It's Always A Learning Experience

I have been in the field of education for 22 years. In that time it has never ceased to amaze me the things I hear from the kids. Often times they will be brutally honest. Other times, they are showing their shear innocence. Many times, they end up teaching me that in many ways their lives are vastly different from mine and the way I grew up. You see, I teach at the school in town that encompasses the largest subsidized housing in the city within it's attendance zone. Our attendance zone also has the lowest Socio-Econimic Standard (SES) in the district.

For instance, I will never forget last year when one of my students saw my wife one day and asked if she was my girlfriend. I said, "No! She is my wife." Then the student wanted to know what a "wife" was. I tried to explain, but in their world "Daddy didn't have a wife, Daddy had a girlfriend."

Also last year, I had the student that announced she wanted to be in gang when she was older because her older brother was in gang. Wow! And she was 5 years old at the time. I also had her in my class this year. I haven't heard a mention of a gang at all this year. But I do know that her step dad is not in the picture now and the family has moved from the nearby subsidized housing to another area. Hopefully, she and the family will be able to live in a better environment.

This year has been eye opening also. I remember an assignment I gave my class a few months ago. I asked them to take a piece of drawing paper and draw their house. After all students were finished I asked them to bring their pictures to the carpet and we would look at and discuss them. I got to this one little fella that raised his picture and showed the class a large black box that had been divided into many smaller squares. I asked what the squares were and he proceeded to explain that "....this is the jail where my Daddy is. I went to see him this weekend!" A few days later this student's older sister in middle school came to me to ask if I would write a letter to help get their Dad out of jail. She came to me because The Dad had met me before on a visit to school to discuss his son's behavior. This same boy was absent on the day after Memorial Day. When I asked if he was sick he said he had been to Mexico. I never heard, but have since wondered if Dad got out of jail and has gone back to Mexico.

Yes, that has hit our school very hard also. The teacher next door to me has lost two students this year because one of the parents has either been deported or has otherwise had problems with documentation and couldn't get back in the country.

Please visit Rogers Online for Mandy's post from Friday, May 30. It will give a little more insight to what I am speaking of.

Last Friday after school I left my truck running in the school drive as I went in to get something I left. I left it running so that it would get cool. (No it was not going to get stolen. I left it running but I didn't leave the keys in. I have remote start with a safety interlock.) Anyway, one of the older students noticed the condensation dripping from the AC and thought it was oil. She comment that my truck was leaking oil. Then she said, "All our new cars always leak oil like that."

On a good note; it appears that our campus will be Academically Acceptable on our latest TAKS scores this year. That is good because everyone at our campus, students included, have worked very hard this year to remove the stigma of "Academically Unacceptable."

Congratulations Brook Avenue Elementary!

© 2008 Barry T Horst


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Re-Looking at Re-Cycling, Really

On an earlier post, gee way back in December of 2007, I was discussing the merits and money for recycling aluminum cans. Granted I am more interested in the money I get back instead of the nice warm feeling I get for help the earth survive for one more day. In the earlier post I said that I was paid 60 cents per pound on aluminum cans. Well folks, I am here to tell you that I went by this morning and the price is 80 cents per pound. I took 'em to Lipsitz Metals On south Loop 340 once again. They are paying the same price as the outfit on South IH-35 by Bruceville-Eddy that was closed today.

In December 2007 I took 54 pounds and got $32.40. If I had waited till today I could have gotten $43.20. That's nearly $11.00 for sitting around and waiting. Today I took 34 pounds and walked out with $27.20. Now I really think I should have waited. If I had waited I could walked out with $70.40 for 88 pounds.

Honestly now I'm beginning to think I should have kept it all at home for another 5 or 6 months. This means I will have added another 30 - 40 pounds to the collection and maybe the price will be $1.00 per pound and I would be able to pocket $110 -$120.

My luck though the market will crash and I'd only get a mere pittance.

