The Importance of Teachers!

I was driving into work this morning listening to a local news station.  The host was talking about teachers who had made a difference in your life.  Lots of people called in and talked about their favorite grade school or high school teacher.  Then one person called in and stated that Mr. Rogers had made a significant  impact in their life.

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I am sure that any of you who are reading this, know who Mr. Rogers is.  I have fond memories sitting down with my young children and watching Mr. Rogers Neighborhood.  It was a PBS anchor, a must for young parents raising young children.  Mr. Rogers was the poster child of true love, kindness, and the motto, "A soft voice can sooth the savage beast."  He was always calm, with a soft voice that invited you to come into his world and let him care for you.  He was a true example for parents of all ages.  In fact, I recall enjoying his show as much as my children did.

I can easily recall all six of my grade school teachers, well actually seven if you count kindergarten.  Mrs. Butler - Kindergarten, Mrs. Higgens - First Grade, Mrs. Stoddard - Second Grade, Mrs. Weaver - Third Grade, Mrs. Davies - Fourth Grade, Mr. Olsen - Fifth Grade, and My Sixth Grade, who will remain nameless for reasons you will find out late.

I find it interesting that I can remember all of my grade school teachers names.  I also can picture their faces and the many experiences I had with them easily in my mind.  They were molding my life.  They were and continue to be a integral part of me.  Now, as a parent, it is a wonderful experience to meet and get to know my kids teachers -- to feel the love that they have for both my kids and being a teacher.  In fact, I have a sister that is a teacher.  She is a marvelous person.  I can feel her love every time I am around her.  She also loves to talk about her classes, the school she teaches in, and her students.

In particular, I had an absolutely awesome fifth grade teacher.  Mr Olsen is the poster child of a teacher.  He really cared about me and my classmates.  He loves to teach and make each and every day an adventure in learning.

Mr. Olsen would make each day better than the previous day.  We had an overnight winter camp at the school district's summer camp.  We went on many field trips to reinforce the concepts that he was teaching in the class room.  He even made preparing for the dance festival fun, because, as I recall, girls were still "yucky" at that time.

The qualities of a good teacher can be summed up in a article by Catherine Tayor-Lagos, here, which, paraphrased, goes like this:   What is a good teacher?  Depending on one's perspective, this question has many valid answers.

• A child might say that a good teacher makes learning fun, is fair, and assigns no homework!
• A Parent might say that a good teacher is organized, has good control of the class, and challenges students.
• Administrators might say a good teacher follows district guidelines, presents curriculum effectively, and contributes to the school community.
• The school custodian may say that a good teacher is tidy, has students clean up after themselves, and makes reasonable demands on his/her time.

The following are generalized attributes of a good teacher:

• Sees each student as an individual with hopes, dreams, strengths, and vulnerabilities.
• Knows their students on many levels.  She learns all she can about a student's academic strengths and needs, but also about their interests, fears, hopes, and worries.
• Helps students develop, achieve, and maintain strong self-esteem.
• Helps students feel that they are special, unique, and wonderful.
• Allows students to see and get to know his real self, not hiding behind the teacher role.
• Remembers that each student is somebody's precious child, is important and valuable.
• Tries to see things through her student's eyes as well as her own.
• Works hard to be fair, empathetic, and encouraging.
• Not afraid to try new things, to look a little silly, to show a little sadness, to be a little angry, to get mighty excited, or to act really happy.
• Not afraid to apologize, or say he made a mistake.
• Makes learning exciting, an adventure!
• Know that no one can be a good teacher to every student every day, but she continues to try -- knowing that is she can be a good teacher to every student many days that she has been successful.
• Shares what they have learned with other teachers.
• Becomes attached to her students, knowing that it will be hard to say good bye at the end of the school year.  Hopes that those students will come back to visit, and even if they don't, that they will carry her in their futures and remember her with their successes.

I am so grateful for good teachers, especially in my kids lives.  There is one particular teacher at my kids elementary school that all of them have had, my youngest this past school year.  She is an exceptional teacher, remembers all of my kids names and the attributes that define them.  She really cares about them, you can feel it when you are in her classroom.

I am also grateful for the protections that are afforded parents in the classroom today.  As much as I don't enjoy discussing it, my sixth grade teacher was probably the worst person I have had to spend an extended period of time with.  Back when I was in elementary school, parents didn't have the luxury of law suites or disciplinary councils.  My sixth grade teacher has a serious temper problem.  He would commonly pick boys up by the hair above the neck.  He actually took me out in the hall and banged my head against the coat rack one time.  (Maybe I deserved disciplinary action, but definitely not physical abuse.)  Of course I told my parents about this and other incidents.  They talked to the Principal, who calmed them down, but did nothing about the problems.  Funny thing is, 25 years later, I remember all these incidents too.  And when this sixth grade teacher was awarded some city service award a few years back (I read it in the newspaper), a flood of memories ran through my head.  I even thought about calling up the city to let them know about what had happened, but decided that it wasn't worth causing pain in an elderly gentleman's life.

