tour of the cock-accommodations.  They report there are at least 100 birds back there…there’s some pit bulls running loose back there as well AND a few families living back there in trailers/hovels!  They live there because that is there job; if they weren’t there, someone would come and steal the chickens! 

The Army, if they bought the property, would have to relocate these people to new housing.  This, again, is another reason this site is only being carried along as an alternate for form’s sake…there is absolutely no chance they’ll be a readiness center here anytime soon.

Acronyms

Two different stories to relate about two different three-letter acronyms.

ACT:  Kevin took the ACT test again in early October; we completely whiffed on doing it last year (had to cancel twice due to activities) and wanted to see where he was at AND see if he had the scores so that he could skip a year of English next year.

So, off he went.  This year he took the +Writing part of the test…he wrote an essay and we don’t have the scores on that yet.  But…we did get the scores for the rest of the test early this week. 

I’ve noticed a few more visitors to the blog recently that I don’t know where they are from; so, I’ll keep the score-reporting comments in general terms.  His composite score jumped 4 points with large improvements in math and science.  He max’d out one section of the reading test (the subscores range from 2-18; he hit 18) on social studies/science.  Had a decrease in the other subsection of reading (from 17-15) that we are gently joking with him about….not sure how he went backwards, but, what the hey.  Suzanne found a site that reported 25% and 75% scores for incoming students at the Big Ten schools….Kevin was over the 75% score for all but 2 of the schools (Northwestern and Michigan).

TSA:  In hindsight, I’ll know to look a little closer at my boarding pass the next time I’m heading towards security.  Apparently, the airline can randomly select certain individuals for secondary screening; those they choose have some initials printed on their boarding passes and when you present the pass and your license the nice men and women with the uniforms point out that hey, you’re special, and you are going to have all of your carry-ons inspected and you are going to get a pat down.

Happy happy joy joy.

Having had to receive pat downs in the past on a random basis I’d like to report that this pat down was much more, um, intimate.  I wonder if it really needed to be that ‘tight’; really, you have to touch my neck?  Everything comes out of the carry-on (hah!  that’s Puerto Rico mud on those boots buddies!…..TSA scurries to get a sample for their machine).

10-minute delay and I’m done, but, next time, if I see those initials, I’m going to see if I can reprint the boarding passes and make it go away!

Caribbean Blue

Yeah…about that.  I think I’ve seen blue skies for maybe about an hour; the weather has been seriously lacking.

Yeah, the pork…it’s big here. Christopher will be amazed that I ended up on a farm down here…

So, about Puerto Rico.  Let’s start with a bunch of random thoughts and then the next post or two will head into photos:

First, I should mention that Suzanne took Christopher to his second practice and called afterwards to report that he displayed the same sorts of awesomeness that I’ve previously described here.  Once can be a fluke; twice indicates (hopefully) a trend….

A State?:  Yeah, that’s not going to happen.  Ever.  That decision would require such a shift in focus for the population of this territory to be almost impossible to contemplate.  I figure, hey, it’s a US territory, that, well, you know, ENGLISH, would be common. 

Not.  There are no signs in english on the roads.  Most service-type people understand well and speak little, but, for work, we had to venture away from that population and it was a a disaster…I mean, you might think that planned interviews with police and fire departments (who might have to answer calls in english) might be reasonable, but, no, not a word of it.

My spanish comprehension level, or better said, memories of high school comprehension, grows day by day….my buddy down here was impressed that I was picking up about one in every ten words as they rattled by in super-speed fashion. “Mi nombre is Escoto”….

Traffic:  Holy cow, where everyone in the US has a car and the roads are built for that, here, everyone owns a car and the roads aren’t built for that.  3 to 4 hour backups are common.   I won’t even try to describe the drive home from the site on Tuesday through Vaughn-like conditions…but, wait, I have to mention a few things.

Driving:  Learned early here that aggressive driving was the way to go, because if you are passive the locals are going to pick you over like piranha.  A left turn from a local street onto a major thoroughfare is typically a stop for the car in question and then a slow glide into the thoroughfare (no matter what is coming) in the hopes that the one set of traffic will stop and the other set of traffic will let their sorry butt in.  This is not an isolated description; it is the rule, not the exception. 

