Senior Class Explanation: The Way Life Is

leaningright

leaningright

Moderate Republican
Staff member
I teach in a small, rural school. Every year our Seniors raise money to go on a "school sponsored" Senior trip. To raise the money we have various fund raisers throughout the year. In the past when I have been the Senior sponsor, like I am this year, I have pro-rated the fundraising based upon the work that each student put in to the various fundraisers. More emphasis was put on fundraisers that involved student participation (like dinners, working donkey basketball games and such) than was put on fundraisers that involved selling things because I realize that some students have an advantage when it comes to selling stuff because of their contacts and such. So, based upon fundraising projects that involved individual student participation I pro-rated the spending money when it came time to make the trip. A student who showed up to work a dinner or came after to help clean up would receive more points and thus get a larger percentage of the spending money come trip time than the student who had the same opportunity and chose to go swimming instead (it is a small community and you can easily know when it happens). It wasn't a vast difference but perhaps one would get $120 and one would get $150.

Because of various accounting laws we now have to divide the money equally among the students in the class. My students asked me how that was fair that the guy who did no work at all got the same as the girl who worked her rear off all year. My explanation was basically that it was life and they just needed to get used to it. Something like, "Sally, you have worked hard all year and Jethro hasn't done squat. But then there's Barney and he hasn't accumulated as many points as you because he has some disability or something legitimate that prevented him from working. In life you'll work and pay taxes that will benefit those who truly need it and there will always be those who try to beat the system and take unfair advantage of your hard work. That doesn't mean that we should eliminate everything available to help those who truly need it but should keep the government working (hold them accountable AMAP) to catch those who are truly free-loading along on the work of others."

While I don't like having to divide the money equally as I feel that the lesson of rewarding hard work goes to the wayside and is lost, this is the explanation that I gave. The part about taxes and help programs is the way that I truly feel. I am not against them at all but do want the ones taking unfair advantage of the system to be weeded out. That is as good an explanation as an old math teacher could come up with.
 
leaningright said:
I teach in a small, rural school. Every year our Seniors raise money to go on a "school sponsored" Senior trip. To raise the money we have various fund raisers throughout the year. In the past when I have been the Senior sponsor, like I am this year, I have pro-rated the fundraising based upon the work that each student put in to the various fundraisers. More emphasis was put on fundraisers that involved student participation (like dinners, working donkey basketball games and such) than was put on fundraisers that involved selling things because I realize that some students have an advantage when it comes to selling stuff because of their contacts and such. So, based upon fundraising projects that involved individual student participation I pro-rated the spending money when it came time to make the trip. A student who showed up to work a dinner or came after to help clean up would receive more points and thus get a larger percentage of the spending money come trip time than the student who had the same opportunity and chose to go swimming instead (it is a small community and you can easily know when it happens). It wasn't a vast difference but perhaps one would get $120 and one would get $150.

Because of various accounting laws we now have to divide the money equally among the students in the class. My students asked me how that was fair that the guy who did no work at all got the same as the girl who worked her rear off all year. My explanation was basically that it was life and they just needed to get used to it. Something like, "Sally, you have worked hard all year and Jethro hasn't done squat. But then there's Barney and he hasn't accumulated as many points as you because he has some disability or something legitimate that prevented him from working. In life you'll work and pay taxes that will benefit those who truly need it and there will always be those who try to beat the system and take unfair advantage of your hard work. That doesn't mean that we should eliminate everything available to help those who truly need it but should keep the government working (hold them accountable AMAP) to catch those who are truly free-loading along on the work of others."

While I don't like having to divide the money equally as I feel that the lesson of rewarding hard work goes to the wayside and is lost, this is the explanation that I gave. The part about taxes and help programs is the way that I truly feel. I am not against them at all but do want the ones taking unfair advantage of the system to be weeded out. That is as good an explanation as an old math teacher could come up with.
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You commie! Get the hell out of the Republican party!!!! ;)
 
@
leaningright said:
I teach in a small, rural school. Every year our Seniors raise money to go on a "school sponsored" Senior trip. To raise the money we have various fund raisers throughout the year. In the past when I have been the Senior sponsor, like I am this year, I have pro-rated the fundraising based upon the work that each student put in to the various fundraisers. More emphasis was put on fundraisers that involved student participation (like dinners, working donkey basketball games and such) than was put on fundraisers that involved selling things because I realize that some students have an advantage when it comes to selling stuff because of their contacts and such. So, based upon fundraising projects that involved individual student participation I pro-rated the spending money when it came time to make the trip. A student who showed up to work a dinner or came after to help clean up would receive more points and thus get a larger percentage of the spending money come trip time than the student who had the same opportunity and chose to go swimming instead (it is a small community and you can easily know when it happens). It wasn't a vast difference but perhaps one would get $120 and one would get $150.

