Recess

When I was a kid, just the word evoked excitement – there were so many fun things to do.  If the weather was nice, you got to go outside!  A break from school!  There were rings to ring, rungs to run, slides to slide down and all sorts of bars to clamor over.  There were balls to throw and kick, girls to chase with hair to pull, and painted lines to hop over, serve into and get played out of.  There was grass to run in, sand to dig in and dirt to slide on.  If you were a loner, there were bugs to crawl after, butterflies to try to capture, and clouds to imagine make shapes in.  There were people to watch, shade to sit in and little rocks to kick.  There was a whole world of adventure and it was just outside our classrooms in the schoolyard.

 

Even if the weather was terrible, we still got recess.  Sometimes we got to go to the gym.  There was basketball, foursquare and the dreaded dodge-ball.  There might have been mats with balance beams, and some other things to crawl around on, or there might have been a stage where we could act like we were putting on a show.  Sometimes we stayed in the classroom.  Often the teacher would have planned ahead and we would have a fun activity that involved us all doing something with our hands while imagining with our minds.

 

I don’t have little kids anymore – mine are 20 and 21 now – but I sure hope that the little kids these days have the same opportunities that I had growing up.  I hope they don’t just sit around texting and playing video games on their phones.  It’s one thing to get outside and get some fresh air, but the exercise of the body and the mind are more important.

I Remember Those!!!

We all get it - “Bloggers Block” – the electronic equivalent of “Writes Block”. I had it bad yesterday so I just sat back and tried to remember…

As I wandered aimlessly about in the deep recesses of my mind (read vacuous, not necessarily voluminous) for something… anything… to blog about, I took a mental trip down memory lane and suddenly remembered reading in Mrs. Izette’s 5^th grade class. It wasn’t what we read that I remembered, it was how we read.

There was a reading program that we participated in, and for the life of me I could not remember the name of it or details about it. I called my brother who *always* remembers all of these little, trivial, unimportant things - he claims these memories will all be on “the test” and he’s gonna ace it! I described to him my best recollections and waited for him to simultaneously tell me everything about it and scold me for not remembering. But – he couldn’t! I couldn’t believe it! I glanced outside but saw no pigs flying so I figured that he must really be stumped. We each agreed to call the other back if and when we remembered.

…dinner and the evening – nothing.

…late night drafting and Leno – still nothing.

…slept the whole night – no springing up in bed at 3:30 with the answer.

Then – this morning in the shower – I remembered. I shouted out SRA! That’s it! SRA!!!

Having dashed to the bathroom to rescue me from who knows what, I could tell my wife really was glad I was ok though her scolding me for scaring her half to death.

It was called a Reading Laboratory Kit that a company called Science Research Associates (SRA) began in 1957 and teachers used in the classrooms as a reading comprehension tool geared towards individual students. The reading materials were color coded, and as you read, completed and successfully tested all of the lessons in one level, you got to move to the next level, which was another color. And the really cool thing was the Progress Board that was set up in the classroom. For each lesson you completed, a big gold star was put in that space and it was out there for all to see.

I remember vividly that it was fun, a challenge and really encouraged us to read. There was pride in our hearts as kids as we achieved the successive levels and had the gold stars to show for it. I don’t know if I’m actually a better reader or not because I used this program, but I do remember that it was fun, and anytime you can make learning fun for a kid, you’re doing something right.

The internet is awesome. I was able to find some images from an original SRA lesson. For those of you who can remember these – it’ll take you back. For everyone else – here’s how we used to learn, old school! Click on these and they'll open up full size.

And yes, I did call my brother and taunt him that I had remembered it. That’s one for me to his thousands…but it’s one!

Now I'm REALLY Back...

After 3 weeks of our FORMER provider telling us that we’d have DSL up and running “tomorrow”, we finally dumped them and are now up and running with a different, better company. It’s a ton faster and I can FINALLY get back to the internet and my Blog! Yay!

