This comic was intended to get out the vote for next month's election. Poor Hector and Sally, they can't vote yet and all the adults who should have voted decided to sit this one out. On a side note the comic is now in color!

Ritter passes gas

In this one Colorado outgoing Governor passes a stinky bit of gas in the form of SB191. This supposed reform law was intended to help the state of Colorado secure the Race To The Top funds. Of course the state did not get the funds, but still gets saddled with this travesty. It will likely be struck down or modified in the coming years. It is a shame that the state will have to spend more money to defend a crappy law. Ritter signed it just before he left office. He signed it even though he had put in place a group to study teacher performance pay and was proceeding in a more thoughtful way. But suddenly RTTT comes along and the Colorado Legislators decide to ram though SB191. Co-sponsored by Chris Romer(D) the bill is a thinly veiled attempt to remove due process rights of teachers and inserts student scores on CSAP into teacher evaluations.

This is the editorial for this month. I can't believe that we have to have this fight! The Colorado state senate is totally out of line for trying to take away our due process rights as teachers. This is yet another attack on teachers in the ongoing Republican, conservative effort to ruin public education. Who the hell do they think they are?

This editorial pokes fun at the school district's fear of spending down the rather large rainy day fund they have. Only 50 million of that fund is required by law to be saved, and yet there is nearly three times that much.

So, things are pretty bleak in the education field. This is the latest editorial cartoon I created for my teachers union newspaper the JCEA Insight. This year the economic calamity has finally come home to roost in the field of education. Many districts in Colorado will be coming up short on the money side of things thanks to the Colorado legislature and Governor slashing the budget and once more cutting into education. They do this even though voters explicitly told them not to with the passage last year of Amendment 23. It seems to me that government is not doing a good job listening to the voters.

The podcast we created attempts to reflect the changes in teaching philosophy in regards to technology over time. We developed three characters: a teacher from the past, one from today’s world, and a teacher from the distant future.

Please sit back, relax, and enjoy our podcast…we had a blast making it. Please respond to the following questions. When finished, please feel free to shower us with compliments.

o Do the aspects of education that our teacher of the past mentioned (penmanship, spelling, and math facts) still have a place in today’s curriculum? If not, will there be consequences to eliminating these former essentials?

o How can we, as educators, better prepare our students to work and live in our future teacher’s world (considering that tomorrow’s occupations have yet to even be created)?

o If you had a chance to pick the brain of our robotic teacher of the future, what would you like to discuss with them?