All Posts Tagged With: "summer school"
What an old house can teach you. About yourself.
My summer education
My family recently bought a 150-year-old house. When we first moved in about two weeks ago, it seemed pretty cool to be living in a house that was actually built in 1860. Although the house has been renovated over the years, there’s still an old brick fireplace in the kitchen, along with cast iron door knobs and bronze vents. Hundreds of people have walked across the ancient pine floors, which were laid down before my great-grand parents were even born.
Little did I know, there’s a trade-off when you live in a 150-year-old house: the bugs are ickier, squishier and bigger.
The first day we moved in, my dad asked me to sweep out the basement. The thing is, houses from 1860 don’t have tidy little basements with concrete floors and drywall. They have creepy stone dungeons, like the one from the Blair Witch Project. The kind of basement where you might find a Ouija Board, or a set of mysterious clay voodoo dolls stacked in the corner.
I had already walked to the middle of the basement when I suddenly realized: there were huge, fuzzy spiders. Everywhere. My first instinct was to scream and run back and forth, and then punch a hole in the ceiling and fly out of the basement. But I was afraid to move. Nobody had entered the basement for at least a hundred years, and I had disturbed all the hibernating crunchy insects. Any slight movement could create a draft, which would fling all the spiders towards my face.
I made a vow to never go in the basement again. Ever. Avoiding the basement for the rest of my life doesn’t seem too bad, anyway. There are plenty of other rooms in the house, and basements aren’t that essential. At this point, I still didn’t hate the house. Yet.
And then I encountered my first centipede.
Maybe large, squishy insects are magnetically attracted to wimps like me. Or maybe some bug from the Jurassic era had been laying dormant under my floorboards, frozen in a droplet of amber and suddenly reawakened by my footsteps. Either way, one night the biggest freaking insect I’ve ever seen was slithering around my room.
I couldn’t bring myself to actually squish it. But then, before I could grab a machine gun or flamethrower, it slipped into a crack between the floorboards.
It’s worse than having a stalker. I now live in constant fear of that bug. At any time it could show up on my pillow. On my toothbrush. Or in my cereal.
-Photo courtesy of ◄M►
Making (or buying) the grade
Teens with cash know an easy A can be bought at some private summer schools
Among teenagers it’s considered a no-brainer: scoring a coveted A grade these days can be as simple as handing over a wad of cash to a wisely-chosen private summer school.
As Ontario high school students face mounting pressure to pull in the high marks needed to get into an A-list university or college, it appears increasing numbers are cracking open their pocketbooks instead of their textbooks.
The trend – known as “buying a credit” – is ringing alarm bells for both public-system educators and officials at the Ministry of Education, who feel students engaging in the practice are unfairly winning scholarships and select spots in post-secondary schools and then heading off to study unprepared.
“There was only seven people in the class, the teachers focus on you, and basically, there was no way I could do bad,” said Sean Donoahue, 17, who paid $2,000 for a 20-day course in Grade 12 English.
“That’s what sold me, was that I couldn’t get a bad mark in summer school. There was no way I’d get below an 80.”
Ross, who attended a different Toronto-based private school, purchased a package of six credits at $1,200 a pop and boosted his average up to the low-90s. He was accepted to every university he applied to.
“It’s a grade-factory. That’s exactly what it is, that’s the only reason the school exists. There’s nothing more to the school,” said the 20-year-old, who asked that only his middle name be used to avoid having his diploma disputed.
“If you just sort of showed up and did what you had to do, you were guaranteed something of an 80 or an 85. If you put in any effort whatsoever, you’d get exceptionally high marks – in the 90s.”
Other students informally polled outside several non-descript private schools along the Yonge Street subway line in Toronto’s north end said the practice was common knowledge. Some laughed bitterly about their “idiot” friends who were “spoon-fed” by teachers at even pricier schools.
There are currently 399 Ontario private schools licensed by the Ministry of Education to grant Ontario Secondary School Diploma credits. Some boast storied alum while others blend into strip-malls, but all must provide sufficient documentation and undergo an inspection every two years to determine whether they follow provincial guidelines. Many offer courses both in a summer school format as well as throughout the school year.
Does this count as summer school?
I never knew that hair could talk
Last weekend I did something for the first time in my life. Ever. I went to a hair salon.
