text:
I Was a Spy in the Second Grade
They knew I wasn't what I seemed—no teacher's aide had ever eaten in the school cafeteria on beef patty day.
https://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/i-was-a-spy-in-the-second-grade/
From the September 1977 Issue Subscribe
For three weeks in a row Mrs. Webster's second-grade class had surpassed the rest of the school in the observance of Quiet Thursday. They were an exceptional class: docile, good-humored, still wrapped in that cocoon of bemusement that protects children, in the first few years of school, from any knowledge of how grave and exacting an institution it is. But Mrs. Webster did not really expect them to win Quiet Thursday again. It was May now, there were only three more weeks of class, and every day that the students came to school they seemed to bring less of themselves. Poised on the edge of summer, the world outside Thorndale Elementary was one great shimmering distraction: Six Flags Over Texas had seized the airwaves and implanted in every preadolescent soul in the state an unbearable longing for what the park was billing as nothing less than a perfect world; Slime, a packaged green ooze with no practical application, had just come onto the market; and there were rumors of a new form of candy that, once ingested, produced dozens of tiny explosions in the esophagus.
Against all this the teachers at Thorndale could only fight a holding action. They threw everything they had into the breach: arts and crafts, track meets, faded filmstrips from the fifties on bicycle safety. Every so often they would make a V-sign with their fingers and wave it in the air, but this symbol for silence went largely unremarked. All their Quiet Thursdays seemed to be behind them. At this point, the popcorn the kids were being offered for their silence just wasn't enough of a bribe anymore.
"I don't believe this," Mrs. Webster said when her class broke ranks on the way to the cafeteria. "You're one of the best classes I've ever had going down the hall, but now you're acting like first-graders. I want you to turn around and go down to the end of the hall and come back quietly!"
Such was the prevailing mood during the three weeks I spent with Mrs. Webster's class. I had come to Thorndale because I had been told it was a typical elementary school. Thorndale certainly seemed typical to me. The building itself appeared to be less a product of conscious architectural design than a form called forth out of the collective memory of everyone who has ever been to public school. Thorndale was classic, a one-story expanse of corridors and classrooms with an overall shape that resembled an ongoing game of dominoes. There was a gym and a playground and an auditorium/cafeteria where at lunchtime children stood in line as women wearing plastic gloves grabbed handfuls of fruit salad and french fries and deposited them onto plates. Every such scene at Thorndale was imbued with cosmic resonance: you could imagine it occurring simultaneously at each of the 3265 elementary schools in the state.
Thorndale is not the real name of the school I visited, and I've changed the names of the teachers and students in this article as well. There is no compelling reason for this secrecy, other than that it seems appropriate. I was, after all, misrepresenting myself to the kids. They were told I was a teacher's aide, and to further that impression I would hover above them and check their math problems or shepherd stragglers back into formation in the hallway. But the kids were not convinced of my authenticity: teacher's aides did not lurk around the classroom taking notes, were able to add simple figures, and knew enough not to eat in the cafeteria on beef patty day.
They were never suspicious of me, just curious. "What are you writing down?" they kept asking me, fascinated by the cursive handwriting they had so far heard only rumors about. "Oh, not much," I'd say, and every time I'd put them off I would feel myself allied with some amorphous, barely perceptible conspiracy against them. In an institution of learning my instinct had told me to withhold information, that I was here not so much to impart knowledge as to forestall chaos, so that knowledge could be calmly and evenly dispensed.
It was not the first time I had confronted my capabilities as an educator. Several years earlier I had worked for the state's Poetry in the Schools program with fourth- and fifth-graders. Week after week I watched the class I was teaching degenerate into a mob. For every girl who would shyly hand me a poem about horses dancing at the North Pole there would be two boys in an all-out fistfight in the corner.
"Uh, why don't you write a poem instead?" I would suggest.
Sure. Finally the librarian or, on occasion, the principal, would peer in through the door with a look of such deep shock that the offenders would settle down for a few moments and grudgingly dash off a poem about shark fishing or car upholstery.
I had come home every week shaken and exhausted after only an hour in the classroom, struck with the realization that if one was to be an effective teacher in a public school, one had to make peace with the fact that education was an enterprise that was conducted under martial law. School was a place where, above all, children went to learn to sit still.
There are, of course, different settings for this experience. Before coming to Thorndale I had visited several other schools within the same district. Though each school receives from the district a standard per capita budget, they differ widely in supplemental income. Various factors contribute to this. In a wealthy community, an affluent and cohesive PTA can make a great deal of difference, providing the school with a surplus of electronic learning devices and applying pressure to insure that its teachers are calm and cheerful and never speak above a well-modulated whisper. Though these schools are not eligible for the federal money that poorer communities receive under the provisions of Title I, they often have a staff experienced in writing grant proposals and pilot projects.
One of the schools I visited was located in a financially depressed Mexican American neighborhood. It had been built a year earlier to replace a facility a few blocks away that had been standing since the latter part of the nineteenth century. The new school had been constructed with money raised by a general revenue bond election and was operated with heavy infusions of federal aid in addition to the district's allotment. It was a showcase, built in the Open Classroom concept (everything having to do with education is a "concept")—a big, brightly lit windowless place that reminded me of a shopping mall. An ersatz pre-Columbian mural loomed in the entrance hall, and at the core of the school's one great room was a sprawling library, around which eight classes were conducted simultaneously in English and Spanish. The open school itself, however, had been subdivided by bookshelves and audiovisual equipment thrown up between each instruction area. These makeshift classrooms were the most promising thing about the school: they suggested a human encroachment in a theoretical environment. The open classroom was being reclaimed.
Within these enclosures highly skilled teachers spoke to their students in low, sober tones.
"Sandra, I like it so much better when you're sitting in your seat working. Thank you." "It's so much fun when everyone works on their reinforcement skills together. It would be so much better if David and Gracie would join us."
"The discipline problem has diminished tremendously since we moved into this facility," the principal assured me, and I had no reason to doubt him. The children seemed subdued and content, motivated, if not inspired, by the dispassionate talents of their teachers.
But this school was an exception. Within the same district there were other schools still housed in grim, decrepit buildings dating from eras in which any educational concepts were simple and absolute. For schools in low-income areas the district lowered the standard student-teacher ratio (from 28 to 1 to 22 to 3) and federal money still paid some of the bills; nevertheless they could be bleak places. I visited a classroom in which twenty black second-graders were being shown vowel sounds on an overhead projector by a kindly white woman from another planet. The harsh light of the classroom, the dark, narrow corridor outside, the smell of mildew and the acrid composite odor of the food being prepared for lunch contributed to a palpable mournfulness. Unlike their contemporaries at Thorndale, these children seemed already to have sensed the magnitude of this enterprise and had resigned themselves to it. School was a chronic condition that would never end.
"Now boys and girls," the teacher was saying, and her voice was naggingly familiar, like a long-forgotten voice heard at a séance, "if we get our work done, if we don't get any names taken in the lunchroom, it wouldn't surprise me at all if we got to go outside for a little bit. But not if we touch each other or bother each other in any way . . ." Thorndale was not so oppressive. It was, I thought, a pleasant school, an environment the children took for granted, a place where they existed with proprietary ease. The school's population was mostly white, gleaned from a community of mixed fortunes. The Thorndale school zone incorporated the children of lawyers and professors and consultants who lived in a fashionable neighborhood along the banks of a creek, but were too far upstream to send their children to a nearby school where a progressive PTA had bought a synthesizer for the music room and hung Cezanne and Van Gogh reproductions in the halls. The larger part of the Thorndale zone was economically depressed, a neighborhood of dilapidated rental properties where families lived month by month with the possibility of eviction.
There were children in Mrs. Webster's class who were wards of the state because at home their parents had routinely beaten them, and there were others whose parents abused them no further than taking them out to expensive restaurants and making them try escargots.
It was not immediately apparent to me which kids were which. The class, as a whole, was homogeneous, a single organism that had an embryonic promise about it. For the first few days I was there the children seemed to me unformed, unimpressed, as touchingly indistinct as a litter of kittens.
Mrs. Webster wrote Thursday's Brain Bit on the board, forming each letter with such precision and concentration she seemed to be in a trance. The children, in turn, pressed the worn-down leads of their pencils through the lined paper they had been given, grimacing as they made the letters. When finally she had finished, Mrs. Webster backed off from the board and read the Brain Bit in its entirety.
"A pearl begins as a grain of sand inside an oyster."
"Mrs. Webster?" Alice said.
"What, Alice?"
"Some people eat oyster sandwiches."
"I'm sure they do, Alice," Mrs. Webster said without excitement. When she was filling out Alice's report card yesterday Mrs. Webster had written under Teacher's Comments, "Still tries to dominate conversation."
Alice was a tall girl with a rather pouty face who was wearing what looked like a wedding dress. Its hem was frayed and grimy, but it still imparted a distinction she clearly coveted. She was the only one in the class who had her own desk—there was no room for her at the four worktables around which the other children sat in clusters—and lately she had been using it as a lectern to deliver terse little homilies about Judy Garland, of whom Alice believed she was the reincarnation.
Before Alice could launch into a polemic about oysters, Mrs. Webster hurriedly changed the subject and reviewed the week's previous Brain Bits about the boiling point of water and the laziness of the sloth. By then it was time for reading.
The class was divided into three reading groups that Mrs. Webster taught one at a time on a large rug by the bookshelf. While she was busy with one group the rest of the children were expected to occupy themselves with various ongoing assignments; copying sentences in their writing workbook, or drawing a picture of a snake, or writing ten sentences each with "a word for a person or an animal" and "a word for what we do or what we did—a verb."
The first group Mrs. Webster took over to the rug was the most advanced. They were on third-grade level, reading from a book titled Air Pudding and Wind Sauce. The group included Susie, a Taiwanese girl who had been in the United States less than two years and who had already, through simple industriousness, exhausted everything the second grade had to offer her. "A joy to teach," Mrs. Webster had written under Teacher's Comments. She had written the same thing on Kelly's report card, but Kelly's intelligence was an indolent, free-floating thing, a product of good breeding. Nevertheless the two girls were good friends: next year they would skip the third grade together. Their nearest intellectual rival was Eduardo, a pale, courtly boy governed by some mysterious internal ethic that kept him as composed and impassive as a samurai.
The Air Pudding group was reading aloud a story about Earl and his magic sneakers. Mrs. Webster would call on another member of the group every few paragraphs. Most of them read eagerly, fluently, their pace accelerating as they approached the end of each sentence. Occasionally Mrs. Webster would look down at her teacher's manual and ask a question.
"Remember what Earl's mother said that morning? Michael?"
"That you have to make your own luck."
"And what do you suppose she meant by that?"
"That the magic sneakers won't make your luck but that you have to make it yourself."
While she conducted Air Pudding the rest of the class carried on with reasonable decorum. They did not need permission to go to the restroom or the water fountain, to sharpen their pencils, to talk to one another at a minimal level. These were, perhaps, token concessions, but to me they seemed revolutionary. I remembered my own school days, forty children sitting erect at their desks, praying they could last until recess without wetting their pants, desperate to speak, to move, to learn in the way their instincts told them it was done.
At Thorndale these rights were partially restored, and no one seemed to suffer for it. Mrs. Webster monitored the class at large with some part of her attention, and whenever the volume or the movement reached an intolerable level she turned around in mock disbelief.