Because of various accounting laws we now have to divide the money equally among the students in the class. My students asked me how that was fair that the guy who did no work at all got the same as the girl who worked her rear off all year. My explanation was basically that it was life and they just needed to get used to it. Something like, "Sally, you have worked hard all year and Jethro hasn't done squat. But then there's Barney and he hasn't accumulated as many points as you because he has some disability or something legitimate that prevented him from working. In life you'll work and pay taxes that will benefit those who truly need it and there will always be those who try to beat the system and take unfair advantage of your hard work. That doesn't mean that we should eliminate everything available to help those who truly need it but should keep the government working (hold them accountable AMAP) to catch those who are truly free-loading along on the work of others."

While I don't like having to divide the money equally as I feel that the lesson of rewarding hard work goes to the wayside and is lost, this is the explanation that I gave. The part about taxes and help programs is the way that I truly feel. I am not against them at all but do want the ones taking unfair advantage of the system to be weeded out. That is as good an explanation as an old math teacher could come up with.
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Leaning,

It is what Jesus said to do, he told the parable of the workers, those that came and worked at the end of the day got the same pay as those who worked all day, the Christian, kingdom of heaven is like your fund raising!
 
Rana said:
@

Leaning,

It is what Jesus said to do, he told the parable of the workers, those that came and worked at the end of the day got the same pay as those who worked all day, the Christian, kingdom of heaven is like your fund raising!
Click to expand...

They don't all spend the same amount of time in purgatory, though. ;)
 
why not be truthful and tell the kids you're too lazy to make it fair?

Because of various accounting laws we now have to divide the money equally among the students in the class.
Citation needed
 
tell the kids that you're leaving it up to them to vote on what is fair......then, divide it equally no matter what they vote......when they complain tell them it's a lesson in Democratic Party politics......
 
tinfoil said:
why not be truthful and tell the kids you're too lazy to make it fair?

Because of various accounting laws we now have to divide the money equally among the students in the class.
Citation needed
Click to expand...

If you had read (perhaps you just missed it), I prefer to pro-rate how it is divided....and that is how I had done if for years. I believe it teaches the lesson that the harder one works the better off he is. That is truly a life lesson that I believe in. As to "Citation needed" I'm afraid that you'll just have to take my word for it. I'm not going to research law books or whatever. We (the school) are audited every year. The state bean counters have dictated to us (the school) that we must divide the proceeds equally.
 
I'm calling bullshit on the weak ass rant!
1 you lied to the kids about working more
2. Various accounting laws - lofl. Let me guess u pulled that out your ass!
 
The Dude said:
I'm calling bullshit on the weak ass rant!
1 you lied to the kids about working more
2. Various accounting laws - lofl. Let me guess u pulled that out your ass!
Click to expand...

You are so disrespectful. You can't even be polite to one of the nicest posters on the forum. I feel sorry for you.
 
leaningright said:
I teach in a small, rural school. Every year our Seniors raise money to go on a "school sponsored" Senior trip. To raise the money we have various fund raisers throughout the year. In the past when I have been the Senior sponsor, like I am this year, I have pro-rated the fundraising based upon the work that each student put in to the various fundraisers. More emphasis was put on fundraisers that involved student participation (like dinners, working donkey basketball games and such) than was put on fundraisers that involved selling things because I realize that some students have an advantage when it comes to selling stuff because of their contacts and such. So, based upon fundraising projects that involved individual student participation I pro-rated the spending money when it came time to make the trip. A student who showed up to work a dinner or came after to help clean up would receive more points and thus get a larger percentage of the spending money come trip time than the student who had the same opportunity and chose to go swimming instead (it is a small community and you can easily know when it happens). It wasn't a vast difference but perhaps one would get $120 and one would get $150.

Because of various accounting laws we now have to divide the money equally among the students in the class. My students asked me how that was fair that the guy who did no work at all got the same as the girl who worked her rear off all year. My explanation was basically that it was life and they just needed to get used to it. Something like, "Sally, you have worked hard all year and Jethro hasn't done squat. But then there's Barney and he hasn't accumulated as many points as you because he has some disability or something legitimate that prevented him from working. In life you'll work and pay taxes that will benefit those who truly need it and there will always be those who try to beat the system and take unfair advantage of your hard work. That doesn't mean that we should eliminate everything available to help those who truly need it but should keep the government working (hold them accountable AMAP) to catch those who are truly free-loading along on the work of others."

