The Judge Turns Up The Heat

I've been telling you about my appearance last week before Justice Martin, attempting to overturn the Summary Judgment awarded to the Schoolteachers in chambers before Master Berthaudin in the winter. Mr. Mackwood had just finished his presentation, and just as I was getting started, the judge interrupted me. Basically, he wanted me to "cut to the chase": he had some real concerns as to how I intended to prove malice on the part of Tram and Skull. Weren't they ultimately just doing their job?

This was unexpected. In my Brief, I had argued that Tram's diary, which which I posted earlier this month online, was virtually dripping with malice at every line. Even the worst of my online haters, like Mr. Confused, virtually admitted it was so. And yet the Judge claimed not to see it. Well, this was going to be tougher than expected. My whole future was on the line.

What happened next was that as I started going through my argument, the Judge was continually engaging me and questioning me. I've never quite been in that position before; usually, both sides present their arugments with little interruption, and then the judge retires to make his decision. But this was a continuous back-and-forth that lasted nearly an hour. It was pretty gruelling.

And yet he seemed to have an  open mind. He assured me that no matter what the outcome, he wanted me to go away feeling that at least my argument had been heard. And I think he was being straight about that. But he still had difficulty seeing explicit malice in Tram's diary.

Finally, with just half and hour left in our two-hour hearing, he asked me if maybe I didn't want to take a break and return to my prepared arguments, which he would listen to without interruption. I took him up on his offer, and left the chambers to gather my wits. At twenty to four, we resumed.

First I reminded the Court of the ground rules for summary judgment: it's not a mini-trial, and I don't have to prove my case. I just have to show that I have some reasonable evidence from which the ultimate finder of fact (the trial judge or jury) could "reasonably infer" the existence of malice. And if the glaring inconsistency between Tram's account of my practicum and my own contemporaneous notes (which were also entered into evidence) wasn't enough, then there were two very compelling circumstances which were almost impossible to explain without the presence of malice:

1. The case against me was made in secret, and not revealed to me until the day I was expelled. This violates all the rules of fair play, whether the common sense rules or the explicit rules set out in the Practicum Student Teacher Handbook.

2.  The evidence showed that after Principal Skull notified the University that I had been excorted off the property, the University immediately wrote back and requested that Skull formally ask that I not be allowed to return! This step was necessary to meet the strict conditions for expedited removal as laid out in the Handbook, thereby depriving me of my right to appeal or have my story heard. This, I told the Judge, more than anything else showed both the elements of malice and conspiracy which were necessarcy for me to prove at trial.

These two elements, which were well-documented in the evidence before the court, should have been (and perhaps they will be) enough for me to prevail at the Summary Judgment level. But there was one more piece of the puzzle which I almost forgot to bring up, and only got in at the last minute. It was almost 4:20 already, and the Judge had already permitted me to go 20 minutes over. I was trying to wrap up, but there was one more thing I wanted to say. I drew the Judges attention to the affidavit of Colin Russell, the University Registrar who had filed a stack of documents almost a year and a half ago in support of the University's unsuccessful attempt at Summary Judgment on the same motion. (The Professors and the Schoolteachers, as I have called them, retained separate counsel and were pursuing separate defence strategies, which is why I had to defeat two different summary judgment motions.)

It seems the day before they kicked me out, the Vice Principal of Gordon Bell had engaged in a phone conversation with Deb Woloshyn, the Director of Student Teaching at the U of W. And Deb had made notes of the conversation, which were then included in the package submitted to the court by Colin Russell. As the Judge read over those notes, I thought I saw an expression of interest that might have boded well for my prospects. When we return, I'll tell you what Mr. Cox told Deb Woloshyn, and why it might have been problematic for Mrs. Skull and Mr. Tram...

A Genuine Issue for Trial

We were arguing my appeal of the Schoolteacher's summary judgment, and Mr. Mackwood was up first. He spoke for maybe 25 minutes, sticking close to the Schoolteachers' main argument: that I had no evidence of malice to defeat their defence of Qualified Privilege. This was the argument that Master Berthaudin had found convincing at the original hearing last December. At that time I had argued that I was not obligated to provide evidence at this stage of the proceedings, because the Schoolteachers had not met their "first-stage onus" on summary judgment: to make a prima facie case that my pleadings could not stand.

