QUIBILS AND QUIRKS
(the original text as serialized in The Cariboo Observer)

Dan Lukiv, M.Ed.
English and Creative Writing
McNaughton Centre, Quesnel, BC, Canada
E-mail: lukivdan@shaw.ca

LAST EPISODE/CHAPTER 48: Booger almost became a human snowball again, but a tree stump stopped him, and gave him a headache.

CHAPTER 49: “[QUIBILS] MAKE SKUNKS
SMELL LIKE PERFUME”

            “I rolled down the hill and died?” Booger said. “Yer a strange one, Yooper. And being orange...in that contraption...out of nowhere.”
            Hooper, trying to ignore the pile of dirty clothes, told Booger about his day. But Booger paid attention to only the part about the Quirks and quibils being friends.
            “I’m the only one anywhere that’s friends with any quibil. Nobody else alive can stand the smell. Not—ohhh!—anybody.” His head throbbed.
            “Why don’t quibils stink to you?” Hooper asked.
            “A secret,” Booger said.
            “But they, fffup, don’t stink to me either.”
            “Do you like the tea?” Booger asked, changing the subject.
            “Quibils don’t stink, do they?” Hooper said. “People just think they do.”
            “They—ohhh!—make skunks smell like perfume.”
            “That’s as stupid as Professor Hamburger’s Encyclopaedia,” Hooper said.
            Somebody knocked on the door.
            In walked a quibil. His hair on top, parted down the middle, looked trim and stylish.
            “Quabbit, look at what the cat dragged in,” Booger said. He started to laugh, but he stopped because laughing made his head ache more.
            Quabbit pointed behind himself: “What is that?”
            Hooper saw, through the open doorway, four quibils playing in the time machine.
            Then bangs shot off!
            Hooper spit out strawberry tea, and cried, “Nooooo!”

full text >>>

Developing Language Strategies for English Language Learners

Margarita Lara, PhD
Associate Professor of Bilingual Education
Department of Curriculum and Instruction
Texas Southern University

Luis A. Rosado, PhD
Director of the Center for Bilingual Education Program
The University of Texas at Arlington
E-mail:  rosado@uta.edu

Introduction

The number of English language learners (ELLs) attending schools in the United States has grown phenomenally, thus posing a challenge for schools and teachers. For example, in 2000-2001, an estimated 4.6 million English language learners were enrolled in public schools in pre-kindergarten through twelfth grade (U.S. Census 2000). In Texas alone, the number of English-language learners identified in 1991-1992 was 331,869 and in 2000-2001, the number increased to 601,791 (U.S. Census 2000). A startling 81.3% growth rate raises an enormous concern of how to meet the needs of ELLs in our public schools. Teachers of ELLs need to be equipped with strategies for teaching English-as-a-second language (ESL), reading, academic literacy, concept attainment, writing and cultural awareness. Garcia (2001) affirms that it is crucial for teachers to select and apply instructional strategies that respect and build on the language and culture of the home. Teachers should also have some background knowledge on research concerning the complexities involved in teaching language and content to ELLs. With a better understanding of these complex processes, teachers of ELLs can support and understand the need to implement strategies that contextualize language and content to maximize students’ literacy development and success in school.

full text >>>

Student Teaching Evaluations:
Psychometric, Methodological, and Interpretational Issues

Anthony J. Onwuegbuzie
Professor
Department of Educational Measurement and Research
College of Education
Sam Houston State University
E-mail: tonyonwuegbuzie@aol.com

Larry G. Daniel
Dean of the College of Education and Human Services
University of North Florida

Kathleen M. T. Collins
Assistant Professor
Department of Curriculum and Instruction
University of Arkansas at Fayetteville
E-mail: kcollinsknob@cs.edu

Student teaching evaluation (STE) instruments, which typically are completed by the students at or toward the end of the course, represent the most common way of assessing faculty teaching performance at institutions of higher education in the United States (Dommeyer, Baum, Chapman, & Hanna, 2002). STEs routinely are utilized by administrators to make decisions on faculty about tenure, promotion, and merit pay increases. Although some STE forms contain one or more open-ended items that allow students to delineate their perceptions about their instructors’ teaching styles, these instruments almost exclusively or predominantly contain one or more rating scales containing Likert-format items. It is data from these scales that typically form the basis of decisions made by administrators and stakeholders. Unfortunately, because many administrators do not have adequate training in measurement and statistics (Onwuegbuzie & Daniel, 2003), they are not fully cognizant as to how easy it is for them to misuse and abuse a STE form, culminating in “unwarranted and unjust termination for large numbers of junior faculty and a source of humiliation for many of their senior colleagues” (Gray & Bergmann, 2003, p. 44). Such misuses include “treat[ing] relative position [of a rating] as if it were an absolute measure of merit” (Gray & Bergmann, 2003, p. 45), and “not recognizing that even in departments with mostly effective instructors, 50% of teachers would be rated below the department median” (Onwuegbuzie, Daniel, & Collins, in press, p. 4). Further, insufficient grounding in measurement and statistics on the part of faculty render them unable to defend their administrators’ invalid interpretations of their STE ratings.

full text >>>