Yes, my sister made me do it.
According to my sister, my old haircut said “super nerd who doesn’t care about his appearance.” I didn’t know that a hair cut could say something that specific about a person. Actually, I didn’t know hair could talk. But for the record, my hair was lying. I do care about my appearance.
Sort of. Sometimes.
But last Saturday, after spending three intense hours up close and personal, observing the secret sub-culture of a professional hair salon, I think I should get an advanced credit in anthropology. Or at least some sociology course.
For instance, I learned that there’s actually a difference between barbers and hair dressers. Before my trip to the hair salon, I figured that barbers were just the Old West version of hair dressers. I mean, both of them cut hair. I didn’t think there was much room for difference.
But apparently, the difference between barbers and hair dressers is sort of like the difference between one-ply and two-ply toilet paper. Barbers are a more basic version of hair dressers.
And those gigantic, ceiling-mounted high-tech hair dryer thingies that look like they’re from some lame science fiction movie? They actually exist.
When I first showed up at the hair salon, Vinny, the hair dresser, handed me a booklet. A booklet that contained little pieces of hair. At first, I was horrified. I had to stop myself from emitting a high pitched scream and dropping it to the floor. I was holding a little scrapbook of voodoo dolls.
Once my heart rate returned to normal, I had to force myself to think happy thoughts. Never mind voodoo dolls. It was like being handed a saltshaker filled with toenail clippings. I now have a new nightmare: that booklet, spilling into my bowl of breakfast cereal. Millions of hairs. All different colours. All over the place. Airborne.
After my sister finished her conference with Vinny, with me pretending not to listen as they discussed my washed-out skin tones, helmet hair, and lack of any texture (people have, uh, texture?) it was decided.
Of course, no one thought I needed to know what was going to happen next.
Next I had my hair washed. Leaning back in a chair, my scalp being washed by a complete stranger, has to be the most vulnerable I’ve ever felt in my life. Until five minutes later, when Vinny wrapped a small, airtight plastic cap around my skull, complete with a vinyl cape.
Hair expert Vinny Nguyen, of Beauty Hair Creations in Kitchener, transforms Scott Dobson-Mitchell
The surface of the cap was covered in millions of little holes. When I noticed that the hairdresser was wielding a mini pickaxe, I didn’t make the connection right away.
And then I figured it out. The hairdresser was going to pierce through the cap (which was vacuum-sealed to my scalp), and then somehow pull a strand of hair through one of those tiny holes.
“This might hurt a little,” Vinny warned me. And then she jumped, gaining as much leverage as possible, and brain fluid squirted across the hair salon.
When my sister had highlights put in her hair, Vinny neatly wrapped little pieces of tinfoil all over her head and used a paintbrush. Had I inadvertently broken some social code of hair salons, and was being punished?
When I regained consciousness and tuned in to my sister’s and Vinny’s conversation, I suddenly realized that every second word was, “blah blah blah.” Apparently my sister couldn’t live without “blah blah blah.” She used “blah blah blah” every morning. And although “blah, blah, blah is fairly expensive, it’s really worth it.”
I finally figured out that “blah blah blah” wasn’t some sort of code word. It’s actually a short, round, purple bottle. Filled with hair stuff. And apparently it costs a lot.
Never mind anthropology or sociology. The whole thing was a learning experience in linguistics. After listening to my sister and Vinny, I could probably fake my way through hair salon dialogue for at least three minutes. Heck, five minutes, if I was allowed to fill every sentence with “blah blah blah.”
When I first caught a glimpse of my hair in a mirror, I thought something had gone horribly wrong. I’m used to a solid helmet of brown hair. Now I had bright yellow stripes all over my head. Or more like chunks. Yeah, chunks. Suddenly I understood how people can have texture in their hair.
I thought my sister was just messing with me when she said to the hairdresser, “Wow, great! That looks perfect!”
I was busy wondering how I could get home without another human being seeing me between Vinny’s and my place. Or more importantly, how to avoid all future human contact until my hair grows out a couple of inches and I can chop all of that ‘texture’ off.
Or most important of all: how to avoid seeing my three younger brothers ever again. Because when my new haircut speaks to my brothers, I already know what it’s going to say.
“Give Scott a punch in the gut.”
Scott Dobson-Mitchell "After"