Mr. Mackwood argued that the Schoolteachers had the best possible evidence of bona fides (lack of malice): namely, their own sworn testimony that they had acted at all times in good faith. Who, after all, is more qualified to testify as to their state of mind than the owner of the "mind" in question?

I found that argument to be disingenous at best: of course they are going to deny malice. That an impregnable defence. Furthermore, my position was backed up by significant case law, where judges have held that at the summary judgment stage, the courts should not make findings on the state of mind based on the uncorroborated assertions of the claimant. I was prepared to argue before Justice Martin that the protestations of innocence on by Mr. Tram and Mrs. Skull did not rise above the level of what is known as "bald assertions and self-serving affidavits".

But Master Berthaudin hadn't bought that argument in December, and that was why I was back in court. So this time I was also prepared to argue that even assuming the Schoolteachers had met their "first-stage onus", that I had sufficient evidence to meet my "second-stage onus" on Summary Judgment: namely, to show that there was still a genuine issue for trial that could not be settled at the summary stage.

And that was where we stood when Mr. Mackwood concluded his arguments and I rose to make my response...

A De Novo Hearing

Wednesday was a gruelling day in court. We appeared before Justice Martin of the Queen's Bench to argue my appeal of Master Berthaudin's award of Summary Judgment to the Schoolteacher Defendants in Green v Tram, my claim for Conspiracy to Injure. That motion was argued before the Master in December, and his decision in favor of the Gordon Bell defendants was a serious blow to my case.

But just as the University defendants (the Professors) were appealing the same Master's earlier dismissal of their motion for Summary Judgment in the same case, I was now appealing the Schoolteachers ruling. I filed my Notice of Appeal in February and shortly thereafter we appeared before Justice Chartier to set down timelines.

I was a little concerned about the protocol here, because according to the Queen's Bench rules, an appeal from a Master to a Judge is a de novo hearing; which means, you're basically starting from scratch. Well, that made sense for the Professors; because they lost before the Master, so their appeal before the Judge was just like they were starting all over again. But what about this case? Here the Schoolteachers had won their motion, and it was I, the losing party, who was appealing. But if we were starting literally from scratch, wasn't it still the Schoolteachers Motion for Summary which was the order of the day, and not my appeal?

It makes a difference because...who goes first? I tried to ask Justice Chartier if the Schoolteachers shouldn't file their brief before me? Well,  I get the feeling that some judges don't like self-represented guys like me, who they call "hobby litigants", coming in and telling them what the rules are. And so he basically bitch-slapped me for wasting the Court's time with an idiotic question. It was my motion so I had to file my brief first. Simple as that. And that's how we did it. I filed my brief, and they filed their response. Fortunately, Mr. Mackwood for the Schoolteachers played it pretty straight...he didn't come up with any novel arguments (as he would have been entitled to on the de novo theory) so I didn't need to file a subsequent rebuttal brief. Both parties based their arguments on the reasons for decision as set down by Master Berthaudin in his "short form" judgment. ("Short Form" means its a written judgment that doesn't get reported, so you won't find it if you search the archives like you will if you look for the reasons for decision in the Professors earlier hearing .)

Anyhow, when we appeared before Justice Smith on Wednesday, Mr. Mackwood was there and I was all set to argue my case. So we were both pretty surprised when the Judge entered the chambers and said, "Well, this is a de novo hearing, and it's your motion, Mr. Mackwood, so go ahead."

I had to laugh a little, and when it was my turn to speak, I couldn't resist telling the judge that I got some satisfaction that my original inquiry before Judge Chartier wasn't as ignorant as they seemed to make it out at the time. True, the question of who files the brief first isn't the identical question as to who argues first, but its the same general idea, and Justice Smith seemed to it all in good humor.

And then things got interesting.

Back In Court

The litigation season is heating up again. I've got five civil and one criminal action lined up against the University, starting today at 2:00 pm in the Law Courts building and stretching through next fall. Here is what we are facing.