I am grateful for the other five, well six if you count kindergarten teachers, and the many Junior High and High School teachers that molded me and made me what I am today.  Teachers are the ice cream of our lives.  Hopefully all of your teachers have been good and loving to you.

Till next time,
Bill

Men are from Alpha Centuri and Women are from The Milky Way

I realize that the title to this blog is a play on the famous relationship book, "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus," by John Gray.  I, unlike John Gray, am not a P.H.D. in psychology, so my comments today will not have any scientific basis to them, but all come from experience.  With that out of the way, I have to sit here and think about what one thing causes innumerable problems in a marriage.  If you were to guess what that one thing might be, what would you say?  If you guessed communication, you would be right.

A very good friend of mine spent many years teaching at an Ivy League school.  His specialty was and continues to be Communication.  I intentionally went out of my way to take three of his classes when I was in college.  All three classes yelled the idea that listening is the key to effective communication.  In order to have effective communication, you have to have a (1) sender, the one creating the (2) message and a (3) receiver, the one who is listening.  If any of these three critical parts to communication falters, then you do not have effective communication.  Listening is really an art.  It is manifest by good eye contact with the sender.  It is funny, but my youngest boy demands my full attention when he talks to me.  If my eyes so much as wander away from his face when he is talking to me, he will scold me for not listening to him, when I am still listening.

So when it comes to a marriage, it is critical that a husband and a wife have effective communication if they want to get along.  I did something that may not have been the smartest thing in the world, but I bought a Hummer.  As you know, these are not the cheapest cars in the world.  Shortly after buying this, I was unexpectedly laid off from my hi-tech job I had worked at for over 10 years.  Of course I immediately started looking for a new job.  My wife was working part time for a local doctor.  While looking for my new job, my wife came home and announced that she had changed her hours at the office for summer, reducing her weekly hours by 4.  My initial reaction was that I didn't want to loose my Hummer and by my wife reducing her hours that would put my Hummer is danger.  So, I unwisely became all upset with my wife.  Granted all that did was cause her to get upset and lock herself in our bedroom for the rest of the night!

So, let's analyze this situation.  First, second, and third of all, in fact all of the "all's" the main problem here is communication.  If I had been open about my concern about possibly loosing my Hummer, my wife may have been more sympathetic about her work situation.  She may have actually tried to add more hours to her summer schedule to assist me with my financial situation.  If my wife had been more open about why she wanted to cut back her time working (to spend more time giving, as in community service), maybe we would have been able to meet half way and come to a solution that would benefit both of us.

Another situation might center around time.  A few nights ago my wife stated that she was going to take my son to rugby practice.  I interpreted this to mean she was going to drop him off at practice and come back home.  Two hours later, when my youngest son is demanding dinner, I am getting angry because I don't know where my wife is.  Yet another hour later my wife and Rugby son come home.  I ask her were she had been and she said that she decided to stay and watch the practice.

By this time I was quite angry and I was the one who stomped off and went and hid in the computer room.  So, how could this situation have been averted?  When my wife took my Rugby son to practice, after about a half an hour, I just needed to call her up and see what her plans were.  Then I would have taken on responsibility to make dinner for my youngest son.  OR, my wife could have told me she was planning on staying for the whole Rugby practice as she was heading out the door.  Either way, I would know what I needed to do for the evening and there would have been no hard feelings.


Communication is the key.  Time is the key.  Take the extra minutes to make sure that you and your wife are continually on the same wave length and hopefully you will have a long and happy marriage.

Till next time,
Bill

Judge Not ... Lest Ye Be Judged

I am associated with a religious organization that provides a summer camp for kids.  My daughter went to this camp recently.  Several young women from our congregation went the same week, along with several Moms to provide leadership and support.

Now Girls Camp should be a good experience for everyone, and since this is a week-long camp, it was up to the last day.  My daughter would text me each evening before she went to bed.  She was excited about all the hikes and crafts and outdoorshish things that she was doing.  She even caught a squirrel in a trap she made from a tin can!  (She let it go.)

