Being that it’s been five days since my last post, I would suppose it’s time to write something again.  But what?  I suppose I can write about this weekend.  This post will actually go back a bit though, since earlier events pertain to this weekend.  For the most part the weekend was quite ordinary.  4th/5th grade ministry on Saturday night and Sunday morning, the service I went to at 8:00, er I mean 9:00 (sure felt like the earlier time for some reason…  You did set your clocks forward, right?), dodge-ball for gametime, yep- quite ordinary.  So let’s focus on the other stuff.

First off, back in January we started something which should have become regular.  As I make a video every year for my cabin at summer camp, I was asked to make some short videos for the regular service every few weeks.  Well, they handed me a camera back then to record the kids at various moments during the services I was there.  Another filled in for me at the third service.  Mission part one accomplished.  Part two would be editing, and that became the big problem.  They have a Mac set up at the church where they do their own editing using iMovie.  Now, if I had a job at the church this wouldn’t be a problem as I would just use this computer, but I don’t, so I could easily use mine instead.  Not so easy in fact.  First off, my computer is not a Mac (though I have experimented a bit with OSx86 to turn my computer into what’s known as a hackintosh by installing OSX to my external hard drive).  I quickly found out that the Firewire port on a Mac is not the same as an IEEE-1394 port on an HP (two names for the same thing, only “Firewire” is copyrighted by Apple) so the firewire cable they had didn’t work.  We tried a USB cable for the camera, but that required drivers my computer didn’t have, and I couldn’t find one on the web.  A few weeks went by, and we experimented in saving the videos on their Mac then transferring them to my computer.  Let’s just say slow and awkward.  The default format on the Mac of saving video is a format with the extension .dv.  I could save each video as .mp4 or try to find a program on my computer to convert the native .dv files.  Yeah, too much work.  So they look to get the right cable to go to my computer.  They find one at Radio Shack for $20 and one online for 50¢.  Which would you go with?  Well, they bought both, hoping to be able to return the overpriced Radio Shack one should the cheap one not work.  Last Wednesday, fingers crossed, we tried the cable.  Worked like a charm.  We finally got the video from the camera to my computer in a format my computer liked, mpeg-2.  So, Friday night I worked for a few hours to get that first 4-minute video done, and brought it with me Saturday night.  Popped in on the computer from my flash drive, which held both .wmv and .mpg versions of the video,  and we were ready to go.  Not so fast.  No audio cable from the computer to the sound board.  Sigh.  Well, I just played it in silence since the worship team was practicing anyway.  We left a message for the tech director to leave us the proper cable, and come Sunday morning they had one waiting.  Then, we had the computer taken away and replace with a different one because they needed the one elsewhere.  The one they gave us was not turned on and literally took 20 minutes to boot up, log in, and finish loading Windows.  Good thing I had the .wmv version as there was no way this computer would be able to handle MPEG-2.  In any event, mission completely accomplished.  Hopefully next time we will record a new video and do it again, minus the mishaps.  Ideally I will transfer the videos before I leave for the day.

This weekend was also a time I got to teach again, finally.  I last taught in December.  I taught a lesson on stuff.  No, I am not being general.  The theme of the year is living like a Christian, so this week was about having and wanting stuff, whatever that stuff is to you being video games, stuffed animals, trading cards, or whatever.  The start of James chapter 5 tells us a bit of God’s feeling on this topic:

1Come now, you rich, weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you. 2Your riches have rotted and your garments are moth-eaten. 3Your gold and silver have corroded, and their corrosion will be evidence against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up treasure in the last days. 4Behold, the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, are crying out against you, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. 5You have lived on the earth in luxury and in self-indulgence. You have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter. 6You have condemned and murdered the righteous person. He does not resist you.

(James 5:1-6 ESV)

Stuff- not so bad.  Love of stuff- watch out.  It is not wrong to be rich of course, but if your heart is with your money or things, then that’s a problem.  After all, Jesus Himself said you can’t serve two masters.  If you serve money, you will not be able to serve God at the same time.  I showed them some pictures of way overdoing collecting stuff (here and here for example), and I acted out a person on the phone trying to get something no matter what it took, even hurting someone to get it. I thought my teaching went fairly well, though still a few minutes long.  There was a video at the start (not the one I put together) that I should have ended earlier than I did.