May 21: This afternoon I am before a Queen's Bench justice arguing against the Schoolteacher Defendants, Tram and Skull, on their Motion for Summary Judgment. This is on my Claim for Conspiracy to Injure with regard to the way I was removed from my practicum. I accuse Tram and Skull of cooperating with the U of W to kick me out. The Schoolteacher defendants are represented separately from the professors, and both parties have motions for summary judgment against me.

June 3: Back in Provincial Court before Judge Krahn for the conclusion of my criminal trial for Forcible Entry and Trespassing on the U of W campus.

Sometime this summer: I expect to go before a Master against D'arcy and Deacon who are representing Professor Bush and his wife, who have moved for Summary Judgment on my Defamation lawsuit, where I say they falsely accused me of a home invasion.

Sept. 16: I have an Application before the Queens Bench for an order requiring Professor Metz to give me a grade on my Bulletin Board assignment. This is the assignment I handed in just before I was kicked out, but which Professor Metz refused to mark.

Later this fall: The Professors have their own motion for Summary Judgment, on the same claim which the Schoolteachers are arguing today. But the arguments are very different. The Schoolteachers are basically asking for summary judgment on evidence, saying that the facts do no disclose any malice. So we'll basically be arguing the credibility of Mr. Tram's diary, which has been a recent topic of this blog. The Professors are aruging jurisdictional grounds: basically, as far as the courts are concerned, that what happens at the U of W, stays at the U of W. The briefs were all filed long ago but the lawyers for the University have been delaying on the date.

Later again this fall: In addition to my action for conspiracy stemming from the practicum removal, I have a further claim against the University for Breach of Duty of Care with regard to the way they kicked me out of the Faculty of Education. I have filed my arguments and we are still waiting for the University's responding brief, due on June 15th. Then we will set it down for argument in the fall.

And that's where it stands...for now.

What I thought of Mr. Tram

I promised you last week that I would demonstrate by example just what kind of detail you need to include to show that someone is a bad teacher. We went through Mr. Tram’s diary where he recorded his impressions of my work as a student teacher, and everyone agrees that he paints a horrifying picture of me. But it is oddly lacking in detail. This doesn’t bother the haters out there, who were quick leap to Mr. Tram’s defence, even claiming that his lack of specifics should be excused on the basis of his obvious difficulties with the English language. I don’t think Mr. Tram had a problem with English. I think he had a problem with telling the truth. But that’s something we’ll argue out in court if my case ever goes to trial. Today I want to go in a different direction.

I didn’t think Mr. Tram was a very good teacher, and I’d like to tell you why. I’m not doing this because I want to get even with Mr. Tram, but because I think if someone is a bad teacher, it’s not all that hard to list specific examples of what went on the classroom. I didn’t spend all that much time observing Mr. Tram…maybe five or six classes. But I didn’t think he was doing a very good job. Now I am going to tell you some of the things I saw.

1.  I watched Mr. Tram teaching the Biology Unit of Grade 9 Science. One of the big topics in that unit is Meiosis. I didn’t see him teach it from the start, but I saw him reviewing it with the students, and he had them going to the blackboard and drawing those eight circles with the squiggles in them. You’ve seen the pictures:

From what I could gather, Mr. Tram’s idea was that the students were supposed to be able to match up the correct names (Anaphase, Teleophase, etc.) with the pictures. I didn’t see him talking about the process of what was going on inside the cell: just, “What is the name of this picture?” I didn’t think that was the right way to teach meiosis, and actually the curriculum guide backs me up on this point. It specifically says you’re not supposed to dwell on the names.  

2.  The next day Mr. Tram asked the students if they wanted to act out Meiosis in a dance? Then he led them outside to the school yard. He had some colored chalk and started drawing circles on the pavement. He spent about ten minutes drawing those eight circles with the squiggles in them; I don’t remember if he wrote the names or just numbered them. Meanwhile the students were just milling around. In the end, he didn’t know what to do with the students and the chalk circles, so he just took them back inside. One of the girls said, “Well, at least you tried.”