I’m getting good at it!

Emergency Services:  These vehicles drive by, everywhere, with the lights on.  You’re only supposed to pull over if you hear sirens.  But, man, it’s a weird feeling to look back and see the lights and not move over (I would tend to move to the slower lanes until they went by so I didn’t have to deal with it).

Surface water drainage:  You would think(!) that a territory that had to deal with hurricanes wouldn’t have problems with getting rainfall from the high parts of the island to the low points, but, man, Tuesday I was driving through water up to the floorboards of the rental Jeep.  Which was fun, but, what the heck!

Basketball – Day One

I wasn’t planning on doing a post about basketball but realized after the first practice I wanted to write down how happy and excited I was for Christopher.

Since I volunteered to be the asst coach I had a chance to look at the scores from the tryouts…..I wasn’t very surprised to see that Christopher was average or below average in most categories but one (that category was ‘height’…he max’d that one out).  That’s ok, those categories were ‘speed’, ‘agility’ and the like and well, that’s going to happen. 

Suzanne and I have talked about how it’s becoming more and more obvious in soccer that “one of these things isn’t like the others” with Christopher…..and looking at the tryout results I was a little concerned about that as we headed into the first practice.

As I told Suzanne afterwards “I shouldn’t have been worried…he was awesome!”.  I just need to remember what I always say…it seems to take Cpher a little time to get comfortable with a sport.

They start the practice just shooting around…his form is ok, but, it’s not great, and I’m sure they are going to work on that.  They move to the traditional ‘lightning’ drill…..you’re at the free throw line and the front person shoots, and the second person shoots, and if the person behind you makes it before you do (after rebounds, if you miss), you’re out.  This drill favors the better shooters and the agile.

Christopher was the last one out; he finished second.  Can’t ask for much more than that.  Did suicides at the end of the practice; finished 4th or 5th (out of 10)…can’t ask for much more than that….these aren’t supposed to be his strengths and he’s doing well at them.

His strengths should be playing inside, doing the rebounding and the second shots….and in the scrimmage he did a lot of that.  Grabbed the ball and went right back up with the shot; he didn’t do a lot of that last year (wasn’t aggressive enough really) but he was aggressive and knew where he needed to be and what to do here.  He was passing and looking the defender off of his passes (just amazed me he did that…looked one way and passed the other).  A very pleasant 90 minutes of athleticism from Cpher that I wasn’t really expecting……and am just crazy happy that it did happen.

P/T Conferences – Fall 2010

Kevin:  Not much to report here; we didn’t go.  Just too much going on to make the first two days we could go and the last day is tonight; Suzanne is getting Cpher to his tutor and I’m in ATL waiting to go Puerto Rico.

That’s ok…there isn’t much to discuss when his lowest grade in any of his classes right now is a 96. 

The only thing that might have made me go is a burning desire to talk to the orchestra teacher about Kevin’s chair placement; he was assigned the 4th chair viola as the school year started and it hasn’t changed.  Which seems very bizarre.  It hasn’t been a bad thing because it’s motivated Kevin in his All-State preparations (he was ranked higher than the kids in front of him right now last year during the auditions); the thought being that if he’s ranked higher again he can go and say “Well?”…..

Christopher:  Doing well, working hard, friend to all.  No trace, nada, zip, zilch, of the attitude he displays at home from time to time.  4th grade is the first year where grades are going to be assigned; he’s carrying an A, three B’s and a C (in writing) right now.  The B’s annoy me as they are taking off points for spelling in science and social studies, and, well, Christopher’s going to lose those points all of the time. 

One thing to work on?  They’d like him to ask for help more often…..think this might be a result of last year where we were told he asked for help too much.  Oh well….