So – I have a lot of reading up to do on the blogs that I follow… I’ve got a lot of catching-up there and I also need to start writing on my blog again. I’m looking forward to reconnecting with you all.

I’ll start everything off by reminiscing about printing. I was at work and two things caught my attention. I was plotting some 42x30 drawings on an HP Laser plotter, and I had just printed out a few sets of .pdf color renderings of a large project that I'm in charge of this spring. The 42x30 drawings are chock full of construction information… plans, sections, elevations, details, schedules, notes, etc. All of this type of info is created using AutoCAD, not hand drawn (that’s an observation for another time), and as the info is sent to the plotter, it spews out these huge sheets of info at a rate of 3 or 4 every 10 minutes. Likewise, the .pdf renderings were shooting out at 2 or 3 a minute.

Like I said, the capabilities revolving around the information involved here are a discussion for another time, but as I stood there watching these documents being produced, I was suddenly whisked back to 3^rd or 4^th grade when I was helping a teacher’s aide (remember those?) make some dittos for a class. I remember the purple-ish / blue-ish print that the pages all had. If you picked up the dittos when they came out of the machine too soon, they were kind of still “wet” and could smear and get all over your hands. They also very warm when you first picked them up and if it was a cold morning, it was great to hold them close to you to warm up a bit.

But – nothing compared to the smell. I remember that we would grab the new dittos and hold them up to our faces and breathe deeply. I suppose that these days we would be accused of free-basing ditto toner, and we’d all be suspended because of the zero tolerance policies. But, man, if I we’re able to get a good whiff of ditto smell today, I’d be standing once again in the office helping the aide print dittos for the upcoming class that day.

Bangs, Backpacks & Britches

Bangs. Did you have “bangs” when you were a kid? I know they were a big thing for girls, but remember how cool it was as a guy to have bangs? It was awful when it was haircut time – if you were like me, then mom did all the haircutting when you were young. She cycled through the styles… buzzcuts in the warmer months, and a decent covering throughout the rest of the year. How's that for an awesome school picture? circa 1968.

I think my favorite was having bangs, ‘cause I loved it when they got long. It felt so cool to have them over your eyebrows and getting in your eyes. Of course we were emulating the Beatles and the more we could look like the Liverpool Lads, the cooler we felt. And we also used to let the hair grow and hang down in front of our ears so we had “sideburns”. Then we kind of looked like Mr. Spock, and that was really cool, too.

As we got into High School, the bangs grew into “long all over” hair, with us constantly trying to whip our heads to keep it out of our face. And this eventually gave way to styled hair at “hair studios”. Oh, what a interesting hair tale we traveled.

Backpacks.
We never had them in school. We carried our stuff in our hands. We had books, Pee-Chees and notebooks, and we carried them. If the weather was bad, we put them inside our coats. We kept the supplies we used at school in our homeroom class and/or in our lockers. The fun thing about Pee-Chees was how we altered the drawings on them. More on that some other time.

These days kids seem to have everything and are prepared for a weekend camp-out every day that they go to school. Often the backpacks are bigger than the little kids hauling it. A change of clothes; a local bus, regional train and international airplane schedule; seeds and starter plants to plant their own garden… who knows what’s all really in there. I just know that we seemed to get by just fine with a lot less.

Britches. At some point in my life, I grew up enough to be wearing “pants” or “jeans”, or maybe even slacks. This did not, however, change the fact that my grandmothers would still comment on what a nice pair of britches I had on. It’s just one of those funny words that has, for the most part, gone the way of other words like trousers, stockings (guys socks – my dad still says this) and canvas high-tops.

What things do you remember having when you grew up that have been "replaced" or "improved" today?

School Bus Days 3

Today, I’ll finish up this little discussion about riding the school bus – especially as I remember it when I grew up.