3.  Another topic in the Biology Unit is dominant vs recessive traits. There are some standard examples of dominant vs. recessive which teachers use to illustrate, like the ability to roll the tongue or the presence of a widow’s peak. He also talked about sickle-cell anemia. He said all these were examples of mutations. Of course this is quite incorrect. These are traits already present in the gene pool, and what is interesting is the circumstances under which they become visible in the individual. A mutation is an error in the gene code, unrelated to anything in the parents DNA. After the class I brought this up with Mr. Tram, asking him if it wasn’t incorrect to call these things mutations? Mr. Tram immediately suggested we ask Mr. Wong, a knowledgeable and respected teacher within the department. Mr. Tram explained my question without disclosing who supported which position, and Mr. Wong answered correctly, as I expected him to. I thought Mr. Tram would then say something like, "I guess you were right, I'll have to make sure I don't call those mutations next time; but instead, he looked at me with satisfaction and said, “There, does that answer your question?”  It sounded like they'd just proved that I was wrong; and when I paused before replying, Mr. Wong exchanged what I can only describe as a “knowing glance” with Mr. Tram and observed, “I think he still wants a different answer.” 

4.  Mr. Tram’s class was what he called a “transition class”, made up of problem students. There were two social workers and one parole officer in attendance when all his students were present. One day, at the start of class, one of the tough kids, who was sitting at the very back of the room, slid his desk over so it was touching the desk of the girl beside him, who was sitting in the corner. So she was totally blocked in. The kid started chatting her up, and I thought she looked uncomfortable. I waited for Mr. Tram to do something, but he didn’t. So I said to the kid, “I think you’re crowding her personal space”. He said she didn’t mind, and I looked at her. She didn’t say anything. She looked a little scared. So I said I thought he should give her some space. After a short pause, he slid his desk back over to his own row. I think Mr. Tram should have dealt with this and not left it to the student teacher who was only there as an observer. I think he was a little afraid of the students.

5.  For the end of his Unit, Mr. Tram gave a test where all the questions were written by the students. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but I was there when he assigned the students to write their own questions, and I don't think he did a good job of it. I used to be a test question designer for the industrial trades, and it can be a lot of fun to write questions that really make you think. Mr. Tram didn't talk at all about how to write good questions: he just divided up the topics and assigned each student a topic. They were pretty much on their own. I think they needed more guidance than he gave them. And there was one more thing: he told them they could share their questions with their classmates. This was an obvious acknowledgement that they hadn't really learned anything, and the only way they could pass the test was if they knew the questions (and answers!) in advance. I acknowledge that you have to do the best you can with the students you've got, but I still think his expectations were a bit low. Especially when you contrast it with the way he raked me over the coals for not making enough progress in the curriculum and having still had "no assessment" when I was only five days into my Unit.

These are the things I saw when I was observing Mr. Tram as a student teacher. After I took over the classroom, I saw a few other things about Mr. Tram that I didn’t like very much.

1.  In my first class, I was doing some demonstrations with static electricity. I had a balloon handing from a string in the middle of the class. I rubbed it on wool to give it a negative charge, and then took a second balloon and charged it as well. When I held it up to the first balloon, of course I wanted to demonstrate repulsion; but instead, the hanging balloon spun around and stuck to the balloon in my hand. I started to explain to the class that one of the problems with Static Electricity is that you’re experiments don’t always work. At this, Mr. Tram became very agitated: “Experiments ALWAYS work!” he said, and to prove his point, he grabbed two balloons, rubbed them on his sweater, and floated them in the air towards each other. Of course they latched together, just as mine had! So he grabbed them again, rubbed them on his sweater, physically pressed them together,  and then let go. Of course they flew apart. “See!” he said.

2.  Before I started my second class, Mr. Tram said he had a video he wanted to show them. It was about electrostatic spraying, showing how you could coat tomato plants with insecticide by using a sprayer that put a charge on the droplets. This was supposed to be an example of how charged objects are attracted to neutral objects. I didn’t say anything at the time, but the video was not helpful to me. First, it was way out of sequence: I had only started with “positive attracts negative”, and I had a whole bunch of demonstrations prepared to show how charged objects attract neutral ones. So the video really was jumping the gun on me. But more importantly, it was a very bad video from a scientific point of view. Electrostatic spraying doesn’t work on the same principle that a balloon sticks to the wall when you rub it. The targe need to be grounded, so you have a complete circuit. It’s a very different mechanism, and the video completely ignored this point.