While I don't like having to divide the money equally as I feel that the lesson of rewarding hard work goes to the wayside and is lost, this is the explanation that I gave. The part about taxes and help programs is the way that I truly feel. I am not against them at all but do want the ones taking unfair advantage of the system to be weeded out. That is as good an explanation as an old math teacher could come up with.
Click to expand...

Seems you're trying to "circumvent" the house rules a little.....the rule that says you must divide the money equally....by pro-rating it with your point system......kudos.
Now I understand the "conservative democrat" in your title....doing the right thing is a conservative value we are proud of.....
The rule is written by pinheads to not hurt feelings but your students show themselves to be more intelligent than the facility in asking the question they did....
They understand that lazy parasites should get nothing from the hard work of the responsible students and I'm sure they understand that the student with a disability shouldn't
suffer for something he can't help....I surprised you get away with it.....but keep it up.....I'd adjust the prorating system to reward the workers a little more, maybe a lot more.

I'd wager that 100% of Conservatives agree with your statement
...." I am not against them at all but do want the ones taking unfair advantage of the system to be weeded out."

Its exactly the reason I'm a Conservative Republican and fight the socialists ..... we are not even 1% like we are portrayed to be by the pinheads posting here.....
Just goes to show you the power of Koolade and perfecting the Goebbels method of lying.......
 
leaningright said:
I teach in a small, rural school. Every year our Seniors raise money to go on a "school sponsored" Senior trip. To raise the money we have various fund raisers throughout the year. In the past when I have been the Senior sponsor, like I am this year, I have pro-rated the fundraising based upon the work that each student put in to the various fundraisers. More emphasis was put on fundraisers that involved student participation (like dinners, working donkey basketball games and such) than was put on fundraisers that involved selling things because I realize that some students have an advantage when it comes to selling stuff because of their contacts and such. So, based upon fundraising projects that involved individual student participation I pro-rated the spending money when it came time to make the trip. A student who showed up to work a dinner or came after to help clean up would receive more points and thus get a larger percentage of the spending money come trip time than the student who had the same opportunity and chose to go swimming instead (it is a small community and you can easily know when it happens). It wasn't a vast difference but perhaps one would get $120 and one would get $150.

Because of various accounting laws we now have to divide the money equally among the students in the class. My students asked me how that was fair that the guy who did no work at all got the same as the girl who worked her rear off all year. My explanation was basically that it was life and they just needed to get used to it. Something like, "Sally, you have worked hard all year and Jethro hasn't done squat. But then there's Barney and he hasn't accumulated as many points as you because he has some disability or something legitimate that prevented him from working. In life you'll work and pay taxes that will benefit those who truly need it and there will always be those who try to beat the system and take unfair advantage of your hard work. That doesn't mean that we should eliminate everything available to help those who truly need it but should keep the government working (hold them accountable AMAP) to catch those who are truly free-loading along on the work of others."

While I don't like having to divide the money equally as I feel that the lesson of rewarding hard work goes to the wayside and is lost, this is the explanation that I gave. The part about taxes and help programs is the way that I truly feel. I am not against them at all but do want the ones taking unfair advantage of the system to be weeded out. That is as good an explanation as an old math teacher could come up with.
Click to expand...

Dumb. It makes the system pointless. Just make them pay it themselves and cancel the fundraiser. Only alternative would be to have mandates of some sort. Contributions to any system that suffers from the free rider problem are going to tend to be scarce and only get worse with time. The only thing that breaks such a pattern in game theory is to give people the power to punish those who they feel aren't contributing as much to the collective, but you can't really do that here.
 
Well, I shouldn't have to be Sr. sponsor any more before I retire so at least I won't have to worry about it any more. We cycle that job every 5 years. Just wanted to throw that out there for a bit of discussion.
 
leaningright said:
I teach in a small, rural school. Every year our Seniors raise money to go on a "school sponsored" Senior trip. To raise the money we have various fund raisers throughout the year. In the past when I have been the Senior sponsor, like I am this year, I have pro-rated the fundraising based upon the work that each student put in to the various fundraisers. More emphasis was put on fundraisers that involved student participation (like dinners, working donkey basketball games and such) than was put on fundraisers that involved selling things because I realize that some students have an advantage when it comes to selling stuff because of their contacts and such. So, based upon fundraising projects that involved individual student participation I pro-rated the spending money when it came time to make the trip. A student who showed up to work a dinner or came after to help clean up would receive more points and thus get a larger percentage of the spending money come trip time than the student who had the same opportunity and chose to go swimming instead (it is a small community and you can easily know when it happens). It wasn't a vast difference but perhaps one would get $120 and one would get $150.