Matthew:  Focus is the big theme here……or, the lack of it.  He’s doing well; he’s doing better than well (he’s racing through the multiplication tables…..Matthew is at the point that Cpher was at last April, and Cpher was a little ahead of where he should have been getting through it….) but he doesn’t seem to want to read or listen to directions, he just wants to go (oh man does that sound familiar!).  Still gets in trouble with “the law” more than either of his brothers did but this year seems to be taking “the man” much more seriously…getting in trouble has been followed by repeated apologies and more than a few tears on occasion.  Talked it over with Matthew and he swears this doesn’t happen….don’t know what to think of it.  I realize I’m the typical parent…he’s my third kid, I could care less if he loses lunch recess for talking.  

Hey, what about pictures?:  Fall pictures were a bit of a disaster; both Cpher and Matthew’s were dreck and Kevin completely whiffed on having them done (even though he had the form).  We decided to go to a studio for a group shot and did that last week…should have the results soon I guess…

So, no pictures here.

Weekend Update

Kevin:  He now has his Class 1 Drivers Permit; he has to collect 30 hrs of drive time with parents (at least 2 at night) and wait 3 months before he can move on to the 2nd phase of Drivers Ed.  He’s still super-geeked every time he gets behind the wheel and I’ve only had to raise my voice on two trips so far.  Biggest weakness right now is a consistent habit of taking up both sides of a driveway as he pulls in and out of parking lots, restaurants, etc. 

High school all-state auditions were this weekend….I need to make the time to tape him playing the etude that he had to play on Sunday.  It seemed, to me, to be really challenging and I was very impressed by how he played at times….he was really ‘forceful’ and ‘confident’ on certain notes and I just haven’t heard him play that way. Ever. 

He said he did ok on the scales and described the sight reading as really difficult; viola is mostly alto clef and the sight reading was in treble clef (I’d like to think that last year’s adventures in violin helped here) and Kevin says the piece was meant to be played in second position….something he’s not done a lot of.  Kevin thought he did ok, he knows he kind of missed one passage but when that passage repeated he got it, so, that’s something I guess.  His fellow viola-ist at school said he didn’t even use second position for it…not sure what to think of that, whether Kevin misunderstood how to play the piece or the other kid did.

We’re not really expecting him to make it this year…it is a big step up. Would be nice though. 

Matthew:  Outdoor soccer is over, so, that means, indoor soccer must be starting.  We had two games this weekend, lost the first 5-2 to a TNT team that formed at the last minute (kind of irked about this…I may not have done indoor soccer if I knew there was going to be a TNT team…..I guess I had the chance to switch him but decided to keep him with Cpher and the rest of the team) and tied the second game 2-2.

Matthew volunteered to be goalie in the first game…gave up two goals, one that he had no chance on and one that he had every chance to get and didn’t.   He’s certainly not the best goalie in the world; it takes a while for him to get aggressive and get into the game (the two goals were early) and once he did get aggressive he was much more involved and ‘steady’ in the net.

One of the TNT parents submitted a story for the local papers about the team….

Christopher:  Played in the two games mentioned above; had two good shots on goal in the last minute of the final game but both deflected off of the defense and we settled for the tie.  Not much to report here; he played ok but he’s certainly limited by his size and speed in a wide open game.  I wish he understood a bit more that his time in soccer (at least at this level) was coming to an end….he really enjoys it and understands the game, but, when kids can just blow by you it’s not going to be a good thing as he continues on. 

He’ll get his chance to play goalie next weekend; I like to have everyone get a chance to play at some point and have chosen the weakest team in the group of indoor for Cpher’s shot at it.  It’s going to be a challenging 24 minutes…..

Not much else is new with the big guy…..he’s lost his TV for the long-term until his ‘chatter’ with the family loses its harshness and improves.  I’m not sure it’s working out that well (I think he doesn’t miss it that much)…not much improvement in the last week…we’ll keep going though (and step up the restrictions to match).

Basketball practice begins this week…..that ought to be interesting.

Coming Soon:

• P/T Conferences, Fall 2010
• I have a really tough work assignment coming up next week, 3 days and nights in Puerto Rico.  More than one post and a few pictures are almost a certainty.
• Holly Update – haven’t talked about the dog that I think we should have named ‘Princess’ or ‘Diva’….will do that as we near her birthday.
• Halloween – not much to report here, but, I guess a post on it isn’t out of the quetion.