3.  During my fifth class, Mr. Tram said he had another video that he wanted to show the class. It had something to do with faith healing; it was that Filipino healer who reaches right inside your body and pulls out a tumor or something. After the video, Mr. Tram led a short discussion about why you shouldn’t believe that kind of nonsense. I don’t think this digression belonged in my Grade 9 Static Electricity unit.

4.  For my sixth and last class, Mr. Tram insisted that I abandon my own lesson plan and teach according to his. His “lesson plan” turned out to be a worksheet with ten “fill-in-the-blank” questions. I thought this was inappropriate for the nature of the course, which is designed (according to the curriculum outline) to be highly experimental. The theme of the worksheet, as might be expected, emphasized vocabulary knowledge instead of understanding; and it included questions on the gold-leaf eletrometer which is definitely not on the curriculum. The curriculum guide has the students build their own electrometers by hanging a bit of tinfoil from a thread, so that students learn you can do scientific investigation without needing commercial equipment. This is the way I did it in class.

And there you have it. Those are my observations of Mr. Tram as a teacher. As I explained, I have no interest in trying to get Mr. Tram into trouble or making him look bad. I am just saying that if someone is a bad teacher, you can easily make the case. You just have to tell what he did in class. Mr. Tram, in his diary, was obviously trying to make me out to be a horrible teacher. But where is his anecdotal evidence? I think if I was as bad as he makes me out to be, there should have been a story or two along the lines of the eight little stories I've told here.

How to Tell If You Are A Hater

It’s amazing how many haters write in claiming to be former classmates who can’t remember anything specific I did wrong, but are adamant that I deserved to get kicked out of University. Why? Because I was constantly interrupting the professors to make pointless long-winded arguments. And yet when I ask them to describe one specific episode, they bristle with indignation because:

a) there were just so many occasions they all blurred together

b) they can’t remember because they tuned right out as soon as I would start to speak, and

c) it doesn’t matter what I was saying because I clearly just wanted to hear the sound of my own voice.

The last of these three points is a bit peculiar: what if it’s true? What if I was only speaking out because I liked to hear myself talk? First of all, this is a teacher education program, so you’d think that all the people in the course have some desire to be at the front of the room holding forth. To find fault with that is a bit like going to a dance school and complaining that you can’t stand watching another student dance because he “obviously just loves to be prancing about in front of an audience”. Well, DUH…

If I speak out in class, either I’m saying something worthwhile or I’m not. So what difference does it make if I like the sound of my own voice…unless their saying that even if I have something worthwhile to say,  I should “put a sock in it” regardless. Because they don’t want to hear it either way.

And when it comes right down to it, that is their essential position. But even the haters are embarrassed to come out and put it in such crass terms; so they have to justify their hatred by saying that every time I interrupted I was wasting valuable class time with irrelevancies. But here’s the problem…when I ask them for one single example of a time I spoke out improperly, they get all up in a huff and say “how am I supposed to remember what you said? I stopped listening as soon as you opened your mouth”.

As I tried unsuccessfully to explain to Mr. Confused the other day, you can’t have it both ways. You can’t say I was talking nonsense, and then say you don’t know what I was saying because you weren’t listening. And you can’t get out of this dilemma by changing the subject and accusing me of loving the sound of my own voice. Because that’s beside the point.

But there’s a deeper reason the haters can’t understand what’s wrong with their position. Yes, they are not very smart, but that’s not the real reason. The real reason is that they are not very honest. They DO remember the things that happened in class, but they don’t want to admit it.

Of course they remember the things that happened! How do you sit for ten weeks in class with a guy who, according to them, is a constant thorn in the professors side, an ongoing disruption to their education…and there aren’t two or three glaring examples that stand out to prove their point? Who are they kidding.

They remember what happened. And the reason they won’t come clean is because they know that the stories reveal more about the jackass behavior of the professors (and sometimes themselves) than anything bad about me.