So she had lots of fun doing the camp scheduled things, but of course she did all the things that a young girl would do at camp including pranks and more pranks and still more pranks.  That is what caused a bit of a problem on the Thursday evening before going home on Friday.  You see, there were four girls in their cabin, and one girl thought it would be funny to pants another girl.  (For those of you who don't know, pantzing is pulling down the pants of someone.)  Now, these girls had returned from an afternoon hike, where they had worn shorts.  Towards evening, as it got colder, they had put on sweat pants, so this first pantzing caused the girl to still be in her shorts.  Funny, yes, damaging, no.  So, the girl who was pantzed turns around and pantzes my daughter.  Now all four girls are laughing and carrying on in a humorous manner.  My daughter then pantzes another girl, who apparently wasn't wearing shorts under her sweat pants.  (Now remember, these four girls are the only ones inside their cabin...) This girl, who had been laughing when the other two girls were pantzed, lets out a blood curling scream, pulls up her sweat pants and runs out of the cabin screaming like someone had pointed a gun at her!

Of course all the Girls Camp leaders run to see what the matter was.  This girl tells them that she had been terrorized and that what had happened to her was the most traumatic event of her life!  She would never be the same!  And that my daughter was the devil himself!

Rather than try and find out what had happened, several of the leaders ran over to my daughter and criticized her for what she had done.  They didn't try to get the whole picture that a small group of girls were just trying to have some fun.  They put my daughter through the ringer and would not listen to her side, nor the other two girls side of the story.  So by this time, my daughter had returned to her cabin and was in tears!  What a way for a Girls Camp experience to end.  And this would have been the end of the story if it were not for a Samaritan leader who went into my daughter's cabin, waited for her to calm down, and talked with her.  When my daughter was able to speak, she told this counselor that what had happened was a innocent joke gone wrong.  The counselor also talked to the other two girls involved, and they supported my daughter.  The she went and talked to the girl who had freaked out, running out of the cabin screaming.  She admitted that maybe, just maybe, she had over reacted.

 

In the aftermath of the evening, according to my daughter, since I wasn't there, the counselor that had heard her side of the story talked with all the involved leaders.  Even though a lot of the leaders still, firmly, felt that my daughter was in the wrong, most softened up.  My daughter, being the way she is, immediately made up with the girl who thought she was victim.

After all this was over, the last major event of the camp Thursday night was a get-together by the fire where the girls and leaders have a chance to discuss how they have enjoyed the camp.  The counselor that had helped my daughter invited her to come to the fireside chat.  My daughter instinctively didn't want to, but she softened up and went.  The other leaders and girls came.  Camp ended the way that it should have.  When my daughter came home, she didn't want to worry about what had happened, she just put it behind her, chocked it up to experience.  I like that attitude.  I hope that the leaders will feel the same way.  I do appreciate the counselor who did not judge and helped my daughter out of a particularly perilous situation.

I'm going to try my darnedest to not judge people.  It is so hard sometimes.  I just need to try and feel what the person that I want to judge may be feeling.

Til next time,
Bill

The Perils of Technical Writing

I used to work for the top Networking company in the world, Novell, Inc.  During my tenure there as a programmer/software engineer, I had the forced opportunity to do a lot of technical writing.  I wrote product specifications.  I wrote multitudes of engineering paperwork.  I wrote API documentation.  I created on-line tutorials for Novell's third-party developers.  Needless to say, I did a lot of writing.

After many years at Novell, my product was sent overseas and I was a part of a massive layoff.  However, the powers that be requested that I continue to write documents, "How To's", for Novell's Developers and Partners.  They would give me requested subject matter and I would write up a tutorial, or in depth article on the subject matter.  As time went on, I started working for another company, Novell put more trust in me and would ask me to come up with my own subject matter.  I obliged.  Everything went well until I wrote an article on the myriad of programming languages that could be used to interface with Novell NetWare/Identity Manager/eDirectory.  I covered at least 25 programming languages showing how to use them to interact with the Novell products.  The problem was that I wasn't an expert in most of them (I am a C/C++/C# and Java programmer).

I was writing and providing examples for Pearl, PL/M, AWK, BASIC, PHP, and a bunch of others.  I did my best.  I provided examples that worked and interfaced with Novell's products.  The article was published on Novell's partner and developer website.  It didn't take too long before the comments started coming in.  Over 200 the day it was published.  Most were negative stating that I didn't know what I was doing with PERL, or PHP, etc., etc.  These comments were being made by programmers who use their respective languages every day.  They knew the ins and outs and accepted procedures for these languages.  I did not.  I took a lot of criticism over this article.  I bowed my head and didn't write another article for Novell.

I don't know how many negative comments came in over that one article.  I have since learned my lesson.  Creating just one sloppy, badly researched article can cast a dark shadow over hundreds of great, useful, creative articles.  As a Technical Writer, one needs to make sure that they are masters of the subject matter.  If not, you better have a contact or friend that can proof read your works before you submit them.  I still love to write, but when I do so for money, I make sure that the subject matter is correct, that I have an expert in the subject matter proof read my article for technical accuracy, and lastly, have a lay person read it to make sure it is understandable for the desired audience.

