Summer preparations

It's summer, so I am preparing for the next school year.  Considering that this is one of my 2 unpaid months of the year, that is unpaid labor, but no one cares about that.  It's my choice to spend extra UNPAID time now so that I can concentrate on teaching and other tasks "as assigned" starting on August 15.  So what have I done so far?

When we were camping, I planned out the first quarter of my Honors Computer Science class.  When I spent 4 hours in a government office (NCDMV) yesterday, I planned out the entire year of Intro Computer Science.  Before we went camping I also worked on my Algebra 3/Trig class, but it will be an ongoing planning situation because of day-to-day challenges of the different students.  At least this year I have "only" 4 subjects to teach.

I am currently fixing up the homework pages for our new teachers.  That'll teach me to volunteer, except that I really like helping my fellow faculty members with their computer work.

I have found one thing different this summer, though.  For the past 2 summers, I was concentrating on doing things for my mother and seeing her at least twice a week, so I did not do as much sewing and working on the house as I had before.  Now that she is gone, I am having trouble getting back to the sewing.  The work that the house needs is another ongoing situation in my life, so that hasn't changed all that much. 

The tiles for the "tin" ceiling are supposed to be ready by tomorrow, and I am not looking forward to doing that work in this heat.  Maybe I'll just move our new air conditioner to the kitchen for the duration of putting up the new ceiling.  I just keep on reminding myself that I will be so happy when it's done.  I'm making that my mantra for the time being.

The King Effect

In 1975, while I was a college student, a friend named King brought a color TV to our house to try it out on our outdoor antenna.  (Yes, there was a time when most people had black-and-white TVs because color TVs were too expensive.  It was rather like the HD and 3-D TV situation now.)  After spending an afternoon watching color TV in our living room, my husband and I went out and bought our first color TV the next weekend.

It is 36 years since then.  When we were camping in West Virginia over the past 2 weeks, we visited our friend King, his wife, and daughter at their home.  They had an air conditioning unit that we liked.  Well, the "King effect" happened again.  Upon returning home to 95+ degrees Fahrenheit with very high humidity, we went out and bought an AC unit similar to the one that King and his family had.  My made-up excuse: my husband being 68 deserved air conditioning at home before he got older.

What makes it being cheap?

One of my brothers said that my husband and I are cheap because we camp so much when we travel.  That's an interesting opinion from someone who prefers to ride a motorcycle instead of a car.  Who is the cheap person here and what makes that person's actions "cheap"? 

Sometimes when my preference of camping causes problems for my brother's plans (in this case carrying something big to store in our house ... along with all my mother's other stuff), he will try to spin his words to make us look bad.  Most of the people I know, myself included, will do this at one time or another.

When it comes to my brother's love of motorcycling and our lack of interest in same, he doesn't think he's being cheap but efficient.  This is the other side of the concept presented above: spinning one's words to make ourselves look good.  Again, most people I know, myself included, do it at one time or another.

So do we actually camp out to save money?  Sometimes yes, but the fact is that we really like camping.  We find hotel/motel rooms and hallways, etc. to be very claustrophobic in nature.  When we camp, we have privacy (no maids, etc.), we have lots of space to set our stuff out, and we can enjoy our day at our speed.  We don't have to follow a hotel schedule about housekeeping and breakfast, etc. hours.  There's no television to distract us.  The neighbors can be friendly or we just ignore them.  The only bad part is the fact that we find ourselves in various stores, cafes, etc. in order to use the internet.  I am too cheap to buy a broadband card.

Real Life Happens

Real life is not scripted.  It follows no pattern set in stone.  It just happens.

I had planned to spend this morning doing some sewing.  I was in my sewing room bagging up my wastebasket trash when I heard a crash from downstairs.  I assumed it was the spring rod for the shower curtain, so I wasn't too worried when I went downstairs to check.  Only it wasn't the rod.  The downstairs bathroom had no problems.  I knew the crash had been below me, so I went on to the next room.  There was a new big hole in the ceiling above the television and plaster all over the floor, rug, furniture, television, and assorted devices.