Oh yeah...and how do you know if you're a hater? If you've ever said (a), (b), or (c) above.

How To Tell If Someone Is A Bad Teacher

For the last six blogposts  I’ve been letting Mr. Tram have his say as to what kind of a student teacher I was when he supervised me in his Grade 9 Science class. I think everyone will agree that he paints a horrifying picture of me. I don’t think he was all that fair. I thought I was a good teacher. But that’s not what I want to talk about today.

It’s evident that Mr. Tram thought I was a terrible teacher; but if you read his diary, it’s not really all that clear just what I did wrong. Yes, he talks about how I didn’t submit lesson plans and how I talked about things that weren’t on the curriculum. But isn’t it just possible that someone – not necessarily me, but someone - could be guilty of those two sins and still be a pretty good teacher? So it’s hard to say just what I’m guilty of. Mostly he talks about things that happened out of class…snatches of conversation, mostly taken out of context, that make me look…well, crazy. He mentions three or four occasions on which he felt afraid of me, like the time I “paced past (his) classroom without saying anything”. But what was it actually like sitting in class while I was teaching? If you read Mr. Tram’s diary over again, you’ll find that when you’re done you won’t know much more than you know right now.

Well, it’s my blog, so I suppose I should defend myself and tell you my version of what kind of teacher I was. But every time I do something like that, the haters chime in and complain that I’m just spouting self-serving propaganda, that of course I’m going to see myself through rose-colored glasses. So maybe I won’t do that now.

Instead, what I think I’m going to do is to show you what it really looks like when you write up a bad teacher. If I was really as bad a teacher as Mr. Tram makes me out to be, I wold think he would have a lot more specific classroom incidents that he could describe in detail.  But in fact, he doesn’t provide a single example. Not even one.

I know the haters among my former classmates are already preparing to leap to Mr. Tram’s defence, just as they did when I challenged them to name one single incident that happened at the U of W which justified getting me kicked out of classes. Like Mr. Confused, who self-righteously proclaims "I am NOT a hater" and then gets all indignant that I have the audacity to ask for details of what I did that was so wrong:

You are like a broken record. I saw a guy who questioned the strategies of most instructors to the point where it sucked up valuable class time. ALL OF THE TIME. Can I remember specifics? Nope. You need to stop asking this, we have all moved on and filed this in the 'irrelevant' file.

It’s funny because I don’t have that much trouble remembering details. Professor Bell was a very bad teacher, and I remember details that I can describe to back that up. Professor Metz was a bad teacher, and I can justify that judgment with specific details. Professor Bush was an awful teacher, and I can tell specific stories to explain why. Professor Cantor…well, yes, she was bad too but in her case I might have trouble with details because everything was just so mushy. She was so earnest and sincere, and she’d keep on saying how such-and-such a point was really really important, and I kept waiting to find out just what her point was, and it never really came. But in general, I can come up with lots of specifics to justify why someone is a bad teacher. And if you’re going to kick someone out of his practicum after just six days, I’d think you should have something more substantial than “he paced by my classroom without saying anything.”
 

So just what am I expecting of Mr. Tram? In a word…specifics. The very thing Mr. Confused insists I'm not entitled too. And although I haven’t mentioned it yet, I happen to think Mr. Tram was quite a bad teacher. So I asked myself: let’s say we turned the tables. Could I back up that claim with specific incidents? And when I think about it…yes, I think I can. So maybe that will be my next order of business when we return.

I ought to mention that this might not be the smartest move on my part. Yes, Mr. Tram criticized me in writing, so why shouldn’t I criticize him right back? Well, theres’ a difference. It was his job to be critical of me; so it’s hard for me to sue him, because under the doctrine of qualified privilege, I have to prove that he was malicious. That’s not so easy.

But if I come out in this blog and just criticize him out of the blue, it’s not clear that I have any such defence: this blog is not what they call a “privileged occasion”. He can sue me, and my only defence would be that what I’m saying is the truth. And that’s not always so easy to prove, considering I don’t have ready access to the witnesses who saw it all…that is, the students.

