jtn

My school (which is quite large...think in top 10 for size in the country) uses CART almost exclusively now. ASL is problematic for a wide variety of reasons in my experience. I've had interpreters show up, but no student. I've had interpreters not show up. Ive had issues with privacy. Many students don't want to be known as 'that' kid in class. CART makes them anonymous. And honestly, if they can't read English well, they shouldn't be in a university. We demand our foreign students know English and we assign books, papers, and assignments all in English. If they can't keep up with a streaming English feed, then that's a bigger issue. We have a large sign language department and students can take it as a language option, and we are almost completely on CART for deaf students... We probably moved over about 4 years ago and it's worked very well as I've seen it.

I am a professor. If you are over 18, I cannot speak to your parents about your grades. It's a violation of privacy laws. If ANY parent tries to contact me (I've had over 8000 students and only 3 parents), they get directed to dean of students. I routinely have 200 students in a class, and I would be aware of her grade.... Especially since she was special needs. You would check her to see if she was having translation issues... (Which having a sign language interpreter in class is out of date... I get a special mike with deaf students. I speak into it and they have an off-site live time captioner steam the class as a window on their computer so they can read every thing i say, but also take notes... It is also better for their privacy) I tell students who score a certain level to drop. No guilt. What I have learned after 10 years is most students score in a range. No matter what, I can't change study habits. Those habits determine grades more than anything else. If you get a 70, 90% of my students could maybe get a 80 with hard work...maybe an 85, but not a 95 except on very rare occasions. It's not me,But how well you take notes, how well you focus, and prepare. If you have to get an A, it's not cruel to tell you to drop...I'm trying to be nice and tell you to try again. In my experience, it won't happen because you can't score that high given the odds. I also hate extra credit. If you give it, it has to be fair. That is, every single student gets the same opportunity. When you give one student an assignment others don't get, you play favorites and that's not good.

I have really made an effort in the last 6 months to just avoid watching any media associated with this family because any attention (positive or negative) just encourages additional media stories, shows, etc. That said, I was flipping channels and caught the last 2 minutes of tonight's show. All I can say is it was 2 minutes too much. The whining, sniping, and talking over each other was flat out annoying. Kate was probably the worst because she was acting like a bullying babysitter and not a parent. If that's their role model, these kids are so completely screwed.

I found it a bit contrived as well. If that was the policy, they would have known in far in advance and I would have preferred to see her show up in a kilt... or go to the Halloween store and get a full length grim reaper robe... or a toga made out of "My Little Pony" bed sheets (or something equally silly) or pants under a full sized hoop skirt made out of pride flags... there are so many ways to flip off administration while technically adhering to the policy. She could have even made a transformer dress with panels buttoned on to create a skirt or a full tux with a teeny tiny micro mini a size too small around her waist instead of a cummerbund... heck, I'd be tempted to get the policy from the school to double check it, and go out and buy a Barbie dress and pin it on the tux like a corsage. If the rules say you have to wear a dress, its technically adhering to it. The outside prom is just a cop out.

I'm guessing Daphne wishes she hadn't been so pissy with her mother about the Angelo's insurance money about now... maybe Regina can back out of funding the college deaf program and instead fund the paying for construction equipment and lawyers fee to avoid hard prison time. I'm still hopeful Daphne will do some hard time and we see a time jump of several years that picks up again with her being released. Most judges are going to look at her and say "blackmail conviction, stolen Oxycontin, and felony vandalism at Northwestern and at the construction site... I think stripes will be flattering on you..." but this is ABC Family so something will be pulled out of someone's posterior and after some insane maneuvering she will have learned her lesson and be preachy and sound like Nancy Reagan giving PSAs on the dangers of drug use. I just hope they show Nacho getting 10-15 for his actions in the same courtroom with Daphne getting her probation because she can afford a lawyer and appear contrite. Hell, if I was Chip Coto, once I found out about this, I'd drop a dvd of "The Bad Seed" in the mail to Regina.

I think this episode highlights they have played out most of the high school drama... I'd love to see a 3 or 4 year time jump between seasons... instead of the whole 'let's start college and figure out some contrived way to keep the cast together...' I'd like to see Bay filtering back to KC after living with Emmett for a couple years but not going to school... her friends are starting lives and she is forced to take a crappy job and live at her parents. I'd like to see the whole Daphne bad girl on probation story line over and done with... either force her to live at home or have her bombing her MCATs and trying to figure out what to do.