"My goodness, people! Is this my class? Have I wandered into the wrong class by mistake?"
In correcting her class Mrs. Webster was neither peevish nor intimidating. Her overall demeanor suggested a reasonable person who was shut up every day with 22 second-graders and determined to make the most of the situation. Perhaps because she had begun her career later than most (she had waited until her own children were grown), her teaching skills seemed based more on instinct than on formulated precepts. Some of the younger teachers I had seen—those whose professional vocabulary seemed to consist entirely of positive-reinforcement slogans—treated students with chilling reserve. They were clinicians, tolerant and impassive. Mrs. Webster's gifts as a teacher centered around her ability to project herself to the class as a human being. She did not excite them, and surely she had her failings, but the children recognized in her something kindred and authentic, and they were comforted by her presence.
There were 25 teachers at Thorndale, all of them women. "I'd say Mrs. Webster is one of the five or six who are any good at all," a staff member told me. "Most of them are incompetent. A few of them are downright sadistic. They'll tell their kids all day how rotten and stupid they are, then try to fail them just out of spite. Year after year they hand in the same old lesson plans. At twelve o'clock you can bet they've got their purses up on their desks ready to go—they're just coasting through the next two and a half hours."
I did not know which of the teachers at Thorndale were "good" and which were "bad." I would see them in the teachers' lounge, eating leftover tuna casserole from plastic containers and talking about cat diseases and recreational vehicles and planned communities where they were thinking of buying. Occasionally they would express concern about some recalcitrant fourth-grader they were scheduled to have in their class next year. They seemed to take their teaching duties no more or less seriously than the world at large took them as teachers. Some of them were incompetent, no doubt, and no wonder.
It is one of the great ironies of American culture that the transmission of knowledge to children is regarded as more of a hobby than a profession, a task that should be carried out all but voluntarily by an inexhaustible supply of prim but good-hearted matrons and distracted young women marking time until they find husbands. In our society an elementary school teacher remains a marginal figure, a pleasant nonentity like the woman who comes to the door collecting for the March of Dimes.
The image is persistent, and because we have such a peculiar resistance to the idea that the teaching of children is a serious calling, those who undertake it are routinely patronized and abused. At Thorndale, for instance, the staff had on the average twenty minutes for lunch, which they ate in a teachers' lounge they had furnished themselves by raising money from bake sales and raffles. They were plagued by meaningless paperwork, and if they wanted something for their children other than the minimal classroom materials—construction paper, glue, clay—that the school provided, they had to buy it themselves. In some schools teachers are required to perform "spoon duty," which means they have to stand guard in the cafeteria during breakfast, checking each student's cereal bowl to make sure he does not leave his spoon in it.
The school finance bill passed during the special legislative session in July sets the beginning salary for a teacher in Texas at $8460 a year. After seventeen years he or she (most likely she) can expect a salary increase to a ceiling of $13,818. It is a livable but grudging wage, hardly commensurate with what is arguably the most crucial job in society. Teachers, of course, have the summer off, but many of them—those for whom their teaching income is not merely supplemental but the basic support of a family—spend those three months working at another job, and frequently moonlight during the academic year as well.
One of the basic misconceptions about teachers is that they keep the same hours as their students, that they leave school at 2:30 in the afternoon and are settling down to The Edge of Night at the same time their kids are tuning in Cartoon Corner. Not so. More likely they leave school at 4 or 4:30, hauling home unfinished lesson plans, ungraded papers, unformulated projects they must complete on their own time.
Considering the tension and low pay and utter lack of status an elementary school teacher must endure, it's not surprising that the position attracts those whose commitment to education is often minimal or temporary. A majority of elementary school teachers leave after five years or so. The aggressive, career-minded teachers who have lately been flooding forth from the universities naturally gravitate toward positions of greater responsibility and higher pay. The system tends to channel the most ambitious and committed teachers away from the front lines, and leaves in their place the same sorts of teachers who have always been there.
I don't want to imply that many of these teachers are not gifted or dedicated, only that the system does not encourage these qualities in those whose contact with the students is most direct and prolonged.
The system certainly does not encourage men. In Texas there are ten times as many women teaching in elementary schools as men, though male principals outnumber female principals four to one. Granted, there is something suspicious about male grade school teachers—many think of them as being rather giggly and manic, incessantly babbling to their students about the glories of nature and so forth—but that stereotype is ripe for revision. It will be revised only when men perceive classroom teaching as a respectable vocation, and of course they will only see it as such when it is endowed with a respectable salary.
While Mrs. Webster worked with the Air Pudding group I helped Drew with his reading. Drew was a short kid with sharp, narrow features and a utilitarian haircut that suggested he was regarded in his home less as a human being than as another object, like a toaster or lawn mower, to be maintained. Every day he wore the same faded Big Bird T-shirt. He seemed to sense that in certain fundamental ways he had been deprived, and this knowledge outraged him. He sat there fuming at the book he was reading to me. Every word was a malevolent force, and he spat them out one by one, with no real sense of how they fit together.
"Watch . . . me . . . climb," he read, "watch . . . me … climb . . . I . . . am . . . Cubby . . . Bear . . ."
Drew's problem, according to Mrs. Webster, was that he had a "low self-concept." So did Janie, who walked around the classroom blithely announcing that she was fat and stupid, and that nothing could be done about it. So did Theresa, whose mother dressed her as she dressed herself, in garish polyester clothes that didn't fit. Theresa always carried a purse dangling from the crook of her arm and whenever someone regarded her with ambivalence she would break into tears.
The three of them were among the members of the lowest reading group. They read at "pre-primer" levels from books filled with simple rhymes and colorful pictures and much white space. They spent a good deal of time each day with the resource teacher, whose job it was to deal with children who were having learning or emotional difficulties, or with the Title I reading teacher, who was there to help the kids who were not "on level."
Both these women were headquartered in the same classroom, which was down the hall from Mrs. Webster's room. They were both young, hip, unflappable. They were responsible primarily not to the principal of the school but to a roving district supervisor, and so some of the teachers at Thorrnale viewed them as elitists, an impression they fostered by eating their bean sprout and avocado sandwiches in their classroom rather than in the teachers' lounge like everyone else.
But their classroom was, after all, a very congenial place. A child who entered it was bombarded with stimulation: books, tapes, and reading games spilled out of every available shelf, and the teachers themselves had stocked the classroom with posters, gerbils, plants, parakeets, even a portable oven the kids used to toast bread on which to spread their homemade plum jelly. The room was subdivided into five or six different areas, each of which had some cozy feature—a couch, a cubbyhole, a womblike place to read.
The place made sense, not because of the gadgetry that was available but because of a certain mood that the room cultured. Learning was not just tolerated here, it was sought out. The room engaged the children, met them on terms they did not yet have the awareness to demand on their own.
The two special teachers were shrewd and patient. Since each had only five or six students at a time they were able to provide enough individual attention so that even the most obstreperous of them remained calm and industrious.
This sort of learning environment had not existed when I was in school. Children with behavior problems were sent to the principal or merely slapped around; those who were slow were jettisoned when the time came for the class to move upward to the next grade. There were no real provisions for children whose performance kept them out of the mainstream, and I thought it ironic that the resource rooms and support teachers that had been called into being to aid problem children were now the most effective learning centers in the schools.
Their success is due, of course, to money, to the establishment of what is essentially a leisure class of teachers who don't have to face a daily battle for supremacy with twenty or so children. It is an expensive luxury, but if American public education is to continue its glacial progress toward the humane enlightenment of its charges, that luxury will have to be viewed sooner or later as a necessity, as a simple childhood right.
For now, though, the "normal" kids were out. For those who had no special way of calling attention to themselves the rhythm of classroom life remained unbroken, uneventful. The day was divided into little compartments—reading, spelling, lunch, math, social studies—through which the students were expected to pass with as little fuss as possible, making sure, as they left each compartment, to pick up after themselves. Their reward for doing this was being allowed to leave at the end of the day.
Over the weeks I came to admire the children's endurance, to feel that their tolerance of the educational system that had closed in on their lives was almost saintly.
They were, of course, children, and these were lofty adult qualities I was overlaying on their perceptions. Still, at lunch, when the woman serving the food would see me in line, motion for me to cut in at the front, and then offer me a selection of food that the children did not have, I wondered how they could not sense the profound inequities they were enduring. Over the years the educational system had made efforts to appease them, to make their incarceration sunnier, but it had not yet been successful at understanding them; and so almost every natural way in which they were made to perceive the world—touch, talk, movement—was still regulated, seized in its entirety and rationed back to them a piece at a time. But their trust remained. It remained total, because that was all they had. They believed in their education, though they did not know what it was that imposed it upon them, or why.
How well Texas is doing by its schoolchildren is an unresolved matter. There are no objective standards for ranking a particular state on the quality of its education, but various indices exist that suggest Texas is slightly worse than the national average. National Education Association figures compiled for 1976 show it to be twenty-fourth in money spent for teacher salaries, thirty-seventh in expenditures per student (though third in the number of students in average daily attendance). The National Association for Education Progress, which divides the country into four regions based on an assessment of their educational product, assigns Texas to the region that is ranked third.
Nevertheless, when we speak about the educational commitment in Texas we are speaking in terms of billions of dollars, about 2.5 of them this year. Three-fourths of that money, if not more, will go to pay the salaries of teachers, administrators, supervisors, bureaucrats. The rest will be spent on maintenance and operation, transportation, special education, bilingual education, equalization aid, and a dozen other projects.
The money is distributed according to the provisions of the Foundation School Program, which requires basically that each district, in order to receive state education funds, must come up with what is called a Local Fund Assignment, a percentage of the educational bill that the state assigns to the district based on the market or agricultural value of the district's taxable property.
By the time this $2.5 billion reaches the schools so much has been waylaid and parceled out that Thorndale, say, is fortunate to have $500 beyond its basic operating budget to distribute among its teachers for the purchase of extra classroom materials. Billions are pared down to hundreds and finally to tens and ones. A teacher at Thorndale decides to take her students on a field trip to an ice cream factory and pays each of their 15¢ bus fares herself. A reasonably conscientious teacher can count on spending $200 a year out of her own salary on such excursions and projects, and ultimately her willingness to spend that money, because in some way it is worth it to her, has an impact on learning that $2.5 billion of assessed and appropriated funds cannot match. The system can produce electronic learning devices and talking textbooks, it can produce uncountable stacks of printouts filled with vital data, it can produce insipid educational films in which third-rate mimes lead black, white, Mexican American, and native American children through the Wonderful World of Concepts, but it cannot produce education. That is something only a teacher can do.