Still, I think I can make out a pretty good case that Mr. Tram was a bad teacher. Not because I want to get even with him, but just to clarify the theoretical point: what does it look like when you compile a list of actual examples of poor teaching? Because I don’t think Mr. Tram has really done that in his diary. Like I say, it could get nasty for me, but hey…what the heck. Let’s see what happens.

* * * *

EDIT: Mr. Confused has written in with a list of my character flaws that supposedly proves I was a bad teacher. One of those flaws is that I'm "so self-absorbed I can't see the big picture". Hmmm...

He insists “I am not a hater”, but later he admits that he was the anonymous poster who called me an idiot.

He admits that it’s obvious that someone must have told Tram to “get the dirt” on me (and who would that be if not Principal Skull?); but in spite of all this, he proclaims that if it was him in my situation, he would have won Tram over with his personal charm. (Who’s “self-absorbed” now?) 

When I first started posting Tram’s diary, he complained that I must be leaving something out because there was nothing in Tram’s account to explain why he was so opposed to me; but later, when it became clear to him that I had left nothing out, he backtracks and argues that according to the Diary, Tram started off on my side, trying to “help me become a better teacher”. 

And after admitting that none of his four CT’s never even asked for as much as a lesson plan (and how much he enjoyed the freedom they gave him), it still doesn't cross his mind that maybe he was lucky that he didn’t have Mr. Tram as a CT.

He criticizes my lesson plans for not listing the SLO’s but admits he didn’t read the introduction where I list all the SLO’s.

When it comes to what happened at the U of W, he admits he can’t remember anything I specifically did wrong at the University, but still says they were justified in “giving me the boot”.

He ridicules me for being so obsessed (“like a broken record”) with getting people to come forward with specific incidents, saying (more or less) “get over it already. Everyone else has moved on. Why can’t you?” Big picture: Yes, Mr. Confused, you’ve “moved on” because you’re not the one who got kicked out of school.  Talk about “self-absorbed”.

He ridicules me for speaking out in class when it was obvious that no one was interested in what I had to say. Self-absorption: just because you weren’t interested, doesn’t mean no one was. 

And Big Picture: not everyone is brought up to believe it is a sign of character to back down in the face of public opposition. My father gave me Ibsen’s Enemy of the People to read when I was a kid. I’m guessing yours didn’t.

He characterizes my public disagreements with the profs as “trivial”, and then proudly says he can’t recall any specific examples because he would always “tune right out” as soon as I started speaking. Let me try to explain to him the Big Picture here: you can say that the things I said were a waste of time, or you can say you don’t remember what I said because you weren’t paying attention; but you can’t say both.

EDIT: A former classmate, Mr. I'm-not-Shari, wrote in below to ask me about a presentation I was scheduled to do in Prof. Bell's class just before I was kicked out. I actually wrote the University VP to ask if they could modify the expulsion order just to allow me back for the just presentation, but after consulting with the University lawyers, he informed me that they had advised against it. 

I think it would have been a pretty good presentation, but there's no point saying that now. Yes, I had planned to use it to "advance my agenda", as the haters have been complaining all along, but what the heck is wrong with having an "agenda" and wanting to advance it? Anyhow, the theme of the presentation would have been how to tell the difference between going through the motions of teaching and learning, versus actually teaching and learning. I was going to start with a story taken from my engineering education background, which I wrote up last year on my other blog over here. It's from the field of structural theory, which turns out to be a feature of the Grade 7 (!?) curriculum. (They deep thinkers in the curriculum branch throw in a bunch of pretty hard concepts involving things like shear and torsion in order to justify turning the kids loose on the spaghetti-and-marshmallow bridge contest. But that's not my point.)

Anyhow, I was going to start my presentation by explaining the Diving Board Problem to the class and asking them to sketch their best guess as to the correct answer. The problem looks like this:

You have to guess how the curvature varies along the length of the board...where is it greatest, where is it least? It's a funny problem and I tell the story about it in two installments, starting with the link to my other blog. The article includes a bunch of stuff about the political fallout that got mixed up in the story, but I wasn't planning on including that part in my class presentation.