Let's look at my earlier math and update it with the current numbers:

Now, let's look at the numbers behind the numbers. Thanks to modern manufacturing techniques there are approximately 33.5 cans to make a pound. In 1980 that number was 25 cans per pound. That is why the cans seem so much thinner now. I can remember when I was in junior high and high school guys would show off by tearing an aluminum can in half. I did that recently and was proud of the fact that I could still do it. Then I learned that I could do it because the cans are made a lot thinner these days. So much for the feelings of youth from days gone by. Back to the numbers. So let's see; 34 pounds multiplied by 33.5 cans/pound equals 1139 cans. If you divide 1139 cans by 12 cans in a 12 pack you get 94.92 packs. Let's just say 95 packs. Now we can have fun. My $27.20 divided by 95 packs equals approximately 29 cents per twelve pack. (That is 7 cents better than last time.) (Here's the rub, the price for drinks has gone up also. Let's use a sale price of $3.33 per. That's generally the price here when they go on sale.) If I spent an average of $3.33 per twelve pack to buy the 95 packs of drinks that means I spent $316.35 in order to make $32.40. OH MY!

Let's look at it another way. If I spent $3.04 per twelve pack ($3.33 sale price less the 29 cents made from recycling the twelve cans) that means each can would cost a little over 25 cents. Sometimes it is better to look at the little picture than it is to look at the overall big picture. The big picture can get cluttered up with lots of silly numbers that lead us away from the overall goal which is the fact that each can is worth a little over 2 cents each. (At the last post the price per can was a little under 2 cents. So I guess this is still a money making proposition, of sorts!) Keep that in mind the next you chunk a can out the window. "Hey honey! There went 2 cents."

© 2008 Barry T Horst


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Crunch Time

The countdown has started and it's crunch time.

Today is Friday and the last day for school is next Wednesday. Today is our "No Referral" Incentive party. Let me tell you, there were some unhappy campers yesterday when they found out they couldn't go to the park and skating because of discipline referrals. This will be a first for me. I have never taken a class full of Kindergartners skating. I suppose it will be easier than taking Pre-Kindergartners skating; after all, Kindergartners are bigger.

Next Monday we begin practicing for our Awards/Graduation. The ceremony will be on Tuesday morning. Afterwards, we will have a reception in our classrooms.

Then the day we have been working towards all year long arrives. Wednesday, June 3, last day of school and it's an Early Release day at that. The students dismiss at 12:00 and get to take their report cards and other stuff home and then start summer vacation.

Alas, that is not the end for me though. The staff still has end of year stuff to finish and than a workday on Thursday. Since our campus will be used for summer school and then summer training we all have to make sure our rooms are in order and all supplies are secured.

Fortunately I do not change classrooms this year. I changed last year and it was a major pain. I taught Pre-K last year. Since the district took Pre-K off several campuses this year I transferred to Kindergarten. So my STUFF was moved into another Pre-K classroom whose former occupant took a job in a nearby district. This teacher left behind a lot of STUFF. I also took the place of another Kindergarten teacher who got married and moved away. Her STUFF was also moved to my new room. I spent 2 weeks last summer before school started sorting through all of this STUFF and making sense of it. So again I say, "Fortunately I do not change classrooms this year."

P.S. I sat and made Graduation Tassels for my class last night. Oh the joys of Kindergarten.© 2008 Barry T Horst


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Get 'er Done! Yeah Right!

Since we got the DVR with our cable I have found that I started to schedule my favorite shows to record and then watch them in my spare time. I also do this with new shows so I can watch them later. This is good. Especially if you need to waste your time and not be very productive.

Well, I have now found a newer and much better way to waste time and be even less productive. (Chris is not happy about this.) I have now found online streaming videos. No not YouTube or the like. This is actual TV stations with movies and cartoons and such.

Some of the links I have found are to: Beeline TV . At Beeline you can choose from bajillions of stations from around the world. Well, actually 238 stations today. There is also StreamKick TV that has a lot of links to stations to watch. Then there is FreeTube. If you go to FreeTube and click on the Entertainment tab on the left sidebar and scroll down a bit you can find some good cartoon stations streaming classic cartoons from the 40's and 50's.

Perhaps my favorite site is America Free TV. At America Free TV the have 15 channels streaming various types of entertainment. All of it clean, from what I can tell. Their cartoon channel plays a lot of Merrie Melodies and Popeye. I've seen Three Stooges on one of the movie channels and I watched "Meet John Doe" last night.

A couple of other sites worth going to are In2TV-AOL Videos, TV4U, Entertainment Magazine On-Line, and for classic commercials try Classic TV Ads. All of this is available 24 hours a day which means I can waste the entire day.