We started cleaning up everything, then drove to the local home center and bought a wet-dry shop vac because our vacuum couldn't handle that mess.  Spent the rest of the morning and the afternoon cleaning up that mess.  I guess that next summer we'll be putting in a new ceiling again.  What really irks me is that we haven't finished putting in the new kitchen ceiling.

Tomorrow I go back to sewing.  Unless real life happens again.

Thoughts on trying to reach the emotional areas of the brain.

I just received this year's AP CS A exam results.  I knew before Easter break just what those results would be, and I was right.  No matter how many times I told my students that they were going to take one of the hardest AP exams and that they could not wing it by cramming at the last minute, most of them did not listen.  Most of them did not pass.  What does it take to reach the part of a student's brain that realizes that I am telling the truth?

Last year my entire class passed that exam.  Since they were all mentally geared towards the subject, I could have done nothing, and they probably still would have passed.  My experience has been that the individual student's desire to pass the exam and interest in the software creation concepts side is a far better predictor of success than anything else.  The interest in software concepts I have a good sense of, but how do I help them desire passionately passing the exam?  I don't believe in using my emotions to manipulate students although I will use manipulative techniques to get them to do the work in class.  It's getting them to work in the lab that is a big problem.  I shall have to think seriously on this one before the fall.  I have the passion that I need to pass on to them.

Working on the house

I've been preparing my kitchen in anticipation of scraping the ceiling.  We plan on putting up a tin or fake-tin ceiling this summer.  I will finish taking down everything on the cabinet tops today, my husband will wash clothes this evening, and I will cover the lower cabinets and appliances tomorrow and start scraping.  My father would probably tell me that I take too long to do these things.  I think he would be right, but I like to do quiet things in the heat and humidity of the afternoon.

My younger brother, however, seems to think I do a lot in the summer.  He skyped me yesterday and made a comment about how busy I am when school's out (I don't remember his exact words, just the gist of what I got from them.).  I do know that I hate doing the work, but I love the results, so I do it.  Plus summer can be a waste if one does nothing useful.  Besides, it's either do physical labor or exercise by walking down the greenway.  Right now the physical labor is winning.  Going up and down the step ladder for a couple of hours each day is great for my leg muscles.

I'm also trying to finish my Moodle site for the first quarter of a math class.  I know that I will either have a study hall or a different math subject this fall, and I want to be ready in case the latter happens.  I also need to do the same for both my Intro CS class and my Honors CS class.  One thing I learned this past year is that I need to insure that my CS students cannot find the answers to their problems on the internet.  For some reason, they don't think they're cheating when they do that.

Opportunity knocks!

My son and I went to the school yesterday morning so that I could have an accounts payable "bill" signed and faxed to our host's office.  It should have taken all of 5 minutes, but it took closer to an hour.  The business manager was on the phone, so we had to wait.  A teacher borrowed my son to help him with computer hardware problems in his classroom while waiting.  I taught a new teacher the basics of using his homework website.  Then I got the paper signed and faxed.  Son was still working in the one classroom, so I spent some time talking with a graduate I taught a few years back.  Son was still working, so I spoke with a teacher about setting him up with a Moodle account for testing purposes.  Son finally returned, but he had not been able to fix the problem.  Funny thing is that the school pays for 2 full time tech people, one being my son's boss who was out yesterday, but the faculty call on my son whenever they have a problem and he's at the school because they have had no success with getting help from the other tech person.

Meantime, I finally took my serger sewing machine to a repair shop.  It's been broken but usable for more than 10 years, but I was always leery of leaving it with anyone to fix it.  The last time I left a sewing machine to be repaired (in another state), it really wasn't, so "once bit, twice shy" am I.  I hope these people do a good job because I need a reliable repair place for my other sewing machine ... the one that has the problem that was never fixed. 

In regards to both the one tech person at the school and the repair shop that never repaired my machine, I wish people would understand that life is far more than earning money.  One's life has to have meaning as in doing the best one can do for others, like fixing machines or solving computer problems.  Perhaps it's my religious view, but I believe that we all need to help each other whenever possible and appropriate.  No one was ever put on this earth "to make money", no matter how much he/she wants to believe that.