Okay, here is the long-awaited part 2 of the teaching poll.  Please choose as many as you would want to teach.  And please feel free to comment/expound on any of your choices. 🙂

[poll id=”5″]

There was a time, when I was in college that I wanted to be a teacher. Specifically, I wanted to teach High School Math. While in college, I did specialize in computers, I took the exact same classes for a teaching position. For the first 2.5 years of college, I was sure I would either program video games, or teach High School Math. I don’t do either of those. I’m not sure why I never tried the video game programming, but I do know why I didn’t go into teaching.

It started with an introduction to student teaching. Not the full fledged student teaching, just 1 week in a 9th grade general math course. These were not troubled kids, just your normal everyday kids in small town Ohio. The problem is that they didn’t know basic math. Things I remember learning very early in grade school. Other things I learned in 6th, 7th and 8th grade. Not any really advanced stuff. Things like 33 + __ = 72. They were struggling. By the end of the first class, I was frazzled. The second day in I was in charge of a lesson. The teacher prepared it for me, and I just had to study in the previous evening. I stood in front of a class of dazed faces. The day before, I was helping individual students during their study period, today I saw the same faces on every one of the students. They didn’t want to be there. They had no interest in math. My lesson went as well as could be expected and the teacher was impressed by the way I handled myself. I was to observe the next two days, and design my own lesson for Friday. We would talk about it after the Thursday class.

The next two days were just really getting to me. I found that my patience grew less as the week went on. Everyday I needed a few hours just to unwind from 1 class period. I wasn’t sure what was causing this reaction. In talking with the teacher, he thought I just had nerves from a public speaking encounter. I thought that could have been the problem. My lesson on Friday when Ok, I developed a ‘fun’ review of the weeks lessons. The teacher gave me the thumbs up to go ahead, he seemed to think his students would like it. If they did, I couldn’t tell. Stuff they were giving earlier in the week was forgotten on Friday. Stuff drilled over and over again the day before was missing from their memory. If it had been a quiz, they would have had some very poor grades. My nerves were worse that Friday afternoon. Yes, maybe it was speaking in front of so many people, I did have that problem with theater just a year earlier.

Then I got a job as a college tutor. Getting other college students ready for tests, quizzes and just helping with their assignments. 1 on 1 stuff, some of these kids were friends of mine. Trying to give them a heads up on some basic math. Same thing with my patience. It was all I could do to not throw the math books at a head or two. Why didn’t they know this stuff? It is all so basic. Why didn’t they learn this earlier? What happened to math instruction in the High Schools? What happened to basic logic? Hmm. No easy answers. But that was one of my longest semesters at school. I needed the job to help pay for school, but I really hated the job I had. I’d rather wash the uniforms of the various sport teams (did that as a freshman).

To relax I started spending a lot of time in the computer center. Computers didn’t argue that they were right. They did exactly what they were instructed to do. The computer never questioned the rules. At the end of that semester, teaching was out and computers were it. I didn’t apply for my senior year of student teaching and I knew that I never would.

And what was the straw that broke this camel’s back? One of the kids I tutored had a section on some of the basic Algebra rules. The very stuff that makes Algebra work. It was the “Commutative Property of Addition”. That old A + B = B + A. I tried telling this person that it was a rule. It was one of the things that made Algebra work. I remember explaining that there were just a very few rules that made math work. We spent a good two hours going over this again and again. At the end of the time, I was asked how I knew all this worked. My reply was simple. It works because it was designed that way. The answer back was, “Oh, Ok”. I thought that was the end of it. The next session, the student brought back sheets upon sheets of paper with many, many math equations written on it..

1 + 2 = 3, 2 + 1 = 3, 3 = 3, 1 + 2 = 2 + 1 …. 999,999 + 1 = 1,000,000 .. 1 + 999,999 = 1,000,000 .. 1,000,000 = 1,000,000 .. 1 + 999,999 = 999,999 + 1 …. and so on. I don’t know how long this was worked on, but was a lot of paper and pencil lead wasted. All to say “I guess it works, I couldn’t find anything that didn’t. I didn’t have the nerve to say, that this could go on to infinity and never give you an incorrect answer unless you added wrong. All I said was, “Yep its a rule, and you can’t break it.” I just shook my head. I guess I could have had fun and changed a rule or two. Can you say Abstract Algebra or Non-Euclidean Geometry?

