TMI

This is about the Too Much Information TMI and not the Three Mile Island TMI.

I'm 52 years old. I was born and raised in Texas. I have lived here all my life. I have used the colloquial term "Y'all" for as long as I can remember. Things like, "Y'all get over here!"; Y'all get quiet!"; "Are y'all comin 'over?"; "See y'all later!" and the like. I've been speaking this way probably since as far back as the first day utterances poured forth from my mouth.

I would often say that I was born in Texas and will always talk that way. Then, I went on a 3 day field trip with 5th graders. I came back saying, "You guys!" Now I find myself in my classroom intoning, "Hey you guys, let's get quiet. I have something important to tell you." Quite a difference from, "Y'all hush!"I never would've thought I would be saying 'You guys!" I mean, I'm a Texan. Most Texans I know don't say things like "You guys!"

In fact, you could say that I probably would have thought I would only talk that way when "pigs fly!"

Well, "Swine Flu" and now I'm saying "You guys!"

© 2009 Barry T Horst


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Pine Cove Trip; Installment #1

So a few months ago my principal stopped me and asked me if I would do a favor for her.

I said, "Sure, I think. What is it?"

She went on to explain that the 5th grade classes were going on a field trip to Pine Cove Camp for Science.

I thought that sounded cool.

The principal said it was overnight...as in three days and two nights overnight.

OK.

She assured me I didn't have to go if I didn't want to go; BUT, if I didn't go they may not be able to find another male chaperon and that would mean the trip is off and the 5th grades would lose out on a excellent learning opportunity.

OK, thanks for the taking the pressure off.

Any way, I told her that I would go and I actually began to look forward to the trip.

THEN I was told the trip was off; not enough male chaperons.

Rats!!!! I had really begun to look forward to going.

THEN two weeks ago I was told that they had found a male chaperon for the trip and it was on again; and it was a little over a week away.

Goody! Time to arrange for a substitute and prepare things for her and my class to do. Once again, on the field trip we would go to the Pine Cove Institute of Wilderness Studies in Tyler, TX. The trip was planned to give our students hands-on experiences with nature and the environment and was geared to their grade level Science TAKS test (Which is tomorrow by the way).

The big day finally came on Wednesday, April 22. I had made all my arrangements, packed enough clothes for a week, and psyched myself up for the events of the next three days. I was ready for this. I was assigned 7 boys in my cabin and was assigned to a group of 12 students (6 boys and 6 girls)for our instructional periods. Fortunately, one of the 5th grade homeroom teachers was also assigned to my group. (In reality, I suppose that I was actually assigned to her group and not the other way around.) The Teacher, Ms. Steele, is a great teacher to work with and does a great job with her kids. You can tell by the way the kids respond to her. As it turns out, earlier this year I was assigned to Ms. Steele's class for after school tutoring. Because I was with her kids most of this school year I grew to be fairly close to them and this trip made that bond even stronger.

A few pictures of the trip begin tomorrow.

© 2009 Barry T Horst


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SWAIN or a Story Without An Interesting Name

Not much of a post today. We're winding down at school and I was busy last night going to the store to buy the necessary cupcake preparation supplies and later preparing a slide show for the class today. The slide show was the various pictures taken throughout the year of the students, field trips, etc.

When I sat down to begin work on it I discovered that the program I normally used for preparing slide shows had been lost when the hard drive went south. Sooo, I had to scour the Internet really quick for a program that I could use to make one. I first went to PC World and looked for a free download. Nothing I liked. I journeyed to CNET Downloads. Same result. I decided to bite the bullet and download a program on trial and then possibly buy it if I liked the interface and the results I got.

THEN, I had a brain storm. Well, maybe it was just a brain burp. Anyway, before I download any program on trial I decided to head to Microsoft and look. And there it was, Photo Story 3 for Windows. It was FREE and it was a quick download. I downloaded, I installed, and then I created a great slide show; all within 15 minutes.

That gave me time to finish the faux diplomas (Really just a graduation poem) to hand out to the children at the Awards Assembly later today. While I was doing this Chris was helping by making the cupcakes for my class to have after the assembly. THANKS Chris!

And somewhere in the middle of all this I found time to go out and water the garden in front. All the flowers are looking good and getting better everyday. I will update all on the garden in a later post.

© 2008 Barry T Horst


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When Spell Check Doesn't Work

It's amazing the things you find when you're not looking for it. I was scanning some of my picture files and lo and behold I came across the image of an e-mail that I saved some months ago. Actually the United States Mint sent this out as a mass e-mailing in August 2007. As I was reading the e-mail I had a word jump out at me. See if it does the same for you.The same type of thing popped off the page for me when I was preparing for our Kindergarten field trip to the zoo a couple of weeks ago. As some of you may know, we went to the Cameron Park Zoo. It is in Cameron Park which is just a few blocks away from our school. I was doing some research at the zoo web-site on their "General Information" page. If you go down to the section of the page titled "The Weather Factor" and then go to the sub-heading "Finally-....". In the heading the word "lightning" is misspelled. It is incorrectly spelled "lightening". The same misspelling is repeated in the text of the paragraph. Apparently the zoo puts the animals away when there is a storm threatening to cause them "to lose weight or become lighter in color".

Hmmmm!

Again, I guess this affliction that I have is all due to having been in education for 20+ years.

Did you find the problem in the US Mint e-mail? It is the word "configuration".

