Sponsor Public School Teachers Instead of Dividing Over Private School Vouchers

Virginia has a bill that would allow a business to take a 70% tax credit for contributing to scholarships for low-income students to attend private schools.  I think a better idea would be to give the tax credit for contributing to the sponsorship of an exceptional public school teacher who gets exceptional results.

If a teacher has to be sponsored by a local business or a group of individuals in order to teach, they might be more compelled to produce excellent results or otherwise risk losing their privilege to work as a teacher or risk losing their tenure as a teacher.  I see a few advantages to sponsoring a teacher:

1. A teacher that produces the best students would probably command a higher salary based on merit.   (Right now the teacher's union doesn't want to make any distinction between good teachers and bad teachers.  That's like asking someone who earned an A in chemistry to understand how someone else who didn't even show up to class, turn in their homework or take the final exam received an A too.
2. The sponsorship money would be attached to the individual teacher regardless of where they're teaching.  If a teacher changed schools for whatever reason (a good reason would be for point #1) then her sponsorship money would benefit the school where she happens to teach.  Communities, parents and principals would try to acquire and keep good teachers where they as opposed to passing off bad teachers from one school to another (because of tenure, it's virtually impossible to be fired), shuffling kids around the city by using grandma's address just to get into a better school district or putting kids through a ridiculous lottery system based on random "luck."
3. The fully sponsored teacher's teaching methods would probably rub-off on other teachers in the school turning them into better teachers who can also turn out better students.

Could there be any negatives?  Some might say the teacher may be influenced by the sponsor(s) to teach a curriculum that serves their specific interests. Well, that's an easy one -- businesses and groups wouldn't dictate curriculum at all. They shouldn't expect to have a say so beyond the normal expectation that reading, writing and arithmetic will be taught in such a way that the children are learning, getting good grades and being prepped for college or skilled vocations.

And that's what it really comes down to isn't it?  Kids need to be equipped for success - and only the best teachers with the best support systems and resources can do that.

I've Been Profiled, Have You?

I love a good profile; maybe even more than I like a straight-on headshot because I've included twenty-one images instead of twelve. The profile captures a gaze other than the one looking straight into the camera lense, so it implies that there is something beyond what the camera sees...especially if it's not even in the frame. Some people would throw these out but I would rather hold on to them so I can use my imagination to "see" what the profiler's gaze implies.

Tree Parts Twelve Ways

Brian had a few days of leave scheduled so he could drive to Punxatawney for the Ground Hog Day celebrations, but, thankfully unfortunately there was a huge winter storm in the north that saved prevented us from participating .  We decided instead to hop in the car and go south to my hometown where there would be freakishly warm weather, 71 degrees to be exact, in the early part of February.  On our way down to Portsmouth, we decided to stop in Jamestown, VA where we learned about the first permanent English settlement in the New World.

What a harsh life they led!  Over half of them died within a few months of landing.  No one really knows why but some say they could have been sickened by contaminated water - weather it was salt or brackish water or diseased water I don't know.  But every person who was there served a purpose.  They were all important parts in the whole of creating what many consider the geographical birthplace of our nation.

Of course I could display some shots of what the settlement looked like along with some interesting artifacts, but I think I might save that for some other post someday.  Today I'm sticking with the parts idea - tree parts to be exact.  They were once part of a whole tree, that was probably a part of a whole forest - so here's a dozen of 'em altogether again.

12 Sunshots

A good friend of mine, Sarah, a true woman after God's own heart, snapped a wonderful "sunshot" with her cell phone today.  I had a feeling that she snapped the picture because she was probably thinking about God and how He is in control of everything...including the beautiful skies and glorious sunshine rays.  Well, at least that's what I was thinking because I happened to take a picture with my cameraphone too.  But my photo didn't turn out so well because my cellphone camera is crap.  So to redeem myself, I've assembled twelve sunshots that I've taken in my travels in my own backyard, to the beach and even all the way to Alaska.  Check out those rays!

Hooked on Who I Am

My latest mini-obsession is genealogy.  There are a few reasons why I'm hooked:

1. My recent trip to Germany and Belgium to meet my mother's side of the family allowed me to drink wine and coffee and dine on bread, meat and butter without any guilt because everyone was doing it, and, I actually lost 5 lbs in the process.
2. My multiracial U.S. family history in colonial Virginia surely has some aristocratic colonial slavery secrets to uncover.  
3. I've added Who Do You Think You Are? to my list of new-favorite tv shows that includes Faces of America and African American Lives.
4. I live 20 minutes away from the National Archives in Washington DC.  I can look things up fairly easily without having to pay Ancestry.com $14.95 a month to look at free public records.
5. I want to know where I'm at in line to the British throne - because I just know I've got to be related to the aristocratic Spencers, as in relating to Princess Diana (Spencer), from England.

Since a royal connection seems a little far-fetched given that the Spencer surname originates from an association with an occupation (i.e. a despenser, or one who dispenses - liquor, food, clothing, whatever), I won't start my genealogical research there.  Rather, I'll go backwards from what I do know now.  Which isn't much!  (Check out the beginnings of my Vanaschen Poulos Spencer Benge family tree on Ancestry.com.)

But one thing I do know for sure is that who I am is directly linked to my family's previous generations and how they interacted with the history and culture of their times.  There is much to be learned from the past and I'm anxious to discover it.