Mount Holyoke professor allegedly attempts killing colleague with fire poker and garden shears.

That tenured track position probably doesn't look too great right now...

Things at sleepy Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, MA, weren't as sleepy over the holiday break, as one professor allegedly tried to kill another faculty member over unrequited love.

According to Massachusetts State Police, art professor Rie Hachiyanagi, 48, went to the home of an unnamed fellow professor from Mount Holyoke around 10pm on December 23rd. After being invited in, police allege that Hachiyanagi wasn't the most gracious house guest, and repeatedly beat her colleague about the head using a fire poker, garden shears, and a rock. The victim suffered multiple fractures throughout her face.

Police allege Hachiyanagi repeatedly told her colleague that she loved her and the colleague should have always known. Granted, swinging a fire poker might send some mixed messages. After hours of beatings, the alleged victim feigned sympathy and professed love to Hachiyanagi, so as to get 911 help for her wounds. The victim told authorities of the attack while safely at the hospital.

NBC News reports that Ms. Hachiyanagi's specialty at Mount Holyoke is with handmade paper works. Writing on her faculty profile statement--in poetic form, no less--she states, "The process of making paper by hand allows me to be humble / As plant fiber and its beauty must be generated from nature." Maybe that's where her garden shears angle comes from. One can only guess. She's humble after all.

Ms. Hachiyanagi is being held without bail until February 4th and is on administrative leave from Mount Holyoke pending the investigation.

Hawaii needs to hire 1,600 teachers and is recruiting on the mainland for them.

Good news for SPAM fans and Don Ho enthusiasts: Hawaii needs to hire 1,600 teachers for the upcoming school year and has begun recruiting on the mainland United States for such personnel

Why? Because no one wants to teach in Hawaii.

It's true! Being a state made up of islands in the middle of an ocean limits the potential recruitment of future teachers just from a geographical sense, and paying teachers below the median national salary for the position doesn't much help matters. As a result, Hawaii often goes to the mainland United States to recruit more teachers every year.

Except that mainland recruitment often fails as well because of Hawaii's extremely high cost-of-living doesn't coincide well with being an underpaid teacher. Added into the mix of problems is that most recruits find themselves assigned to rural schools, which make up 16% of all schools on the islands.

So far Hawaii's recruiting efforts have focused on cities like Los Angeles, Chicago, New York City, and, uh, Newark. One can only assume people might be so desperate to leave Newark they'll take anything available.

Corey Rosenlee, president of the Hawaii State Teachers Association, tells Hawaii News Now it's never getting better. "[Mainland recruits] say, 'I can't live here' and they leave and we have to go back and recruit, and this cycle just continually happens."

And you thought SPAM was an acquired taste. Turns out the whole state of Hawaii is.

Mother wants texts banned from high school, while mildly confused about plots.

"My feeling is once something is that graphic, is there not another book? Cal is not Hamlet. There are other books about oppression."

That would be Siobhan Fallon Hogan speaking, a mother of a senior at Rumson-Fair Haven Regional School District in New Jersey--and she's none too pleased about the books and plays her nearly-adult son has to read for school.

Hogan has started a petition, garnering 250 signatures, and has taken her case to the school board to have two specific texts removed from required reading lists: the aforementioned Cal, and the play Death and the Maiden. Both texts are award winners, both are read widely in high schools across the country, and both usually aren't banned.

Cal does involve some violence, and includes a sex scene. Death and the Maiden has a back story about rape and similarly involves some violence. Both are seemingly too much for Hogan or her son's tender sensibilities to handle.

But Hogan apparently hasn't read much of Shakespeare's dramas, and especially not Hamlet, if she thinks it's a feel-good story. Why? Let's count up the deaths in Hamlet--and how they died--shall we?

• Hamlet is stabbed to death by a rapier coated in poison by Laertes!
• Laertes is stabbed to death by a rapier coated in poison by Hamlet! (What timing!)
• Gertrude is accidentally poisoned by Claudius!
• Claudius is poisoned in a couple ways by Hamlet!
• Opehlia decides to commit suicide by drowning!
• Hamlet's dad is poisoned through his ear!
• Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are both killed by pirates!
• And I don't know why I'm using so many exclamation points, but it seems appropriate!!

This doesn't even include Horatio, who was all set to off himself as well, but Hamlet talks him out of suicide, saying that someone needs to be left to tell the story of what happened. As if that isn't the most obvious thing Shakespeare ever wrote.

No decision has come down yet from the school board as to whether the two texts will be removed from the required reading list.

One thing is for certain though. Hogan was right. Cal is no Hamlet. Cal is a lot less violent and a lot more gentle to read.

The American southwest is apparently an education wasteland.

The Common Core Standards were adopted by forty-four states as an effort to improve student results in a variety of math and reading curriculum. Yet a recent study suggest that not only has improvement stagnated under the initiative, it might have resulted in worse performances.

According to a study at Education Week, scores have stalled or decreased--and by their metric of scoring (high school graduation rates, proficiency scores on tests, per pupil spending)--no state garnered an "A" grade. The best is Massachusetts, which earned a "B."

The American southwest/lower midwest is where the most troubling grades occur, with four of the five worst states residing there.

The five worst:
5. Arizona  (D+)
4. Oklahoma  (D+)
3. New Mexico  (D)
2. Nevada  (D)

Nevada holds the honor--or disturbance--of having the lowest percentage of graduating students from high school, at 60%.

But the worst state for education, according to Education Week's study?

1. Mississippi  (D)

Only 22% of Mississippian students in 4th and 8th grade are deemed proficient in either math or reading.

Sometimes it's hard picking on a state that's only found success in failure.