West Virginia Teachers on Strike, still make sure hungry students are fed

[Fireball]

Grading tests and homework. Don't get me started!  Trying to read test and homework answers in a student's crabbed "handwriting" nearly made me go blind. I don't think that anyone realizes how difficult that kind of thing can be until they experience it. I know that I didn't. I realized when I was 14 in drafting class that I could make my handwriting much more legible than the chicken scratching that I had used up until then. It's called "shop hand", and is all caps. Just look at a drawing made in that era, and you will know what I mean. People who study graphology claim that it is a sign of a big ego to write like that, but I have to point out that clarity of communication supersedes that to them.

I remember in 3rd or 4th grade growing up my teachers were like "Learning Cursive is the MOST IMPORTANT THING YOU WILL EVER DO.  You'll be using it all the time in high school."

Got to high school, my teachers were like "Please print.  No, really just print. Preferably legibly."  (I still did some of my work in cursive out of habit)

As a teacher, I finally got why.  Some kids have beautiful handwriting.  Others are clearly future doctors.  Thankfully these days computers are so widespread that any 3-5+ page paper will be TYPED.  By like demand.  (A friend of mine though, English teacher, REQUIRES her seniors to do one hand written paper per year.  She's a sadist I tell you).  Even WITH print, some kids write answers and I look at it and it's like the Zodiac Cipher.   Need an NSA cryptologist to figure out what they're saying.

Now add in that they are doing proofs in geometry class. Handwriting is one thing, but badly constructed triangles and what not only add to the problem, in grading. I've observed the problem with a lack of teachers in California, and I'd like to help alleviate that problem. But this little conversation is giving me seriously bad memories.

[possibletarian]

Ohhhh ohhhhh can I play "My Life is Harder Than Yours"? I wanna play the kidney failure card more often.

Kidney failure?

Pffft!

One night my heart exploded. I couldn't afford a phone, so I couldn't call an ambulance.

So I left the box I lived in, carrying the remnants ofmy heart in my bare hards, and walked 20 miles, uphill, in a blizzard, to my nearest hospital.

They didn't have a spare heart so I now have, in my chest, a hamster in a wheel.

And it wasn't a young hamster to begin with!

That's nowt lass, why back in my day when I worked down pit when I wer just 5 that knoos....