I’m just looking to see what sort of age groups you might be interested in teaching if you ever decided to teach.  Feel free to choose more than one.  You will note that there is some overlap in grades since not everyone defines the categories the same way.  For example, in some places middle school is 6-8, other places 7-8, and still others 7-9.  I am told there are even places where 5th is considered middle school, but I am yet to be convinced that is actually middle school or combining disparate grades in a building due to space or some other special reason (sorry, L).  I do know a district that has a school for just 5th and 6th grades due to a gang problem.  This district considers 6th to be middle school, so the 5th grade were on an elementary program while the 6th grade switched classes as they would in a regular middle school.  I am almost certain that 5th grade will always be on an elementary program even if inside a middle school, but please comment if I am wrong about this (please, even if you don’t normally comment on my blog 🙂 ).  So anyway, vote away!  Later, I’ll ask about favorite subjects to teach, whatever the age group.

[poll id=”3″]

“…in this room, that I know of, to carry this force.” says the DEA agent teaching a class on gun safety seconds before he shoots himself in the foot! Seriously, this really happened, and it’s kind of funny.  Well, maybe that’s the wrong word to use since someone did get injured…  But admit it, the irony of the situation is tremendously thick.  And if he’s the most qualified person in that room to handle the weapon he accidentally shot himself with, how scary is that?!?

I consider it a small miracle that no one was seriously injured.  Obviously this guy should not have been teaching this class, and I would bet that he was not the only person in the room “professional enough to carry that force”.  But why was the gun loaded in a classroom in the first place?  And why was there at least one little kid in the class?  You can see someone carrying her out of the classroom near the end of the video.  I don’t really know what else to say, so watch it for yourself…  and don’t worry if you surprise yourself with a chuckle – I don’t think it means you’re twisted or anything…  just a healthy dose of irony.  If I was not writing this post so close to bedtime, I would use the opportunity for jokes on puns aplenty about shooting oneself in the foot, putting one’s foot in mouth…  oh, too easy, but not when I’m this tired!  Enjoy, and note how the guy is able to keep his composure and regain control of the classroom, all while being in tremendous pain and presumably bleeding all over the floor – he finally just limps on out of the classroom!

It’s been a while since I wrote a church post, so here we go.  A while back I mentioned the 4th and 5th grade moving into a new room.  The old one was getting kind of cramped and so when the church redesigned the area in the front of the church, adding a mini-café and some TV screens for the live video feed from the worship center, we were able to take the room where the live video feed was.  This room doubles as a junior high room on Sunday afternoons and has a large portion dedicated to games.  There are four TVs for video games, thankfully not used for our group.  There are also two carpet ball tables, four foosball tables (not all in good shape), two air hockey tables, and one of those mini-basketball games.  Now you may have heard of most of what I listed, but you may not have heard of carpet ball.  This is a game that uses ten pool balls plus the cue ball.  each player gets five balls.  The field is long and narrow (about one foot wide by ten feet long) and the object is to knock your opponents balls into his pit (each side has a pit).  The picture above shows a game in progress.  No, the kids aren’t from my church- I just grabbed the pic off the web.  As you can imagine the kids love these games.  Of course it makes the parent’s job harder, peeling them away at the end… 😀

Besides the games, the new room has a divider that cuts off the games during the main time, a projector hanging from the ceiling that broke down this weekend, a better sound system than in the old room, and some couches to sit on during small group time, though some groups leave the room to hold their small groups.  We did this in the old days too when we had this room, before we were moved upstairs when the upstairs was new.  The teaching and worship area is larger as well.  Large enough that some forward-thinking person decided to set up the chairs in three sections.  You see, in the old room we only had room for two sections which kind of became the “boy’s side” and the “girl’s side,” distinctions we never had in mind.  The first day one of the leaders was watching the kids as they claimed a chair and commented on how it was fun watching them try to puzzle out which was the boy’s side and which was the girl’s side.  🙂

The student from Moody Bible Institute who was a leader a few years ago when he was in high school and now came back as a study for his class, taught today at the second service and recorded himself for his class.  He was a little nervous at first I could tell, but he got into it and did a fine job.  One of these days I’ll get a chance to teach in the new room, but the children’s pastor, Steve, wants me to record the kids and make weekly shorts to show at the beginning of class.  I did a little too good of a job on the DVD I made for my cabin… 😛  As soon as he gives me a camera on which to do it, I will, probably in two weeks as I am doing drama next week.  The camera I used at camp really isn’t good enough as it was made to be a still camera first.

The calling idea is working well too.  I have called at least the parents of each member of my small group once so far and I should be giving another call either this or next week.  There is one student who gave me an unreadable number so I haven’t been able to call him yet though and I totally forgot to ask him this weekend about it.  I hope I remember next weekend.

Well, I think that’s enough for now.  Until Tuesday most likely.  Due to small group, Monday is a bad time for me to post.