If you were lucky, you had a “cool” bus driver. I don’t know that I was that fortunate all of my school years, but in my last years in High School, “Jim” was our driver. He played KJR (our great local rock and roll station) nice and loud so we could rock out the latest tunes (remember – we didn’t have the option of our own music in our ears). He also drove aggressively. This is not to say he was reckless or dangerous, - he just punched it here and there, took corners kind of fast, you know – just made it a bit exciting for us kids. Of course he looked the part – long hair, cool sunglasses, smoked. Anyway – he was a great!

For the record – when I was in school, almost all the bus drivers were guys. There was one woman driver, and that was “weird” back then.

One thing that was always a big fear was if you missed the bus. My mom had a part time job by the now and so we didn’t really have a backup plan. If I missed the bus, I had to high-tail it to school. That was a mile and a half to Junior High, and three miles to High School. Skipping class wasn’t really an option, so I did my best to get there asap. Missing the bus after school wasn’t as big of a deal. I had to call mom from school to let her know I would be late – from, you know, a phone that was connected to the wall at the school – but I still had to walk home. It only took a few times of doing this in bad weather to help convince me to be a little more careful to make sure I caught the bus after school.

So – to wrap this all up – I know that plenty of kids still ride school buses. Probably the biggest differences today is that they can totally disconnect from their surroundings from the minute they get to the bus stop until they get to school using personal electronics… be it a phone, mp3 player, hand held game, PDA, etc. I would also hazard a guess that while there are still the many different cliques and social levels that kids either fall into or try to attain, the advent of video surveillance on the buses has probably reduced the fears that we had of the consequences of sitting by the “other” ones.

The public school buses are a great and safe thing for kids. They’re also a great memory that helped to define my childhood, and probably plenty of yours, too. What memories do you have about riding the bus? (And for those who youngin's who might think this is what our buses looked like - we're not that old!)

School Bus Days 2

There were many anxieties associated with riding the school bus as a kid. One just had to do with waiting at the bus stop. You didn’t want to get there so early that you looked like an eager beaver, but you also didn’t want to run up last minute – especially if you made the bus have to wait for you.

While you stood waiting for the bus, you had to decide where you were going to stand, who you were going to stand with, and what you would do while standing there. Remember – these were the ‘70s – you couldn’t bide your time with some hand held device. There was nothing to play, listen to, read or look at. And - you couldn’t talk to anyone who wasn’t within earshot of you. Nope – the options were pretty limited – it was you and the people around you.

Winter was the worst ‘cause you had to stand out there in the dark just hoping that you didn’t freeze, get beat up or be made fun of; pray that you didn’t forget you lunch, homework or that you had a test today, and all the while try to look like you were “cool” and “didn’t care”. I can vividly remember the sights, sounds and my feelings of those mornings… shifting around to keep warm, wishing I was still in bed, dreading some unavoidable event at school that day.

It’s kind of a sad commentary on the times we live in now when I drive by bus stops on my way to work in the morning and I see moms parked in cars across the streets – watching their kids until they actually get onto the bus. Some even keep their kids in their cars until the bus arrives. That would’ve never happened when I grew up, but if it did, you can bet it would’ve been fodder for relentless teasing and bullying once you were out of the protective gaze of mom.

At one time during my high school years, my bus ran a route that would go by my house on our back street, and then eventually come up our front street where my stop was. This made it easy to get all ready to go, catch a few zzz’s and still get up and out to the stop just in time to catch the bus. That was sweet!

I have to add one thing to my last post about riding the bus. Peer pressure is an incredible thing! I’ll never forget when I was in 9th grade and my “little brother” started riding the bus since he was now in 7th grade, now. One of the first mornings of the year, we get on the bus and it’s really full. There were only a couple of places left to sit, and I found a pair of open seats on one side. I sat down and immediately prevented my brother from sitting by me. There was no way I was going to be seen sitting together – my classmates would’ve teased me to no end. He ended up standing the entire time, all because I wanted to look cool in front of my peers. Kind of scary, when you think about it…