Las Vegas Sun article describes how Nevada population growth has quickly fallen to number eight.

The U.S. Census Bureau today said the Silver State gained an estimated 45,823 people between July 1, 2007 and July 1 of this year. That’s a 1.8 percent increase in population, which ranks Nevada as the eighth fastest-growing state, with 2,600,167 residents.

Things change so quickly when the economy tanks. Hope things improve.

snow day from Ryan Armitage on Vimeo.

Yesterday was Thanksgiving, and even in this time of economic uncertainty, I still had plenty to be thankful for. One thing that came to mind was my tenure. After reading about the chancellor of D.C. schools attempting to get rid of teacher tenure, I have come to realize just how valuable it is.

Let’s first understand what teacher tenure is: It’s giving due process rights to teachers. If a teacher has tenure, he cannot be fired without cause. There is a process to any termination. A teacher has the right to a hearing, and school districts must prove a teacher should be fired because of incompetence, some sort of malfeasance, or not following school district policies.

Don’t get me wrong. I think bad teachers should be fired, but not at the expense of taking away due process rights. Perhaps, we need new laws to reform the process, but ending teacher tenure is not the answer.

If teachers are not doing their jobs, their evaluations should reflect this. It becomes incumbent upon administrators to fire those teachers. I have seen many administrators not use the power that they do have to get rid of bad teachers. Either they are too lazy, or perhaps, they are incompetent.

Bad administrators beget bad teachers. The most these administrators do is scare them to another school. This solves nothing. I have seen those teachers who have jumped from school to school become administrators after just four years. Apparently you don’t have to show that you are an effective teacher before you become an administrator. The cycle of bad administrators and bad teachers continues.

Yet, some still want to blame the teachers.

Would you consider eliminating due process rights to police officers, firefighters, or trash collectors? Imagine, a police officer receives a complaint from someone angered at getting a traffic ticket; the chief of police decides to terminate the officer’s employement. No hearing, no questions. It doesn’t seem fair, but this is what occurs when you don’t have due process rights. Why should teachers be treated differently than other civil servants?

Education institutions are famous for changing with the wind: curriculum, standards, etc. Teachers would also be part of these changes as school become more and more political.

Without teacher tenure, school districts could fire teachers for any reason or no reason at all. When a school district has budget problems, it could fire teachers with greater seniority and bring in the rookies who get paid substantially less.

Tenure keeps politics and discrimination out of the employment process, and for that I am thankful.

Forgive me if I sound like a bit cranky, but I spend more time with email than I should. And it’s all because I work with some people who don’t know how to use if effectively.

1) Stop with the cute fonts and colors. 24-point, hot pink, party fonts don’t get your idea across any better. In fact, it takes away from the message. Yes, I notice you. Reading your three sentence email shouldn’t require sunglasses and scrolling down forever. Do you leave a voicemail by singing? Do you write quick note dotting your i’s with hearts? Of course not. Then don’t be cutesy. Cutesy simply takes away from the message.

2) Use a real subject line. I get tired of seeing important work email with the subject line of “Hey” or “Hi.” My response to “Hi” is “Goodbye” with a quick delete. A subject line should be specific.

I sometimes use just a subject line. It saves people time. I often will send messages, “Grade level meeting will be in Room 17. EOM.” Writing EOM means End of Message. The Get-It-Done Guy has a great podcast episode on email subject lines.

3) Stop with the useless attachments. Why do I get attachments of a Word document, when the same message could have been written in the message?

4) No more forwards! I can’t believe I am saying this. We all get those forwarded messages from your old Uncle Phil. It’s almost cute that he uses the Internet at that advanced age. But it seems I get more forwarded emails from my coworkers. The usefulness is about equal to those from old Unle Phil.

5) Quote sparingly. Quote the portion of the email message you are talking about in your reply, not everything! You don’t have to quote the entire message.

6) Check it before you hit send. Please spell check your email. While you’re at it, make sure you used punctuation and capitalization. I sometimes get email messages that look like a text message from a 14 year old.

OK. Those are my rules, if you have any comments, please email me. No! Wait! Just leave a comment below instead.