In the wide world, school finance and other great educational issues were furiously debated, but these were storms that blew themselves out before they ever reached Thorndale. Somewhere unimaginable amounts of money were being spent, in thousands of minds and computers the concept of education was being reformed, but Thorndale remained curiously unaffected. A second-grade student at Thorndale, picking up during Silent Sustained Reading a book with thirteen pages on each of which an animal said merely "I can jump!" could not know that this book was the product of two authors, not to mention an illustrator. He could not know that the attitude test he was being given while his teacher was looking over his shoulder (sample question: "How do you like your teacher?") was the result of profound study and considerable expense.
At Thorndale you could forget the billions of dollars that somebody was spending somewhere; you could forget pilot projects and government-sponsored development labs and task forces and computers disgorging reams of demographic data that nobody ever read. You could forget Jean Piaget and A. S. Neill and Jonathan Kozol and Charles E. Silberman. The true force in modern education was the Happy Face. It was everywhere, it was self-propagating. Someone would decide that students needed a test asking them "How Do You Feel Today?" The students would be given a row of faces—the Happy Face and its variants the Sad Face, the Glum Face, the Mildly Amused Face—from which to choose. There were calculator-like machines called Digitors, on which a kid selected a mathematical function and then punched out the answer to an equation the machine provided. If he had the right answer, a green Happy Face appeared on the screen; if he was wrong a Sad Face came on in red with a frown that seemed excessively sour. Happy Faces were in the halls, on the mimeographed permission slips children took home to their parents to sign, on the covers of educational brochures and on the pages of workbooks. The Happy Face served the illusion that education was always fun and evenhanded, that its failures were not immutable. Surely for every child who conceived of God as an old man with a beard there was another who saw him as a bright yellow schematic smile.
During the last week of school the day-to-day rhythm began to dissipate. A string quartet appeared one afternoon in the cafeteria, played a selection by a "Mr. Mozart," and enlisted a few students for a summer music workshop. The fifth grade put on a play called "The Three Sillies" in which a boy was kissed by two girls, causing a great uproar in the audience. ("Mrs. Webster, did those girls really kiss that boy?" "Well, I don't know, Ruth, but would it be a crime if they did?") There was a daylong track meet, and almost daily viewings of The Electric Company, during which Mrs. Webster tried to catch up on her paperwork. Occasionally the fifth-graders would deliver the school news over closed-circuit TV, an amenity Thorndale had managed to purchase with revenue from several PTA carnivals.
"Now the unit news. Most of the roadrunners and pilots are working on Mother's Day gifts. Mrs. Barnett's kindergarten class isn't, they're studying solids and gases. Now here's David with a report on extinct animals."
"Hello, this is David with a report on extinct animals. The buffalo, as you have all heard of, have been hunted down for a hundred years. Pandas, which many of you do not see very much anymore, is now extinct…"
The school newspaper came out with its monthly issue, featuring heavy coverage of the Mother's Day gifts. ("Dear Editor," a student wrote in, "I would like to comment on the work being done in the cafeteria. Sincerely, Linda M.")
In the afternoons, while the second-graders worked on their own Mother's Day gifts, Mrs. Webster would sometimes play music, the soundtrack from Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day, or a retrospective of Beatles songs sung by the Chipmunks. Once or twice the class had Show and Tell.
"This is a bedbug," Alice said, holding up a fuzzy stuffed arthropod on an elastic string. "It says, 'I'm a Bedbug.' And if you sleep with it, it'll bite you and you'll die the next morning."
But even in the last week of school the curriculum was not abandoned entirely. Each afternoon the three teachers who composed Mrs. Webster's unit divided their students among themselves for math, so that children who worked on the same level were in the same class. Unfortunately for Mrs. Webster this system brought Richard, the second grade's resident firebrand, into her room. Richard was not moved by the mores of Thorndale: he would not sit in his seat, he abused the other kids, he made animal sounds while the teacher spoke. At home he was largely ignored by his parents, and at school he lived his life with a simple integrity that in some ways was admirable but in most ways was tiresome. He spent a good part of each day sitting by himself out in the hallway, where he did not seem particularly discontent. Earlier in the year he had signed a "contract"—cosigned by the principal and his parents—in which he agreed to three provisions of conduct: he would show respect for his teachers, he would not pick fights with his fellow students, and he would pay a reasonable amount of attention to his own education. On the frequent occasions when Richard violated all three terms of this contract he was taken to the principal's office where, with much ceremony, in the presence of a witness, he was whacked with a short, stout board.
He remained incorrigible, and Mrs. Webster watched him with one eye while she taught a multiplication lesson involving imaginary creatures, from the math workbook. "Each Feebeegee has two hats. How many hats would two Feebeegees have?" "Each Gloopus has six legs. How many legs would ten Gloopuses have?"
Richard bounced around at his desk impersonating a Gloopus. When Mrs. Webster told him to sit down he kneeled on his chair and coiled back on his legs, ready to strike.
He was no better the next day, when the class was playing a game in which one student would postulate a. mathematical equation and another would name the function it demonstrated.
"You don't know what you're talking about," Richard told one of the girls. "You're stupid."
"Richard, sit down and be quiet!"
But there was anarchy in the air. The class was fidgety. Half of them were paying no attention at all. When a boy guessed a wrong function Janie stood up and exclaimed, "Jesus Christ!"
"All right," Mrs. Webster said. She passed out mimeographed sheets on which there were long columns of subtraction problems. "Now unless you calm down I'm going to keep giving you more of these math sheets until you have nothing but work to do all afternoon."
The threat of learning was, at the moment, Mrs. Webster's only weapon.
For a month the children had been working haphazardly on a social studies project. Each of them was to report on a particular state, and during the last week of school these reports came due. Alice was first. She stood up by the board and pointed to Oklahoma on the world map.
"The state bird is the scissor-tailed flycatcher," she said. "The state flower is the mistletoe. The state Indian is the Redskin."
Louise reported on Michigan. It was nicknamed the Wolverine State because of all the wolverines there. In Michigan there was a five-mile-long suspension bridge across the Mackinac Straits. The capital of the state was Lansing and not Detroit.
"These are interesting facts," she said.
The rest of the class wrote the interesting facts down in little homemade notebooks Mrs. Webster had stapled together for them. For some reason they seemed fascinated with states.
"Slow down!" they called out when someone spoke too fast for them to get the facts down on paper.
"The population of Hawaii is 769,913," Janie said. "The state flower is the hiccupus."
"Hibiscus. And the state bird is the nene and it means the Hawaii goose."
When Janie sat down after this meager recitation the class was outraged. They wanted more information.
"She didn't even tell us the capital!"
Mrs. Webster calmed them by picking up an encyclopedia and reading from it.
"Hawaii consists of one hundred and thirty-two islands stretching over fifteen hundred miles."
"Mrs. Webster," Susie asked, "is Hawaii part of America?"
"Yes, but it isn't actually hooked on." "Then how come Hawaii isn't part of Africa? How do they know what shape America is?"
Mrs. Webster was torn. She wanted to answer these questions, to indulge Susie's curiosity, but something pulled at her, the need to move on, to cover territory, to play out the lesson plan. There was no time, too many children were counting on her for direction for her to run off in pursuit of abstract concepts. She needed to bring Susie back to solid ground: the capital of Florida is Tallahassee, Iowa is known as the Hawkeye State.
"Well, Susie, I don't actually know why it's part of America and not part of Africa or someplace. You'd have to ask someone who lived a long time ago."
"But they'd be dead!"
"Well, you're right. But we really don't have time to talk about it right now. You'll learn about all this later."
After school Mrs. Webster and the other teachers in her unit sat in the children's chairs rummaging through a great pile of manila folders they had spread out on the tabletop. They were updating the students' personal folders, each of which was about half an inch thick, containing dozens of forms calling for "Enrollment Data," "Special Services Data," "Health Data," for assessments of the student's progress in his or her "Cluster of Skills" or "Reading Ladder."
"Demonstrates an understanding of and uses consonant digraphs." Check.
"Combines phonetic and textual clues." Check.
"Instructions: At the end of each school year the pink carbon copy of the Written Report should be filed in this envelope. Remove the Personal Development section before filing. Copies are cumulative and should be kept in consecutive order with the most recent report on top."
"Instructions: Update Reading Cards. Update Math Profile. Update Vision Screening Results. Update Hearing Screening Results. Update Listing of Siblings."
"Instructions: Clean folders of other clutter."
School ended on a Tuesday. During that day no one at Thorndale deceived themselves into believing they were teaching or learning anything. The whole school was marking time. Every film projector was in use, the popcorn machine was sputtering away in the hall, all the fifth-grade boys had come to school dressed like the Fonz, and their teachers—in the same hysterical mood—were wearing ponytails and bobby socks.
During lunch the teachers sat in the lounge trying to decide if the cut-glass bowls one of them had seen at Edison's would make suitable end-of-the-year gifts for the aides. When they had agreed on the bowls they went on to conclude the arrangements for the annual teacher party to be held at a local steak-and-salad-bar restaurant. It was at that party that the Secret Pals would be revealed.
The Secret Pal concept was this: in order to boost morale, each teacher was expected at some point during the school year to present a gift on the sly to a colleague whose name she had drawn. The recipient would not, of course, know who her Secret Pal was, and would not have an opportunity to thank her in person until the party at the end of the year. But in the meantime she could express her thanks in writing on the big Happy Face poster put up in the lounge for that purpose. "Whoever you are, the memo set is lovely!"
In Mrs. Webster's room on the last day of school the kids were cleaning off their desks, playing Simon Says, Quizmo, Consonant Bingo. Mrs. Webster cleared out her desk drawer, passing out old Easter candy and stickers with pictures of historical events. She gave back the toys she had taken up from her students during the course of the year—a plastic cow, some play money, a Donald Duck motorcycle.
The afternoon passed at its own excruciating pace. The kids were gathering together the artwork they had done during the year. I walked around and looked at it. Butterflies, houses with a thin streamer of blue sky at the top of the page, sharks, flowers. When I looked down over Drew's shoulder I saw that the watercolor he was about to wad up and stuff into his notebook had none of these elements. It was an eerie desert landscape in the aftermath of some fabulous intergalactic battle. Recumbent furry shapes littered the ground. Standing above them were beings of light.
"I think that's really good," I told him. "What's the name of it?"
Drew scowled and looked away. "The Terror of Everything," he said.
Mrs. Webster was still at it, handing out bowling passes someone had given her, and balloons, and stale Tootsie Rolls.
"I'm going to give everybody some pretzels if you'll promise me that you'll try very hard to read a lot this summer."
Everybody promised.
Finally at 2:25 Mrs. Webster stood at the door with the report cards in her hands.
"Every year," she said, "I have a good class, but I think you're the best class I've ever had. And I love every one of you and I'm going to miss every one of you.
"Now I want to tell you that report cards aren't all that important. I don't like report cards. So don't worry about them, don't compare them because that's not what they're for. Some girls and boys learn a lot faster than others. That doesn't mean the others aren't as smart. It just means they don't have their minds on their work as much. An N doesn't mean you're failing. It just means you have to improve."
But the kids knew better. Maybe they did not know precisely what N stood for—Not Satisfactory—but they knew what it meant. They had come to school to learn how to deal with school, and N meant that they had not succeeded, that they had not understood what it was that Thorndale wanted from them, why it cajoled them, harassed them, pursued them so relentlessly. Some of them would live out a long, plaintive childhood, never knowing.
Something serious was going on here, but on the far side of Mrs. Webster there was the beach, TV, Six Flags. They would grab their report cards, hug their teacher, and walk out of bondage into the radiant summer afternoon. That was a concept they could understand.
Texas Kids Got COVID-19 at Summer Camp. Is School Next? By Courtney Runn
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Dressing Down Parents at Houston's Madison High School By John Nova Lomax
Seclusion Rooms in North Texas Schools Spark Controversy By Lauren Caruba
The Seven Ages of Barry Corbin By Michael Hall
A Bad Cop's Best Friend? By Michael Hardy
Tags: Education, Humor, Longreads, Elementary school, Pedagogy, PTA, Public education, School Teacher, Students, Teaching, Teaching Salaries