Till next time,
Bill

The Constitution, Goverment, War, and Security

This will probably be the shortest blog post that I have done on this site.  I received an Easter email from a good friend and he describes on his blog the exact things I have been thinking recently pertaining to Government, Freedom, Guarantees of the Constitution, War, and Security.  His blog is here.  I would strongly suggest that you read it and ponder the ideas and thoughts that are there.

I think I have indicated that I have a good friend who is a Glenn Beck fan.  I have been watching Glenn's show on Fox News for the last couple of weeks.  It is my opinion that Glenn Beck is ahead of his time.  He has information, that while requiring faith to believe, makes a lot of sense.  It is scary information.  Information about problems with this world and our country.  It is information that the world is not ready for.  It is a lot like when new technology is introduced that is decades ahead of its time, people will not embrace it.  At least not right off.

There is an excellent book called The Myths of Innovation by Scott Berkun.  In it he talks about how many ideas that were destined to change the world, were revealed to the world before the world was ready for them.  Excellent book!  Well worth the read.

Back to Glenn Beck.  The subject matter and ideas he has been sharing on his TV show are so shocking that for the most part his audience has shut down.  His advertisers have pulled away, all except the ones for gold and food storage.  Glenn Beck predicts an end to our world.  And while the Bible is in harmony with this idea, the world is not.  Glenn Beck is loosing his show on Fox News basically because of loss of advertisers.  He is loosing advertisers because of his forward-thinking ideas.  Ideas that the world is not ready for.

All that I can say and hope for is that the government of the United States of America will uphold and defend the Constitution.  This is the document that formed our country in the first place.  It directs how the country should be run.  It is an amazing project plan for an amazing country!

Till next time,
Bill

Hieght in Soccer

I have updated this Post to indicate what I found out about height in soccer with the results of my daughter's 2011 tryouts.  See at end of post.

Yesterday and this evening my daughter's soccer team is having tryouts.  I have blogged previously about my daughter getting to the point in her soccer career that her competitive team is much like a college or high school team in that they have seasonal tryouts.

Watching these tryouts, I have to wonder about the
about what will happen.  Will we loose some girls, to be replaced with better prospects?  Will we add some girls and increase the number of girls on the team?

The downside of loosing some girls is that I loose the friendship of that girls parents.  It is almost like a family moving out of the neighborhood, you typically loose contact with them when you don't see them every day!

As a sat and watched our team play in the semi-finals of the State Cup, I couldn't help but notice two of our forwards that are quite small.  They are both under 5 feet.  The girls they were playing against were a good half a foot taller!

Our poor forwards were constantly being knocked down.  Of course they would bounce right back up.  However, they just couldn't keep the ball away from the much larger defenders.

I proposed my concern about this to my daughter at dinner one evening.  (She is 5 foot 7 and still growing.)  Of course she defended her teammates.  Said that they are good ball handlers and great players.  But I have to worry.  Can you be the best ball handler and be small?  The way the other team was dominating over our forwards was quite convincing to me.

Most of our Middle Fielders are muscular, bigger, and taller.  They move the ball well, while providing an ominous presence.  Our Defenders are best of league.  They are tall, fast, and to brag a little, (my daughter plays defense) my daughter has only allowed two balls to get by her all Spring season!

My daughter is tall, lean, and very fast.  She has speed to chase down balls that get past the other two defenders!  But now I am getting off subject.

Really, size does have a lot to do with soccer.  I was talking with a co-worker this morning.  He has a couple of boys in basketball.  Of course height is everything in basketball.  He has been trying to convince me to get my daughter into basketball.  He claims that an athletic, tall, girl can get into basketball a lot later than a boy, and be successful.  However, my daughter has no interest in basketball.

My co-worker took his daughter to soccer tryouts last night also.  Different team, though.  All he could talk about is the height of the girls on the existing team.  He said they were all over 6 feet!  (I suspect he might be exaggerating a bit.)

So we will see what happens.  Tryouts are over this evening.  I will update and let you know if height played an important role in coaches decision this year.

Update - my daughter's team had their two days of tryouts with over 80 girls trying out for the 16 positions.  13 of the original 18 stayed on the team, with one deciding to play down a year and two deciding to play up a year (High School).  The two girls in question that are quite short DID stay on the team.  So -- I am sold on the idea that skill plays a much higher importance than height.  However, height does typically allow for longer legs, which typically will allow you to run faster.  So, I will eat my humble pie on this one.

Till next time,
Bill