Each of these sites use one or more viewers. Some use Windows Media, Apple Quicktime, or some other embedded viewers. Depending upon the viewer and the web-site you may or may not be able to watch the program full screen. And, you may or may not be able to watch without commercials. Some have you watch an ad at the beginning, end or at various spots in the program. And then others make you watch on a small screen and they keep advertising up on the page around the viewer. None of this matters to me. I can tune out the advertising if there is a show I really want to watch.

In many cases much of what I find online is better that what I get off network television. Let's face it, most network programs stink. I'll take most programming from 50 years ago anyday. With one exception. I love to watch shows about how things are made. Enter How It's Made and other shows that are similar. That's OK. I have them covered also with Cool Stuff Being Made.

Now I need to get a larger monitor and better sound and I can just pitch my 42 inch LCD HDTV I bought recently. Won't Chris be excited???

© 2008 Barry T Horst


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WOW, What A Day!

Wow, what a day. It is May in Waco, Texas. That generally means hot and humid. Today was no exception. At least most of the day was no exception.

When I left for work this morning at 6:30 the weather forecast called for a high in the mid 90's and a small chance of rain. Before lunch time it was cloudy and warm. After lunch I took my class out for recess. It was getting hot at 11:30 AM. The kids loved it though. They got to run and play and watch a stray dog wander around the street beside the school. When it was time to go in we definitely had to stop at the water fountain before going to music. By early afternoon the sun came out and it was getting hotter.

At dismissal it was sunny and around 93 degrees. While at our dismissal spot my students were complaining about the sun and the heat. They wanted to go in the shade. By 3:10 PM I had 4 students left and the sky began to cloud up and we started to get a slight breeze from the east. Then the wind picked up out of the east and it was very cool. By 3:15 PM the temperature had dropped about 25 degrees to 68 degrees. Can you say "outflow boundary"? One of my students was actually complaining about being cold when his mom picked him up.

Once my students were picked up, I went in and worked in my room. By 4:00 PM I was leaving and it was beginning to pour. And the thunder was amazing. I wish I could have recorded it and place it hear for you to hear.

Since I couldn't record it I have placed a sound board from soundboard.com below. Listen to Track 1. that is the closest to what I heard.

I raced the rain all the way home. By the time I got home there was a school bus stopped in front of the house and it was raining so hard I had to wait in the carport for the rain to slacken. While waiting the school bus started to back up. How odd! When I finally got in Chris asked me if I saw the tree across the road in front of the house. Now I know why the bus was backing up, the road was blocked by a tree that was blown down by the wind.

Wow, what a day!

© 2008 Barry T Horst

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Is That Really Where I Used To Live?

I was looking at different things on the Internet yesterday. As it so often happens, I will be on one web page and then I will see a link that looks interesting. So I click on it and go to the page to check it out.

Well that happened yesterday. I was on giveawayoftheday.com and saw a link for Rotten Neighbors. I thought, "Hmmmmm! That looks interesting." So I clicked on it and away I went. When I landed on the site I found out that it is a site that allows people to 1. Join; 2. Submit their beefs about neighbors or neighborhoods; 3. Allows members to comment and post on others posts; 4. Look for the best neighborhoods (I suppose the ones that no one has posted anything about.); 5. View a Google map of the offending house-neighbor-neighborhood.

"Wow!", I thought. I immediately wondered about the site and wondered about oversight and what have you. After reading about a few neighbors I kinda got the impression that if anyone wanted to say anything about anyone else they could on this site. Now understand, I didn't join so therefore I do not now about their TOS (Terms of Service) or other legal mumbo-jumbo. It just didn't look like the kind of place that you would have everyone being, shall we say, trustworthy. I mean I didn't get the impression that all of those posting subscribed to the Dragnet Credo, "Just the facts ma'am!"

Then I thought to myself about the recent news story about Waco being the 5th worst place to raise a family. The article is in Best Life Magazine. I've never heard of this magazine before.

Does Waco have a problem? Do they have a lot of rotten neighbors? So I looked. All I found was one entry. All the entry said was, "Loud music!" I looked at the map and what do you think I saw? No not our house. I saw the neighborhood I grew up in over 40 years ago. We lived there until we moved in 1968. Wow.

I stayed on the site and looked a little more and was able to find a few more reports that were not on the first list I looked at. One nice thing I did find on the website was that they show the areas in neighborhoods where convicted sex offenders live. In Texas you can also find this information on the Texas Department of Public Safety site.

© 2008 Barry T Horst


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