text:
Q: nginx redirect to a subdomain even without trailing slashes I just installed and partially configured nginx on a dedicated server of mine. But I've got some trouble understanding the regexp. I would like to make nginx redirect www.mydomain.com/forum/ AND www.mydomain.com/forum (note the missing trailing slash; case-insensitive; same applies for "forums" instead of "forum") to forum.mydomain.com/. This is what I came up with:
location ~* ^/(forum|forums) {
    rewrite ^/(.*)/(.*)$ http://forum.mydomain.com/$2? permanent;
}
... but for some reason it works with trailing slashes only. :-/
Please help me! Thanks in advance!

A: Try:
location ~* ^/(forum|forums)/? {
   rewrite ^/(.*)/(.*)$ http://forum.mydomain.com/$2? permanent;
}

EDIT:
Ok the location seems to be working, the problem is probably the rewrite line.
location ~* ^/forums?/?$ {
   rewrite /forums?/?(.*) http://forum.mydomain.com/$1 permanent;
}

Tested the regex on pcretest and it captured it right, see if it works.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
Швейцарские Альпы () — регион Швейцарии, главная природная достопримечательность страны. Вместе с Швейцарским плато и швейцарской частью Юрских гор являются одним из трёх её основных физиогеографических регионов. Швейцарские Альпы простираются через Западные Альпы и Восточные Альпы, охватывая территорию, которую иногда называют «Центральными Альпами».

В то время как северные перевалы от Бернских Альп до Аппенцелльских Альп полностью находятся на территории Швейцарии, южные перевалы Монблана в Бернском массиве находятся на территории других стран, таких как Франция, Италия, Австрия и Лихтенштейн.

Швейцарские Альпы покрывают почти все самые высокие горы Альп, такие как Монте-Роза (4634 м), Дом (4545 м), Лискамм (4527 м), Вайссхорн (4 506 м) и Маттерхорн (4 478 м). Другие высокие вершины можно найти в списке гор Швейцарии.

