Details, Details

Things I took pictures of today:

A strange hailstorm. (Actually, Dave took this picture with my camera as I was driving.)

Things I thought about taking photos of and did not:

The gyros and french fries that I had for lunch.

Griffin and Dave, who were my lunching companions.

A giant sugar cookie I munched on as I tutored my niece in chemistry.

The giant, bloody steak I had for dinner.

The Details:

The fries were good but the gyros was not all that great (spongy meat, stale pita) and the restaurant was dead, dead, and the help was not so helpful, and if the recession has any mind at all to kill a Greek restaurant, it will surely kill this particular Greek restaurant, I'm sure.

Here is my favorite restaurant reviewer in the universe, Gil, (taking an uncharacteristically reserved stance) on this restaurant:

[. . .T]he gyros are good, albeit lacking in the slightly crisp edges that typify meat shaved from the outside of the meat cone. That might be because during our two visits the spit wasn’t rotating. In any case, the meat was tender and well seasoned, but if you like a little crispiness, too, you might be a bit disappointed.

Trust me, Gil is usually as ebullient as a springer spaniel being offered an entire bag of pig's ear treats. But not so much in this review, no?

The meat cone, indeed.

So, what saved the lunch experience was talking with Griffin and Dave. Griffin, as I have said before, is just one of my favorite people on the planet. (He has that effect on most people who meet him, I think--or if he doesn't, they don't tell me about it.) Today he was full of stories about being the last person in the country to have a Facebook account, and of all the weirdos who have "friended" him. (I don't like the fake word (faux-cabulary?) "friended," by the way, nor do I like the other Facebook term "defriend(ed)." But then again, I respect the English language. YMMV, as the kids txt today.)

So, yes. Griffin and Dave are good lunch buddies, even though they do often veer off into techno geek speak.

Hmmm....

Oh, and the cookie at the cafe and the chemistry tutoring?

So, my niece? Got a 69% on her exam, which is a D, which is not a passing grade. So many students failed the exam (in fact, there were only two passing grades, both in the mid- to high C level) that the teacher is allowing students to retake the exam for an additional 15 points. I helped my niece work through the exam--not doing her work, but explaining the concepts to her and then checking the work after she had finished.

Here's the thing: My niece has to learn how to take responsibility for her education, yes. And don't worry, she gets that lecture endlessly from me. It will take eventually. Trust me. But the teacher? Well, I've been a teacher, and if I had all but two of my students fail an exam, true I'd be pissed--but I'd also be asking myself how I was responsible for that failure rate.

Here's one of the places where the teacher goes wrong, in my opinion: She types out the notes and then gives them to the students. This is not always a route to failure, no, but in this case it is because apparently all the teacher does really is read the notes to the students. That does not equal teaching, that equals story hour. Yes, it is a charming little story about some fairyland called chemistry, but it is not teaching. Drills are teaching. Questioning students so that they actively listen is teaching. Giving assignments and working out examples are teaching. Asking students to remain mostly awake while you read to them is not teaching. It's not even lecturing. It's not doing the least little bit of what you're getting paid to do as far as I'm concerned, which is to TEACH chemistry.

Another place where this teacher goes wrong is that she doesn't actually assign homework. Oh, she suggests that students do the problems at the end of the chapters as a way to further their understanding of the notes she reads to them, but that is kind of like when your dental hygienist suggests that you floss daily as a means to keeping the teeth that you already have. And do you? Floss everyday, I mean. No, you don't, do you? (I mean, I do, but only because I paid a dental surgeon and a dentist over three thousand dollars to extract a real tooth and replace it with a fake tooth because I didn't used to floss every day and the real tooth rotted away. You won't learn from my mistake, I know, but I did and now I floss at least once a day.)

But let's get real. Does this woman really think that students are going to do optional homework? Because any bozo knows that, no, they're not. Every single chemistry class I passed (as opposed to dropping--I never failed a chemistry class) required students to do homework. The teacher gave an assignment then collected the assignment and graded it and that grade was necessary to pass the class. You either did the homework or you failed. That was true in chemistry classes where there were twenty students, and it was equally true in chemistry classes where there were 200 students.

And this teacher? Has eleven--yes, you're reading that correctly, eleven as in ten plus one--students in this class. Yes, she probably has more than one class, but even that is no excuse for her not to assign, collect, and grade homework.

After that rant, you'd need a sugar cookie to calm yourself down, too.

And the giant, bloody steak?

That was at the request of The Brain. The Brain likes very, very rare--bloody rare--steaks. Just that, on a plate. A knife and fork. A little bit of salt. That's a perfect, perfect thing.