a sort of eulogy for my elementary school

The elementary school in my home town is being closed at the end of the year in some sort of bid to close a financial gap the district is having. According to this article, the closing will save the district $730 grand a year. In the grand scheme of educating young people for today and in the future, that amount seems like chump change to me. It seems especially so since the school district is operating with an $8 million dollar deficit. $730 thousand dollars seems like a drop in the bucket when you consider that number. However, I will concede: in these knee-jerk political times we live, I’m sure any meager savings will look good on some pencil-pusher’s ledger.

Where are the new comics?

Sorry folks, I’ve been a bit swamped as we move into the last part of the school year! I’m going to start working on some new strips in the next week or so.

I know it’s the equivalent of recommending reruns to people who already watched something in first-run, but I’ve been reposting some of my older strips on my Tumblr blog, for those interested. I’ve been really pleasantly surprised with the reception my work has gotten over there and I’ve been featured on Tumblr’s Education tag numerous times in the past few months.

Thrift Store Finds: Superman – Miracle Monday

This week’s Thrift Store Find is Superman: Miracle Monday, written by Elliot S. Maggin and published by Warner Books in 1981.

Cover price was $2.50, I got it for a quarter.

This is the second in a series of paperback novels Warner Books published, presumably in conjunction with their Superman franchise of movies starring Christopher Reeve. Superman II was released in theaters in 1980; presumably this book was in bookstores to capitalize on that film.

Teacher Comics: Wishin’ days away

I’m sort of paraphrasing The Thief of Always by Clive Barker here and it’s true. Sometimes constantly waiting for some soon-to-come thing will blind you to what could happen in the now.

This is a follow-up to yesterday’s comic.

Teacher Comics: Countin’ down

Of course, I know teachers who twist and contort the calendar to make it sound like we have less days. One colleague of mine recently told me that we technically have even less days than the students are saying because we teachers have a few professional development days coming up… and those days aren’t really teaching days, so they shouldn’t count toward the overall total.

I am not making that up.

Teacher Comics: I’m not your butler.

I’m often amazed at students who think I should be at their beck and call whenever they have some small need.

Teacher Comics: Welcome back!

I’m not going to put too much stock into these test scores, is I guess what I’m saying here.

Chalkboard Drawings: The “boy wizard” edition

 

 

Thrift Store Finds: Curtis

Today we’re looking at Curtis by Ray Billingsley, published in 1993 by Ballentine Books.

Cover price was $3.99 back in ’93, I paid fifty cents for it.

Curtis is a long-running syndicated comic strip featuring the adventures of the title character, an 11 year old boy living in the city with his family. While not the first popularly syndicated comic strip to center on African Americans, it’s certainly one of the most prominent in the funny paper landscape today. Judging from the appearance of the strips in this collection, they were culled from early in the strip’s run.

Teacher Comics: A good plan?