С древности и времен Средневековья переход через Альпы играл важную стратегическую роль в истории. Регион к северу от массива Сен-Готард стал центром Швейцарской Конфедерации в начале XIV века.

Среди высоких гор скрываются живописные озёра: горные вершины неприступной крепостью окружают озеро Люцерн, Боденское озеро, Женевское озеро.

Изменения климата оказывает сильное влияние на Швейцарские Альпы. В 2019 году учёные подсчитали, что за последние 30-40 лет потеряно около 700 ледников из-за таяния льда и снега. Некоторые климатологи предполагают, что большинство альпийских ледников может исчезнуть в течение столетия, что приведет к образованию множества озёр. Таким образом увеличится риск для людей и животных: горные склоны будут представлять большую опасность для людей и животных из-за камнепадов и оползней.

См. также
 Швейцария
 Альпы
 Готардский базисный тоннель

Примечания

Литература

Ссылки
Туризм
 General timetable of all public transport
 MySwitzerland.com
 SuisseMobile.com
 MySwissAlps.com
 WalkingSwitzerland.com

Карты
 Map of Switzerland with points of interest
 Topographic maps of Switzerland

Разное
 General informations about the Alps
 The Jungfrau-Aletsch-Bietschhorn UNESCO World Heritage site
 Photos and paintings of Swiss Alps

География Швейцарии
Горные хребты Швейцарии

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
Tra i più dotati architetti della seconda generazione medievalista insieme a Giovanni Sicher, Ernesto Corti e Antonio Pedrazzoli, progettò grandi edifici in stile gotico-monumentale, anche con citazioni dello stile veneto-bizantino tipiche dell'eclettismo. La sua opera più nota è l'Hotel Excelsior, in stile neomoresco, al Lido di Venezia.

Biografia
Nato da una modesta famiglia di costruttori, nel 1879 entra all'Accademia di belle arti di Venezia, dove ha tra i suoi docenti l'architetto Giacomo Franco, titolare della cattedra di architettura, geometria e prospettiva. Durante i tre anni di studi all'Istituto di belle arti, si distingue per il suo forte atteggiamento verso la progettazione architettonica che gli vale il prestigioso Premio Tomaso Caronini nel 1881. A 19 anni si laurea maestro di progettazione architettonica e maestro di disegno per scuole tecniche e ordinarie.

Inizia la sua carriera professionale nello studio dell'ingegnere Giovanni Antonio Romano, dove si dedica principalmente al (mai realizzato) progetto della ferrovia Adriatico-Tiberina e disegna importanti opere monumentali. Per rispondere alle esigenze economiche della famiglia, dopo aver sposato Anna Potz nel 1887, con la quale ebbe tre figli, fu costretto ad accettare l'incarico di assistente alla costruzione della Congregazione della Carità, dove rimase dal 1892 al 1897.L'incarico professionale più importante di questo periodo gli venne affidato nel 1898 da Julius Grünwald, che gli commissionò la costruzione dell'hotel Bauer-Grünwald di Venezia, unendo le sue due proprietà a San Moisé, una delle quali era già utilizzata come albergo. Il palazzo costruito da Sardi, inaugurato nel 1901, suscitò subito una generale ammirazione per la saggezza con cui riuscì a far rivivere il tradizionale spirito architettonico gotico-veneziano. Altri prestigiosi lavori seguiranno a Venezia e sulla terraferma.

Oltre all'edilizia civile, Sardi progettò a Mestre una fabbrica per la produzione di scope di sorgo di proprietà di Hermann Krull. Partecipò inoltre a importanti concorsi banditi a Venezia, tra cui il nuovo mercato coperto di Rialto (1901), un nuovo albergo in riva degli Schiavoni tra l'hotel Danieli e il Palazzo delle prigioni di Venezia (1906), il nuovo quartiere operaio a Sant'Elena, in collaborazione con il cugino Giuseppe Sardi, Attilio e Cadel Prudente Padoa.

Oltre all'attività di progettista, Sardi si dedicò con passione anche alla difesa del patrimonio artistico veneziano e nel 1904 accettò l'incarico affidatogli dal vescovo Francesco Paganuzzi di restaurare la monumentale chiesa di Santo Stefano.

In numerose conferenze tenute all'Ateneo Veneto ed articoli sui giornali dell'epoca, commentò i grandi eventi nel campo dell'architettura del suo tempo, che vanno dal completamento della facciata della chiesa della Pietà nel 1902 alle riflessioni polemiche sulla ricostruzione del campanile di San Marco, crollato il 14 luglio 1902.

Docente all'Accademia di Belle Arti di Venezia, Sardi fu membro del Consiglio Accademico, presidente della Scuola Tecnica aggregata alla Società di M.S., rieletta nel 1889 da scultori e scalpellini.

Membro della Commissione comunale d'ornato, Sardi fu anche membro dell'Ateneo Veneto, dell'Istituto di Scienze, Lettere e Arti del Veneto, della Società per le Arti Edili e sostenne la creazione della Federazione Regionale degli Architetti Veneziani di cui fu Presidente. La professionalità raggiunta in questi anni gli valse il titolo di Cavaliere Italiano della Corona conferito nel 1908.

Negli ultimi anni di vita si trasferì a Mogliano Veneto, dove venne eletto consigliere comunale e proseguì la sua attività professionale.

Morì inaspettatamente il 26 giugno 1913, avvelenato da un'uricemia.

Opere

Progetti principali

 Hotel Bauer-Grünwald, Venezia
 Palazzo del conte Costantino Nigra, ambasciatore italiano a Vienna, situato all'imboccatura del Rio Marin sul Canal Grande (circa 1904);
 Restauro dell'edificio dell'ingegnere Beppe Ravà a San Silvestro, affacciato sul Canal Grande(1906);
 Villa Delord a Casella (Asolo) creata per il comandante Oliviero Rinaldi che la donò alla figlia in occasione del suo matrimonio con Arturo Delord (1906);
 Hotel Excelsior al Lido di Venezia (1908);
 Ca' del Mistro (ora distrutta) a Rio Terà Sabbioni, vicino alla stazione ferroviaria di Venezia (1906);
 Palazzo dei Scarpe alle Zattere (1907);
 Ca' Baschiera a Rio Terà Sant'Agnese (circa 1910);
 al Lido : le ville Papadopoli alle Quattro Fontane (1907-1908), Villa Fanna (1910-1911), e Villa Venuti (1911-12);
 Villa estiva di Alessandro Roar a Mirano (1912-13);
 Scuola comunale di Ceggia;
 Chalet Guillon Mangilli a Cornuda;
 Casa privata Guetta a Santa Maria della Rovere.

Note

Bibliografia

Altri progetti

Collegamenti esterni
 Università IUAV di Venezia - Fondo G. Sardi - Note biografiche

Architetti eclettici
Architetti gotici
Studenti dell'Accademia di belle arti di Venezia


The summer of 2016 was particularly challenging for our Dunwoody North gardeners as our area suffered drought conditions and nearly set a record of days at or above 90 degrees. Never the less, Yard of the Month judges were not disappointed with the selection of beautifully maintained landscapes from which to choose our monthly winners. YOTM winners are chosen on the basis of their front yard presentation but often when the award was delivered a tour of the back yard revealed an even more elaborate landscape. There is no shortage of creative gardeners in Dunwoody North!
You can view the 2016 YOTM winners by using your mouse to move the slider. Click an image for a larger view. In large view, hover on the left or right with your mouse and click to move back and forwards. For more details on the criteria for judging the YOTM winners is included on this site.


Hello, I have a SPSS database with medical information. Measurements of 8 parameters were made in 3 different moments: preoperative, 1 month after surgery and 3 months after surgery. I'd like to analyze with SPSS, if there are any statistical significante between the preop and 1 month and 3 months values. Database is clean and ready to analyze.


Lomeshaye Business Village is situated adjacent to Junction 12 of the M65 motorway on the popular Lomeshaye Industrial Park in Nelson.
Lomeshaye Business Village comprises a 116,500 sq.ft business village complex with 128 business/office/industrial units ranging from 100 sq.ft up to 9,200 sq.ft. The business centre is able to offer flexible high quality office accommodation at competitive rentals. Other features of the development include flexible licence agreements, fully serviced offices, on site management team, modern office furnishings, telephone answering, fax, photocopying and postal services, kitchen facilities, security, mail boxes, cleaning and maintenance of the communal areas.
We have a large number of suites ranging from 200 sq. ft. - 2,500 sq. ft. Full details are available on request.
All mains services are connected to the development. Electricity and gas are metered and charged monthly.


