ENGLISH AS A SECOND LANGUAGE

          Roydale Ellen "Boomer" Janochek, proprietress of The Brazos River Yacht Club and Bait Camp, is highly opposed to any legislation that would make English the official language of the United States. She has many reasons for her belief, not the least of which is that making English the "official" language of America would make us look even snootier than the French, which is no small task. So, she was opposed to it. Until now.

          That was before she was introduced to Dr. Don Hooper's, Superintendent and self-styled CEO of Fort Bend Independent School District, own personal website. It's located for the entire world to see at www.cql.net. It appears that Dr. Hooper - who is also known as The Hooperintendent in high level educational circles - has a daytime moonlighting job all his own. This makes us suspect that Superintending is not a full time job.

          Doc Hooper has formed a business named Center for Quality Leadership, and is trying to rent himself out as a motivational speaker. Or as a buzzword generator - we're not sure which.

          Even though the website ranks right up there with playdough sculpture for artistic satisfaction, it's not the visual aspects of Doc Hooper's website that is causing giggles. It's the language. We think it's English. But we're not betting on it.

          Let us give you an example. Doc Hooper writes on his website, "Future trends for preparation of the brain force to lead the work force indicate a need for organizations to adapt to a continuous spiral of improvement in management systems as they eliminate complexities and streamline practices and procedures." We don't have any idea what that means. None. We read it both silently and out loud, ran it through an expensive electric translator with seven languages, and even tried to set it to music.

          Boomer contends, "That's not writing, that's typing." Verdelia says words like that usually come about $14.95 a pound. Buck's take was that Doc Hooper is just a little too excited about himself.

          So, we showed Doc Hooper's website to BubbaX, the best educated among us. BubbaX has a doctorate in theology from Big Melvin's Universal College of Infallibility, and, not to brag, but he is a notary public. At first glance, BubbaX informed us that forcing people to read stuff like that is the penalty for shoplifting in some states. However, with the proper bribery involved, BubbaX agreed to translate.

          According to BubbaX, when Doc Hooper writes these words, "Understanding of effective teaching practices and their implementation will be emphasized along with strategies for the training, coaching, and development of teachers in the act of teaching to maximize student achievement," what this means is: "Help! The dreaded Thesaurus Virus has taken over my keyboard and is typing nonsense all over my website!"

          When Doc Hooper writes, "This program trains members of your organization how to think and plan systemically and to understand the interrelationship of their work with the demands of the global marketplace," (I know you think I'm making this stuff up, but I'm not.) what he means is, "Listen up Bub, I can teach you how to get people to pay you $200,000 a year as a part-time Superintendent!"

          When Doc Hooper writes, "This course focuses on the application of the seven management planning tools and the seven statistical process control tools needed to implement the daily management of the principles of Total Quality Management," what he really means is, "I don't have near enough to do with my time, and have taken to counting with both hands."

          In conclusion, we wish to officially apologize to Doc Hooper and the patrons of Fort Bend ISD for the hissy fit we pitched several months ago when we discovered that Doc Hooper had hired staff writers to write his monthly letter to parents. Bless his heart, since he's only vaguely familiar with English, it's to our benefit that someone else does his writing/translating for him. We look at it as a taxpayer investment in literacy!

          And we also wish to issue a strong word of warning to students out there. If you attempt to use Hooperese in your high school English themes, your teacher will laugh at you. Hard. And, if you use Hooperese on the TASS test, not only will they fail you, they will send a team from Austin to smack you upside the head until you promise to never, ever use writing like that again. Unless you get a PhD in education, of course. Then you're expected to use another language. But, you might try for Latin or Greek - at least a few people can understand that.

          And from his website, it appears that Doc Hooper can't make a sentence without the words "21st Century" or "world class." Ever ones to be helpful, we offer this list of useless and meaningless buzzwords for Doc Hooper to add to his vocabulary. (Remember, students, the penalty for using these words in your homework is to be dropped buck nakkid into the halftime performance of a Clements football game with "Dulles Rulez" tattooed on your hiney. We're serious about this.) With that caveat in mind, here's a list of new pointless words for Doc Hooper: cross matrix, strategic leverage, synergistic interface, symbiotic promulgation, management bandwidth, value chain, resonated resourcing, optimal paradigm, and mission empowerment.

          Boomer smiles and says, "See, you don't have to have a PhD to talk like that; you only have to be unafraid to embarrass yourself."

          Boomer said that; she really did.

WHAT I SAID:

Boomer,

Re: Doc Hooper

As an FBISD student, I can tell you first hand that we should not expect too much from this lowlife.

His plan is very simple, he takes the smartest children, at least those who pass tass, and spreads them around. He sent children from First Colony to Lake Olympia Middle school and Quail Valley middle to raise tass scores... FCMS will do fine ( that is if they do not die from fungi first ) without the kids and he will pass it off as controlling the population (and a good way to make room for kids who's parents buy huge taxes no where near the school but, ironically PAY TAXES! ). And the folks down at Austin say, "Great job Donnie old pal, tass scores are up! " HA, if any thing, more kids are falling... btw- tass scores at LOMS fell 2% last year, hehehe.

He opened Hightower so he can dilute fresno/arcola kids who do fail tass, not because they are stupid, no. But because their parents speak Spanish. The responsible thing to do would be teach them English and promote its use. They can go to a good college and have wonderful jobs. But no, he needs to bus kids in to the school and call it a magnet program. And, in 5 years, when Sienna Plantation is done, those kids will be back at their "home campus".

So thanks Don! TAAS scores are up at MY expense. Keep up the good work (schmuck)!

Eric

WHAT SHE SAID BACK:

Eric -

If have had more students in my class like you, I'd still be teaching. No, that's probably not right. Truth is - there are far too few dandy-smart kids like you, and far too many twits like Hooper. Eric, please consider education or politics in your future. Please. Pretty please. We need thinkers of your caliber to fix this mess we've made. It's kids \par like you who make me proud that my generation did at least one good thing - extending the vote to 18 year olds. I'm gonna post your letter on my website. But, I'm not gonna use your name in full. Hooper is kinda vindictive, you know. Durn you're good!

Susan}}