© 2008 Barry T Horst


This work is licensed under a
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Please visit the Giveaway of the Day at the bottom of the page for free software downloads daily.

Zoo or Zew

Not much of a post today. I've been busy with school stuff, lesson plans and such. We will be going on a field trip to the Cameron Park Zoo next week. So I was assigned the task of doing the lesson plans for handwriting. We decided that our writing for the week should center on doing research and writing about the zoo animals. FUN!

In the process of doing research I ran across something interesting. I was checking out the Cameron Park Zoo website. Looking at the General Information page I was reading about The Weather Factor. It was describing which animals may not be on display under various weather circumstances. As I read through this I came to a highly unusual weather phenomenon. Are you ready for this---"Lightening". That's it. "Lightening". Could it be that this is the phenomenon that causes the animals to suddenly become lighter and float away???

NO! They just misspelled the word "Lightning". Here's the link, check it out. This misspelling was current as of the date of this post. They may change it later; like after I e-mail them about it. And just think, the Cameron Park Zoo paid a company good money to misspell the word. I suppose they don't have a dictionary, or at least a book about weather.

UPDATED 6 July 2011: I checked the above link at the zoo and it now leads to a page that is no longer there.

© 2008 Barry T Horst This work is licensed under a
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Please visit the Giveaway of the Day at the bottom of the page for free software downloads daily.

Plan, Plan, Plan, and Plan Some More

As noted before, I teach Kindergarten at Brook Avenue Elementary. Yesterday was the next to last day before the Christmas holidays. It was also the day of our Christmas Field Trip. For Kindergartners, field trips are pretty big deals. It's like the whole reason some come to school. After all, some of our children do not get to experience a lot outside their neighborhood. When I tell my class about the upcoming field trip they all think they will be going the next day. This continues for a week or two. Then they begin to forget about it until you send permission slips home. Then it starts all over again. The next day you hear something like this, "Are we going on the field trip today?" I say, "No, that is next week."

We teachers plan and prepare for our field trips well in advance. Especially since it is so important to the children that the trips occur without any problems. Yesterday's field trip was no different. Our trip was planned on, submitted, budgeted for, and approved in September. GREAT. No problems in store for this group come field trip day. We would be going to Cameron Park and then to the Mayborn Museum at Baylor University for their Christmas Around the World activities. GREAT!

Our planned itinerary for the trip went something like this:

9:00 AM - Buses arrive. Children board buses and we leave for Cameron Park.
9:10 AM - We arrive at park and children exit buses for playground. This is the day they get to run and play as reward for all their hard work up till now.
10:15 AM - Teachers prepare for picnic lunch.
10:30 AM - Time for lunch. After lunch children get to play, go to restroom, and get a drink of water.
11:30 AM - Buses arrive for loading and transport to the Mayborn.
11:45 AM - Arrive at the Mayborn for the exhibits.
2:15 PM - Load buses and make our triumphant return to school after a successful field trip.

No Problems!

Actual day of the field trip:

9:00 AM - Buses arrive for loading and the students are ready to board. We go to the buses. Bus drivers tell us that one bus is for 3rd grade, the other is for 4th. Oh! Go call to get this straightened out.
9:15 AM - Bus drivers are satisfied that Kindergarten can go on field trip and load bus. The other bus it turns out is for 3rd grade. They too are going on the same field trip, except in reverse order.
9:20 AM - Preparing to leave and the driver mentions that she will be taking us to the Mayborn. NO! We are supposed to go to Cameron Park. Bus driver has to call to get this new wrinkle straightened out.
9:30 AM - Bus driver returns. Trip to Cameron Park is OK. BUT....that means we will need the bus all day and we will have to pay extra for the bus. It seems they thought we would only be gone 1/2 day. We leave for the park.
9:32 AM - As we head to the park the children start to sing. There were 3 distinct groups singing. Their favorites were "The Wheels On the Bus", "Jingle Bells", and "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer". They sounded like this, "The wheels on the bus go round and round, round and round, round and round. The wheels on the bus go...Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way. Oh what fun it is to ride in...a very shiny nose. And if you ever saw him you would even say it glows. When all the other reindeer saw him, they would...go round and round, round and round, round and round." It was great.
9:40 AM - Arrive at park. We need our coats since the weather is cool. Children run and play.
10:15 AM - Teachers prepare for lunch.
10:30 AM - Lunch. Then you hear from the children, "We are going to eat on the ground?", "I don't want to.", "I'm not hungry.", "I want to play." and so forth.
11:15 AM - Bus arrives early, children want to get on bus but can't. The bus is early and we get to the museum early. A few minutes later we get on bus anyway and head to museum.
11:35 AM - We arrive at museum early. The weather is warming so we leave the coats on the bus then the bus driver tells us that she will be leaving and we have to take everything with us. A different bus will pick us up and take us back. So we take our coats, ice chests , and boxes into the museum. They are not ready for us because we are early. We walk around the grounds until they are ready.
11:50 AM - Let the festivities begin. The museum was great and fun was had by one and all.
2:30 PM - We board our bus for the return trip. We are tired. No singing now. The bus driver has not been to our school before. He gets lost and we get a tour of the neighborhood. He asks directions and we arrive safely back at school at 2:50 PM. Dismissal is at 3:00 PM.

We all survived thanks to the advance planning and unerring execution of that plan! "Yeah, right!"


© 2007 Barry T Horst



This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.