We are a group of teenagers who want to help you face life's challenges. Many of us have personally faced these challenges and want to prevent anyone else from going through the same thing. Some of us are here to help because we have friends facing problems and we want to know how to help to them.
Behind every smile is a story; behind every pair of eyes there are struggles. Many teens face challenges against abuse, depression, drugs, peer pressure, bullying, and more. One Step Stonger is striving to make people aware of these silent battles that teens are fighting, so that we can build a community, a world, of people who care and want to take steps into positive directions. One Step Stronger is the weapon in this war of teen struggles. As a group of teens we are creating many ways for teens to reach out to other teens. We want you and other teens to know that they are not alone, are loved, and are important. There is help.
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Arias CA, Singh KV, Panesso D, Murray BE. Evaluation of ceftobiprole medocaril against Enterococcus faecalis in a mouse peritonitis model. J Antimicrob Chemother. 2007; 60(3): 594-598.
Arias CA, Singh KV, Panesso D, and Murray BE. Time-Kill and Synergism Studies of Ceftobiprole against Enterococcus faecalis, Including β-Lactamase-Producing and Vancomycin-Resistant Isolates. Antimicrob Agents Chemother. 2007; 51:2043-7.
Bush K, Heep M, Macielag MJ, and Noel GJ. Anti-MRSA β-lactams in development, with a focus on ceftobiprole: the first anti-MRSA β-lactam to demonstrate clinical efficacy. Expert Opin Investig Drugs. 2007; 16:419-29.
Davies TA, Page MG, Shang W, Andrew T, Kania M, and Bush K. Binding of Ceftobiprole and Comparators to the Penicillin-Binding Proteins of Escherichia coli, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Staphylococcus aureus and Streptococcus pneumoniae. Antimicrob Agents Chemother. 2007; 51(7): 2621-2624.
Drew RH. Emerging options for treatment of invasive, multidrug-resistant Staphylococcus aureus infections. Pharmacotherapy. 2007; 27:227-49.
Ednie L, Shapiro S, and Appelbaum PC. Antianaerobe activity of ceftobiprole, a new broad-spectrum cephalosporin. Diagn Microbiol Infect Dis. 2007; 58:133-6.
Goldstein FW. Combating resistance in a challenging, changing environment. Clin Microbiol Infect. 2007; 13 Suppl 2: 2-6.
Goldstein F, Perutka J, Cuirolo A et al. Identification and phenotypic characterization of a β-lactam-dependent, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). Antimicrob Agents Chemother. 2007.
Jones ME. In-vitro profile of a new beta-lactam, ceftobiprole, with activity against methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. Clin Microbiol Infect. 2007; 13 Suppl 2:17-24.
Kosinski MA, Joseph WS. Update on the treatment of diabetic foot infections. Clin Podiatr Med Surg. 2007; 24:383-96.
Lodise TP, Jr., Pypstra RMD, Kahn JB MD et al. Probability of Target Attainment for Ceftobiprole as Derived from a Population Pharmacokinetic Analysis of 150 Subjects. Antimicrob Agents Chemother. 2007; 51(7): 2378-2387.
Maclayton DO, and Hall RG. Pharmacologic treatment options for nosocomial pneumonia involving methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. Ann Pharmacother. 2007; 41:235-44.
Mesaros N, Nordmann P, Plesiat P et al. Pseudomonas aeruginosa: resistance and therapeutic options at the turn of the new millennium. Clin Microbiol Infect. 2007; 13:560-78.
Noel GJ. Clinical profile of ceftobiprole, a novel β-lactam antibiotic. Clin Microbiol Infect. 2007; 13 Suppl 2:25-9.:25-9.
Page MGP. Ceftobiprole - A case study. Expert Opin Drug Discov. 2007; 2(1): 115-129.
Poulakou G and Giamarellou H. Investigational treatments for postoperative surgical site infections. Expert Opin Investig Drugs. 2007; 16:137-55.
Queenan AM, Shang W, Kania M, Page MGP, Bush K. Interactions of ceftobiprole with β-lactamases from molecular classes A to D. Antimicrob Agents Chemother. 2007; 51(9): 3089-3095.
Rossolini GM. Redesigning β-lactams to combat resistance: summary and conclusions. Clin Microbiol Infect. 2007; 13 Suppl 2:30-3.:30-3.
Rouse MS, Steckelberg JM, Patel R. In vitro activity of ceftobiprole, daptomycin, linezolid, and vancomycin against methicillin-resistant staphylococci associated with endocarditis and bone and joint infection. Diagn Microbiol Infect Dis. 2007; 58:363-65.
Scheinfeld N. A comparison of available and investigational antibiotics for complicated skin infections and treatment-resistant Staphylococcus aureus and enterococcus. J Drugs Dermatol. 2007; 6:97-103.
Yun HC, Ellis MW, Jorgensen JH. Activity of ceftobiprole against community-associated methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus isolates recently recovered from US military trainees. Diagn Microbiol Infect Dis. 2007; 59(4): 463-466.
P-710 / Baseline activity of ceftobiprole against methicillin-susceptible and -resistant staphylococcal clinical isolates from Europe collected in 2005-2006. Davies T, Sahm D, Flamm R, Bush K.
P-779 / Pharmacokinetics of ceftobiprole following single and multiple intravenous infusions administered to healthy subjects. Murthy B, Skee D, Wexler D, Balis D, Chang I, Desai-Kreiger D, Noel G.
P-780 / Activity of ceftobiprole tested against contemporary European Enterobacteriaceae and Pseudomonas aeruginosa (2005-2006). Fritsche T, Sader H, Strabala P, Jones R.
P-781 / Activity of ceftobiprole tested against staphylococcal and streptococcal isolates recovered from patients in European medical centres (2005-2006). Fritsche T, Sader H, Strabala P, Jones R.
P-783 / QT/QTc assessment of ceftobiprole in a single-dose study. Balis D, Strauss R, Murthy B, Tiian H, Noel G.
P-784 / In vitro activity of ceftobiprole, dalbavancin and tygecycline against methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus strains from hospitalised patients in Belgium. Denis O, Nonhoff C, Deplano A, Hallin M, De Ryck R, Rottiers S, Crevecoeur S, Struelens MJ.
P-1321 / Regional variation in Panton-Valentine leukocidin positivity among S. aureus isolates in complicated skin and skin structure infections. Strauss R, Amsler K, Jacobs M, Bush K, Noel G.
P-2024 / Profile of ceftobiprole activity against S. aureus, S. pneumoniae, Enterobacteriaceae, and P. aeruginosa: results of the 2005-2006 Surveillance Program. Aranza MK, Draghi DC, Jones ME, Thornsberry C, Sahm DF.
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P-2026 / Activity of ceftobiprole against Pseudomonas aeruginosa clinical isolates from Europe collected in 2005-2006. Davies T, Sahm D, Flamm R, Bush K.
P-2027 / Ceftobiprole activity and resistance patterns in staphylococcal isolates from a recent complicated skin and skin structure infection study. Amsler K, Jacobs M, Bajaksouzian S, Windau A, Heep M, Bush K.
O-120 / Epidemiology of (CA-) MRSA Characteristics of complicated skin and skin structure infections due to staphylococci and the presence of Panton-Valentine leukocidin. Strauss R, Amsler K, Jacobs M, Bush K, Noel G.
Seifert H, Aurbach U, Stefanik D, Cornley O. In Vitro Activity of Isavuconazole and other Antifungal Agents against Candida Bloodstream Isolates. Antimicrob Agents Chemother. 2007 51: 1818-1821.
P-987 / Steady-state bioavailability of oral isavuconazole in healthy volunteers. Schmitt-Hoffmann A, Roos B, Heep M.
P-1675 / QTc measurements during a placebo- and actively controlled multiple dose study of two different dosing regimens of isavuconazole. Heep M, Roos B, Sochor M, Schmitt-Hoffmann A, Van Merle S, Kappers D, Voiriot P.
P-1676 / Evaluation of isavuconazole (BAL8557/BAL4815) Etest compared to broth microdilution antifungal susceptibility testing against quality control strains and fluconazole susceptible clinical Candida isolates. Heep M, Grover P, Brown NP, Sahm D, Jones ME.
P-1951 / Dose response in neutropenic mice with disseminated infection of multiple strains of Aspergillus fumigatus with widely varying MIC and MFC values treated with isavuconazole. Warn PA, Parmar A, Sharp A, Denning DW.
P-1950 / In vivo efficacy of the triazole BAL8557 against disseminated Candida albicans in mice assessed by survival and tissue burden in temporarily and persistently neutropenic mice treated with 1-7 doses of drug over a dose range of 20-80% of Emax. Warn PA, Parmar A, Sharp A, Heep M, Spickermann J, Denning DW.
P-1977 / In vitro activity of isavuconazole (BAL4815/8557) compared with six other antifungal agents against 180 Cryptococcus neoformans meningitis isolates from the Netherlands. Curfs-Breuker I, Illnait-Zaragozi M, Mouton J, Janssen B, Hagen F, Spanjaard L, Boekhout T, Meis J.
P-1978 / In vitro activity of isavuconazole (BAL4815) compared with seven other antifungal agents against 309 prospectively collected clinical Candida isolates from the Netherlands. Curfs-Breuker I, Mouton J, Debets-Ossenkopp Y, Endtz H, Verweij P, Meis J.