Because of various accounting laws we now have to divide the money equally among the students in the class. My students asked me how that was fair that the guy who did no work at all got the same as the girl who worked her rear off all year. My explanation was basically that it was life and they just needed to get used to it. Something like, "Sally, you have worked hard all year and Jethro hasn't done squat. But then there's Barney and he hasn't accumulated as many points as you because he has some disability or something legitimate that prevented him from working. In life you'll work and pay taxes that will benefit those who truly need it and there will always be those who try to beat the system and take unfair advantage of your hard work. That doesn't mean that we should eliminate everything available to help those who truly need it but should keep the government working (hold them accountable AMAP) to catch those who are truly free-loading along on the work of others."

While I don't like having to divide the money equally as I feel that the lesson of rewarding hard work goes to the wayside and is lost, this is the explanation that I gave. The part about taxes and help programs is the way that I truly feel. I am not against them at all but do want the ones taking unfair advantage of the system to be weeded out. That is as good an explanation as an old math teacher could come up with.
Click to expand...

we will have parasites with us always

sometimes it takes more effort to weed out the parasites than it is worth...but not always, but on a national level it usually is
 
leaningright said:
I teach in a small, rural school. Every year our Seniors raise money to go on a "school sponsored" Senior trip. To raise the money we have various fund raisers throughout the year. In the past when I have been the Senior sponsor, like I am this year, I have pro-rated the fundraising based upon the work that each student put in to the various fundraisers. More emphasis was put on fundraisers that involved student participation (like dinners, working donkey basketball games and such) than was put on fundraisers that involved selling things because I realize that some students have an advantage when it comes to selling stuff because of their contacts and such. So, based upon fundraising projects that involved individual student participation I pro-rated the spending money when it came time to make the trip. A student who showed up to work a dinner or came after to help clean up would receive more points and thus get a larger percentage of the spending money come trip time than the student who had the same opportunity and chose to go swimming instead (it is a small community and you can easily know when it happens). It wasn't a vast difference but perhaps one would get $120 and one would get $150.

Because of various accounting laws we now have to divide the money equally among the students in the class. My students asked me how that was fair that the guy who did no work at all got the same as the girl who worked her rear off all year. My explanation was basically that it was life and they just needed to get used to it. Something like, "Sally, you have worked hard all year and Jethro hasn't done squat. But then there's Barney and he hasn't accumulated as many points as you because he has some disability or something legitimate that prevented him from working. In life you'll work and pay taxes that will benefit those who truly need it and there will always be those who try to beat the system and take unfair advantage of your hard work. That doesn't mean that we should eliminate everything available to help those who truly need it but should keep the government working (hold them accountable AMAP) to catch those who are truly free-loading along on the work of others."

While I don't like having to divide the money equally as I feel that the lesson of rewarding hard work goes to the wayside and is lost, this is the explanation that I gave. The part about taxes and help programs is the way that I truly feel. I am not against them at all but do want the ones taking unfair advantage of the system to be weeded out. That is as good an explanation as an old math teacher could come up with.
Click to expand...

Okay, I am confused. The trip itself, obviously costs money. The transportation to and from, the hotel, etc. The "spending money" is something separate, in my mind, and shouldn't be a part of the fundraising. That should be the individual's responsibility, and they should be able to take whatever they want to spend. If you had money left over, and it was going to be considered 'spending money' I agree with the school, it should be evenly divided. There can be all kinds of reasons an individual did or didn't volunteer time to certain things, and you can't possibly know every detail of every aspect. It sounds like you wanted to 'micro-govern' a little, and try to implement your own brand of 'fair' in an attempt to teach a lesson.

This is nothing like how the government taxes and hands out benefits. If you were to apply that standard, 52% of your class who did all the fundraising, would be sitting at home, while the 48% who did nothing, enjoyed the trip of their life, only to bitch and moan about the 52% not giving their fair share. Spending money would have been doled out on the basis of family income. Poorer kids would have gotten more, while more wealthy kids, regardless of their work, may not have get anything at all. And I have no idea why in the hell Apple thanked your post, this whole thing flies in the face of his ideological thinking, but then, maybe it was because you were trying to play the little socialist and make life "fair," and that appealed to him?

The way we always did our senior trips, was each person had to come up with $X for their share. We had several class fundraisers, but the money each thing raised, was divided between those who actually were present at the fundraiser, if you didn't participate, you didn't get to share the money from the fundraiser. Some kids didn't do any fundraising, they didn't need to, they just forked over their share, and that was it. The fundraisers were for us kids who didn't have rich parents, so we could 'earn' the money for our share. Spending money was never factored in, it was a completely optional thing from the trip itself. Of course, I suppose times have changed, and if we did this today, there would be at least a few idiots who would show up for the trip without ANY money to spend, but that's an entirely different life lesson, isn't it?
 
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