Mike O'Connell

I’ve just finished my latest read, Alexandra Robbins’ The Teachers: A Year Inside America’s Most Vulnerable, Important Profession. With a subtitle like that you know it’s got to be good, right? And just look at those celebrity blurbs on the back!

This is the problem with teachers. Er, The Teachers. I thought it was good… until I read it. Think every blurb writer read this piece of garbage?

Let’s hope not.

Teachers begins with the premise that the titular profession is under attack, and so are the players themselves. Sometimes literally.

Ms. Robbins intends to show this. And she does. No doubt with some hard-hitting research, like doing a Google search of “sensational news stories about teachers.”

Brilliant.

Actually, there’s a great lesson here. English class lesson. Vocab word: self-fulfilling prophecy. I want to prove a certain thing, so I will open one eye and find examples to fit my hypothesis. And after I’ve found enough news articles, I go out and make a few of my own, going “undercover” with my biases in mind. It’s the teacher equivalent of Nickel and Dimed.

Want to make teaching look hard and its brethren suffering? Take the most wild examples you can find from the news and cobble them together under a fancy book jacket. Use some tearjerker anecdotes to string the narrative along and you’ve got a bestseller.

It is worth noting that many of the tearjerker anecdotes involve teachers being “underpaid,” or some similar description. Potential remedies for such include things like, well, finding money on trees I guess. To those who’ve taken Econ 101, that’s just as laughable as “underpaid.” Nobody’s underpaid for a job with a voluntary contract. Are we drafting teachers these days like conscripts of ancient wars? Public school teacher is not a gig one accepts under duress. Like every government job, there’s a line out the door with people clamoring for it.

So yeah, read Alexandra Robbins’ The Teachers if you’re looking for a little escapism or to pat yourself on the back a bit more because you gave 50 bucks to some charitable cause at your kids’ school.

Be nice to your kids’ teachers, sure. But it’s not anything to write a book about.

I’m always one for celebrations, and today’s is a good one: the 100th episode of Math and Musings.

Today’s story takes place in the old country, Binghamton, New York.

There’s danger, heartbreak, chivalry, intrigue, and a plot twist you won’t want to miss.

The show’s the story of my life 15 minutes at a time, and this quarter hour is a particularly good one.

I leave for a few days and I figure by the time I get back somebody else will own my local NFL team. (That would be the Washington Commanders.)

We’ve been hearing about a potential sale for years, though this past week it really seemed imminent, as even folks outside the DMV were expecting this thing to happen. (News has even reached Binghamton, New York.)

More interesting for me, of course, is the issue of a potential new stadium. Like, new stadium possibly in my backyard.

And it’s the classic thing-I-want versus thing-I-believe-in, as my personal desire to see that stadium built (no doubt at taxpayer expense) conflicts with my political principles that say such things are borderline criminal.

Hmm.

This real-life event reminds me of something I saw on television not long ago. (Actually it was very long ago.)

If you’ve never had the pleasure, do yourself a favor and watch the final episode of the BBC’s Yes, Minister from 1982. This “football”-themed episode was Ted Lasso before there was Ted Lasso, and damned if it isn’t still relevant today.

Though I really don’t think something from 1982 should be considered old.

The only thing better than a new episode of Ted Lasso is when said episode channels one of my all-time favorite cartoons, the Disney classic Donald in Mathmagic Land. (If you grew up in the 20th century you saw it in your math class; here was my take.)

Worlds colliding, so beautifully. And this was only a minute and a half of a stellar one-long episode. Unusual, yes, but everything we expect from Ted Lasso. It’s not really just Ted’s story anymore; there were half a dozen side plots last night worth your time.

But damn that cartoon sequence topped them all.

Today on Math and Musings I recap “what I did on my Spring Break.”

Always amusing.

And it’s better to go in fresh, so yeah, just check it out.

Happy Friday.