text:
Boris Johnson claimed children of working mothers 'more likely to mug you on street corners'
Published: 3:06 PM December 4, 2019 Updated: 6:05 PM September 17, 2020
Boris Johnson helps with a science demonstration whilst on the General Election campaign trail. Photo: Stefan Rousseau/PA Wire. - Credit: PA
Boris Johnson has yet again been criticised after comments were unearthed where he claimed that children in low-income families with working mothers were more likely to 'mug you on the street corner'.
In the 2006 book Have I Got Views For You, written before Johnson became mayor of London, Johnson said that women had been "socially gestapoed into the workplace".
He wrote: "In the last 30 years an ever-growing proportion of British women have been 'incentivised' or socially gestapoed into the workplace, on what seems to me to be the dubious assumption that the harder a woman works the happier she will be, when I am not sure that is true of women or anyone else".
Johnson said that female graduates were increasingly pairing up with male graduates, which he called "assortative mating", when they go on to pool their advantages.
He continued: "The result is that in families on lower incomes the women have absolutely no choice but to work, often with adverse consequences for family life and society as a whole - in that unloved and undisciplined children are more likely to become hoodies, NEETs [not in education, employment or training] and mug you on the street corner."
Labour criticised the remarks, the latest in a string of unearthed comments, which they say shows how "out of touch he is".
Angela Rayner, a working mother and the shadow education secretary, said: "It is obvious that Boris Johnson has nothing but contempt for women and working-class people.
"For him to speak about us in such a disgusting manner shows just how out of touch he is. It is clear he only ever stands up for the privileged few."
Last week Johnson refused to apologise for misogynist and sexist comments made about single mothers.
He said in a Spectator column in 1995 that the children of single mothers were "ill-raised, ignorant, aggressive and illegitimate ... who in theory will be paying for our pensions".

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Now that our code has been optimized in order to send as little data as possible, in Part II, we will focus primarily on sending that data as infrequently as possible by means of better utilization of caching on the Web. Once you start to design your sites with an eye towards effective caching control, you will dramatically reduce page load times for your users - particularly your most loyal, repeat visitors - as well as lower your overall bandwidth consumption and free up your server resources.
The basic idea behind caching is simple. Instead of wasting efforts by re-downloading a resource every time it is needed, keep a local copy, and reuse it for as long as it is still valid. The most common example of Web caching is the browser cache, which stores copies of images and other page objects on an end user's hard drive for repeated use. However, there are many other caches on the Web - at origin Web servers, along the network path, and even on the end user's local network - but, the purpose of all of these is essentially the same. Looking out from a local browser cache, you might next encounter a proxy cache on your local network, implemented so that other users on the LAN do not have to access the Web to fetch the same site as you. Next, your ISP or various transit ISPs further down the line might also employ a proxy cache to serves a site's cacheable objects to any other visitor on their network. Lastly, the actual Web site may utilize a reverse proxy cache to hold generated pages in finished form, ready for delivery, in order to relieve the server of the burden of repeatedly generating and delivering frequently requested pages.
This diagram illustrates a key point in our discussion: caches are found on the Web in many places and are constantly trying to hold your site content whenever possible. While it is easy to remain ignorant, allowing them to dictate caching behavior, from the standpoint of site performance, it is vital to purposefully engage them, dictating which objects should or should not be cached, and for how long.
In order to make the best use of any cache, including effectively using a browser cache, we need to provide some indication of when a resource is no longer valid and should therefore be reacquired. More specifically, we need the ability to indicate caching rules for Web page objects, ranging from setting appropriate expiration times to indicating when a particular object should not be cached at all. Fortunately, we have all of these tools at our disposal in the form of HTTP cache controls rules.
The key to cache awareness lies in understanding the two concepts that govern how caches behave: freshness and validation. Freshness refers to whether or not a cached object is up-to-date, or in more technical terms, whether or not a cached resource is in the same state as that same resource on the origin server. If the browser or other Web cache lacks sufficient information to confirm that a cached object is fresh, it will always err on the side of caution and treat it as possibly out-of-date or stale. Validation is the process by which a cache checks with the origin server to see whether one of those potentially stale cached object is fresh or not. If the server confirms that the cached object is still fresh, the browser will use the local resource; if not, a fresh copy must be served.
Step 1: A remote site contains a page called page1.html. This page references image1.gif, image2.gif, and image3.gif and has a link to page2.html. When we access this page for the first time, the HTML and the associated GIF images are downloaded one-by-one and stored in the local browser cache.
Once the data is downloaded to the cache, it is "stamped," indicating where it came from and at what time it was accessed. It may also be stamped with a third piece of information: when it needs to be reacquired. But, since most sites do not stamp their data with this explicit cache control information, we'll assume that our example lacks this information.
The default "Automatic" setting in Internet Explorer partially reduces this continual chatter between browser and server by skipping revalidation of cached objects during a single browser session. You will notice that page load time is generally much quicker when revisiting the same page during the same browser session. To see the performance penalty that would otherwise be incurred by all those 304 Not Modified responses, instead select "Every visit to the page."
Note: While IE's "smart caching" does cut down on unnecessary validation requests, it is also the culprit behind IE's continual reminders to users to clear their caches in order to see new content. With caching, there is a trade-off for everything!
Minimizing round trips over the Web to revalidate cached items can make a huge difference in browser page load times. Perhaps the most dramatic illustration of this occurs when a user returns to a site for the second time, after an initial browser session. In this case, all page objects will have to be revalidated, each costing valuable fractions of a second (not to mention consuming bandwidth and server cycles). On the other hand, utilizing proper cache control allows each of these previously viewed objects to be served directly out of the browser's cache without going back to the server. The effect of adding cache control rules to page objects is often visible at page load time, even with a high bandwidth connection, and users may note that your sites appear to paint faster and that "flashing" is reduced between subsequent page loads. Besides improved user perception, the Web server will be offloaded from responding to cache revalidation requests, and thus will be able to better serve new traffic.
After carefully considering what site resources should and should not be cached, the next step is to implement those policies.
Each of these approaches has both pros and cons that we briefly summarize.
In this case, a browser parsing this HTML will assume that this page does not expire until October 2004 and will add it to its cache. Because the page will be stamped with this Expires header, the browser won't re-request the page until after this date or until the user modifies the browser's caching preferences or clears the cache manually.
You might be concerned about clock variations on the user's system and therefore set the date far in the past, but in reality, this is rarely an issue since it is the server's Date response header response that matters for cache control.
As easy as <meta> tags might appear, they suffer from one major problem - they are not able to be read by intermediary proxy caches, which generally do not parse HTML data, but instead rely directly on HTTP headers to control caching policy. Because of this lost potential value, and given the fact that browsers will readily use HTTP headers, <meta>-based cached control really should not be a developer's primary approach to cache control.
This and similar mechanisms in the other major server-side programming environments is a far more efficient way of communicating with caches than by relying on <meta> tags. So, when you have a choice between implementing cache-control policies using the <meta> element and doing so using a server-side programming environment like ASP, always choose the latter.
Both Microsoft IIS and Apache provide a variety of facilities for cache control. Unfortunately, each has a different approach to caching, and delegation of cache control policies is not cleanly in the hands of those who are most familiar with a site's resources - developers!
When it comes to implementing cache control policies easily, users of the Apache Web server are somewhat better off than those running IIS, provided that the Apache module is installed.
With mod_expires, a server administrator can set expiration lifetimes for the different objects on a site in the main server configuration file (usually httpd.conf). As is often the case for Apache modules, both the Virtual Host and Directory containers can be used to specify different directives for different sites, or even for different directories within a given site. This is much more convenient than having to use IIS's graphical user interface or metabase scripting objects.
Even handier is mod_expires's ExpiresByType directive, which allows you to set the expiration lifetime for all files of a given MIME type with a single line of code. This directive allows you to easily set cache policies for all the scripts, style sheets, or images in your site. Of course, you often need to craft more fine-grained policies based upon object type or directory. In this case, the settings specified in the primary configuration file can be overridden (at the server administrator's discretion) by directives in a .htaccess file for a given directory and its children. In this way, developers can write and maintain their own cache control directives without requiring administrative access to the server, even in a shared hosting environment.
ExpiresByType image/png "access 3 months"
The ExpiresActive directive simply enables mod_expires, while the ExpiresDefault directive sets up a default expiration lifetime that will be used to create Expires and Cache-Control headers for any files that don't have a more specific rule applying to them. Note the syntax used for specifying the expiration lifetime; the time unit can be anything from seconds to years and the base time can be specified as modification, as well as access.
Note that this overrides any directives that would otherwise have applied to files in /static and its children that have the MIME type text/html. By using a combination of configuration file directives, and then overriding those directives by using .htaccess, almost any set of cache control policies, no matter how complex, can be easily implemented by both administrators and, if properly delegated, developers.
If you are setting cache control rules on Microsoft's Internet Information Service (IIS), you need access to the IIS Metabase, which is typically accessed via the Internet Service Manager (ISM), the Microsoft management console application that controls IIS administrative settings.
To set an expiration time in IIS, simply open the ISM, bring up the property sheet for the file or directory whose expiration time you want to configure, and click on the "HTTP Headers" tab. Next, put a check in the box labeled "Enable Content Expiration" and, using the radio buttons, choose one of the options provided. You can choose to expire the content immediately, set a relative expiration time (in minutes, hours, or days), or set an absolute expiration time. Note that both Expires and Cache-Control headers will be inserted into the affected responses. The basic idea is shown here.
Despite the user-friendliness of the GUI, it is actually rather clumsy to set different cache control policies for different categories of files on IIS. It gets much worse if the site's files are not neatly segregated into directories based on their desired freshness lifetimes. If you happen to have designed your site with caching in mind, and put different classes of files in different directories, such as /images/dynamic, /images/static, /images/navigation, and so on, it is easy to set up caching policies via the MMC. But, if you don't do this, or if you are working to optimize an existing site, you may literally have to set the policy on each and every file, which would be quite a chore.
Even more troubling is that, unlike in Apache, there is no easy way in IIS to delegate authority to developers to set cache policy, as modification of the required settings requires MMC access. Fortunately, these gaps in functionality between IIS and Apache with mod_expires enabled can be closed fairly easily with a third-party tool such as CacheRight from Port80 Software.
Here, all images will have a freshness lifetime of six months, except for those located in the navimgs and logos directories. Like mod_expires, CacheRight lets you set the expiration times relative to the modification time of the file(s), as well as to the user's first access. This flexibility can be very useful when publication or update schedules are not set in stone, which is, of course, all too common in Web development.
Regardless of which server you use, it is well worth the time to figure out how to manage cache control hereat the server level. As with programmatic cache control, the directives will be respected by well-behaved intermediary caches and not just by browser caches, as in the case of the tag approach. Furthermore, unlike with programmatic or tag-based cache control, it is very easy using server-based cache control to set caching policies for all the really heavy objects in a site, such as images or Flash files. It is in the caching of these objects where performance gains are most obvious.
While we have only scratched the surface of the complex topic of caching, hopefully we have shed some light on this under-appreciated facet of Web site performance. In particular, we hope that you better understand why it is vital to have a set of cache control policies for your site and that you have gained some ideas about how to go about effectively implementing those policies. The results of properly applied cache rules will be obvious - dramatically faster page loads for your end users, especially repeat visitors. In addition, you will be making more efficient use of your bandwidth and your server resources. The fact that all these enhancements can be achieved through little more than a heightened attention to HTTP headers, and perhaps minimal software investments, makes effective, expiration-based cache-control one of the most cost-effective performance optimizations you will ever make to your site.


