Back to School

I think I do a post every year on going back to school, all the while singing the "Back to School" song from Billy Madison.

This weekend I have been doing some plans for my first week back. President Obama will do a live address tomorrow 12 pm EST to all students. As you may know, there has been some major controversy over this speech with conservatives claiming that the President is going to attempt to brain wash American children.

Good heavens! On the first day of school?! There was particular controversy over the lesson plans that the Department of Education had published. One activity was to write a response or have a discussion about how you could help the president and this had people in an uproar. What is so wrong with helping the president? I remember during G.W. Bush's series of, er, missteps, when so many people were criticizing him, that people often said we should continue to support the office of the president and that constant derision was not going to fix the problems. Agreed. As a teacher during all of that - in very liberal northern VA, no less - I held a strict policy that we would not criticize the president. I allowed discussion, but the students could not call him names and they could not make a claim about him or his policies without having at least two facts to back up their claim. I digress; sorry.

I will absolutely show Obama's speech tomorrow. The White House just released his remarks and they're totally inspiring - about making goals, and progress, and him knowing what it's like to not have a perfect life - and appropriate. I'm even doing one of the activities suggested by the Department of Ed. I think Obama and his people realize his popularity with young people particularly, and are capitalizing on that to encourage kids to stay in school and do something with themselves.

Heaven forbid.