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The Sprintz Center Contents About Practice Our Team
Michael Sprintz, DO, DFASAM
Dr. Sprintz is a national subject matter expert on chronic pain. Dr. Sprintz is triple board-certified in Pain Medicine, Addiction Medicine, and Anesthesiology, and is personally in recovery for over 20 years. He has a passion to help others achieve a better quality of life, both physically and emotionally, and improve their relationships with family, friends, and themselves.
Dr. Sprintz currently serves as a member of the FDA's Analgesic and Anesthetic Drug Products Advisory Committee and was a member of the Joint Commission Standards Review Panel for Pain Assessment and Management, as well as the Joint Commission's Technical Advisory Panel for Pain Assessment and Management in Behavioral Healthcare. Dr. Sprintz was Past-President of the Texas Society of Addiction Medicine and a member of the American Society of Addiction Medicine's Drug Testing Expert Panel. Currently, Dr. Sprintz serves as a member of ASAM's Practice Management and Regulatory Affairs Committee and the Pain and Addiction Educational Program Planning Committee, as well as a member of the ASRA/ASA working group on Substance Use Disorders, which is creating the foundational guidance for pain doctors and anesthesiologists throughout the country by defining the educational needs and skill sets necessary for pain doctors and anesthesiologists to effectively identify and manage complex pain patients and substance use disorders.
Additionally, Dr. Sprintz founded ilumHealth and Cellarian, Inc., which develop innovative software that helps healthcare providers identify and help their patients who may be struggling with dependency on prescription drugs and other addictive substances get the care they need as fast as possible.
Kasia Theriot, NP
Kasia is a board-certified Family Nurse Practitioner (FNP). She holds a national certification with the American Association of Nurse Practitioners. She was born and raised in the Florida panhandle and moved to the Houston area in 2010. She obtained Bachelor's degrees in Exercise Science and Nursing from Florida State University and completed her Master's in Nursing at the University of Texas at Arlington in 2019. Kasia has worked as a registered nurse since 2008 and brings over 13 years of medical experience to her role. She has spent over 6 years in the field of pain management, both as an RN and Nurse Practitioner.
Outside of work, Kasia enjoys spending time with her husband and three daughters. Most of her free time is spent at the ballpark watching her oldest daughter play softball.
Peter D. Mott, MA, ICPS, LCDC
Director of Behavioral Health
Peter has been in the behavior health profession for over 20 years. He holds a Bachelor's degree in Social Psychology from the University of Memphis and a Master's degree in Organizational Management from the University of Phoenix. He has been a Licensed Chemical Dependency Counselor (LCDC) in the state of Texas for 18 years. He is an Internationally Certified Prevention Specialist and a Certified Designated Employer Representative Trainer (CDERT). As a CDERT, he educates and trains business owners, managers, and HR and Safety Professionals on implementing workplace strategies for addressing employee substance misuse/abuse.
Peter began his behavioral health career in community-based mental health facilities in his hometown of Memphis, TN. Providing assessments/evaluations, substance use disorder (SUD) counseling, case management services, and program oversight for individuals diagnosed with co-occurring disorders laid the foundation for his professional journey. After moving to Dallas, Texas 26 years ago, he was instrumental in developing a substance abuse prevention program for at-risk youth in South Dallas. The program served over 500 at-risk youth. He also provided substance use disorder (SUD) counseling services for CPS clients, homeless women and children, and prison inmates at a local criminal justice facility. Since relocating to Houston 16 years ago, he has provided substance abuse counseling services and program oversight in an acute care hospital as well as residential and outpatient treatment settings. For a period of 3 years, he served as program director for a comprehensive IOP treatment program specializing in chronic pain, dependency, and Opioid Use Disorders.
Peter was recently elected to the Texas Certification Board (TCB). He is the Immediate-Past President of the Houston Chapter for the Texas Association of Addiction Professionals. In addition, in August 2020 he was selected to serve on the National Association for Addiction Professionals' (NAADAC), inaugural committee on Critical Issues in the Black Community.
In January of 2013, he became an entrepreneur. He is the President/CEO of National Workplace Prevention Resources, LLC. Peter has been a tremendous advocate for reducing the stigma and shame employees in recovery face in the workplace. Peter was voted Member of the Year for the Houston Chapter TAAP in 2018 and Counselor of the Year in 2016. He has received recognition for his dedication and commitment to the field of addiction and his volunteer spirit for giving back to his community. Peter is actively involved in outreach and community engagement in the recovery community. He presents at local, state, and national addiction studies conferences. He is dedicated to bringing these skills and experiences to help Sprintz Center patients.
111 Vision Park Boulevard, Suite 100
Shenandoah, TX 77384


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AJPS Vol.4 No.7 A , July 2013
Cytological Investigation of Pollen Development in Sorghum Line with Male Sterility Induced by Sodium Ascorbate in Tissue Culture
Marina I. Tsvetova, Lev A. Elkonin*
Department of Biotechnology, Agricultural Research Institute for South-East Region, Saratov, Russia..
Abstract: Investigation of male sterility mutations is an effective approach for identification of genes involved in anther and pollen development. The comparison of "cytological phenotypes" of newly induced mutants with phenotypes determined by already known genes favors elucidation of genetic control of diverse microsporo- and gametogenesis stages. In this paper, we describe pollen development in the grain sorghum line Zh10-asc1 with mutation of male sterility. This line was obtained from callus culture treated by sodium ascorbate. A wide spectrum of abnormalities in microsporogenesis have been found, such as cytomixis, chromosomal laggards, chromosome disjunction, adhesion of chromosomes, disturbed cytokinesis, and others. In tapetum, the cells with one nucleus, with unequal nuclei, and with micronuclei have been observed. During pollen grain (PG) maturation abnormalities in starch accumulation and delay of development often took place. In mature anthers, a variety of pollen grain types have been revealed: fertile, of irregular shape, incompletely filled with starch, PGs delayed at the uni-nucleate or bi-nucleate gametophyte stages, with partially or fully degenerated contents, and with abnormal coloration. Variation in spectrum and the frequency of disturbances between the flowers of one and the same plant have been revealed. The reasons for significant genetic and epigenetic instability are discussed.
Keywords: Male Sterility; Microsporogenesis; Sodium Ascorbate; In Vitro Mutagenesis; Genetic Instability; Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench
Cite this paper: M. Tsvetova and L. Elkonin, "Cytological Investigation of Pollen Development in Sorghum Line with Male Sterility Induced by Sodium Ascorbate in Tissue Culture," American Journal of Plant Sciences, Vol. 4 No. 7, 2013, pp. 11-18. doi: 10.4236/ajps.2013.47A1002.
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