And only day this week, partly thanks to my connection issues which are unfortunately still ongoing.  I had no internet at all for yesterday afternoon and evening, while today it’s been intermittent.  I wonder if the signal is now too powerful if that’s possible?  I mean, it was going through a cable that was chewed or worn to the center wire, so it’s possible that in the past they have had to increase it to compensate (the cable didn’t get that way overnight after all) and now that it’s fixed, the signal may be too strong.  Just throwing a guess out which is probably completely off.  The tech who was here was unable to measure it as his portable reader needed recharging.  Since the connection was up and I was getting nice speeds (around 19000kbps on speakeasy.net), he just let it go.

Still in special ed on Friday, but not due to meetings this time.  Apparently the teacher had a bad case of bronchitis on Thursday so he wisely opted to take Friday off.  It was actually a rather easy day.  Four classes (well, three really- one was a typical two-period-long language arts class) were team teaching, meaning that a sub just takes the role of a teaching assistant while the other teacher takes over the teaching part.  The other two classes were resource periods.  I just gave them a topic to write about in their journals and once finished they just worked on homework.  There was also a teaching assistant in these classes (a sub too, by the way) so as you can imagine it was a pretty light day.  Next Thursday and Friday I have a job lined up for ELL in another district.  This is a teacher I refused to work for last year or most of the year before.  I am hoping things have changed since most of the students from that problem class have gone on to high school.  I will let you know how it goes, hopefully with other stories throughout the week.

And mostly due to my laziness I am subbing once again, and that is good news for this blog.  I have been on hiatus from this for too long.  I still intend to have some posts of my life outside of teaching, but for a while I have just been turned off from writing during the best time those post would have fit.  Well, to tell the truth my life outside of teaching really hasn’t been too exciting.  Remember back in June when I went to camp?  Well, I am finally making the DVD I have done for my cabin for the last few years.  I have two slideshows and a video finished, along with a video I borrowed from my DVD two years ago in which I just had to modify the end to fit my more recent cabin.  I have been using Ulead VideoStudio which I got free with this computer.  It really is a nice program, and not ridiculously high-priced like some packages out there.  Last year I used a 30-day demo of a $250 DVD authoring package which was nice, but not worth that price in my opinion.  Maybe $100 like this one, but not $250.  I also used a slightly buggy freeware program to do one of the slideshows, and maybe another one.  I haven’t decided yet what to do about this last one to make it different enough from the first two.  Well, I still have a week to put the DVD together before the next church time.  This weekend is the last one of the month, so 4th and 5th grades don’t meet.

As for subbing, I was actually able to get three half days during this first full week of many districts.  Apparently the special ed meetings started right away.  I could have had a fourth, but they called me after 8:00 to arrive there at 8:30.  Well, I might have been able to do that if I was ready to go when they called, but since it was 25 minutes away and in fact I was woken up by the phone call, that wasn’t going to happen.  Besides, I had to take my car in that morning for a new muffler.  Anyway, the three days I did have were pretty similar.  They were all at different Junior Highs (that district doesn’t call them middle schools) and were 8th grade, or a 7th/8th mix.  Two of them were 7:15 AM jobs (too early!) but fortunately I got to sleep in for the last which was an “afternoon,” starting at 10:45 AM.  I didn’t have to leave notes for two of them either, which is always nice, since the teachers came back.  Surprisingly one of these times was the “afternoon” job.  I guess she came back from her special ed meeting for the weekly school meeting.  Since school started last Thursday in this district and the meetings are on Wednesdays after school, this may have been the first one which would probably make it important to attend.  As for the other morning job, that teacher only teaches there in the morning, so I she wouldn’t have come back.  I would presume she teaches somewhere else in the afternoon.

All in all the three half-days went well.  Hopefully I will have more work next week even if there is one day off for labor day.  I am signed up again in three of the districts I worked in last year.  The last was still on the hired subcaller system and barely called me so I switched them for another district that is computer-based so I have more of a chance for work.  That is, I am still working on being signed up there, but that is for a rant in another post…

Well, teaching in Sunday school that is.  Unlike last time I taught a month ago, I felt I did pretty well this time.  I was able to do 1½ lessons this weekend.  The ½ comes from last night, when I taught only half of the lesson.  Why?  Well, there was a shortage of leaders due to many taking the night off for this or that reason.  In fact, one who had off rearranged his schedule so he could be there after all.  Anyway, it was decided that we would spend most of the night with the younger kids (1st-3rd) as a result and not have small groups.  In the end, we did wind up with enough help from last-minute volunteers to do our normal thing, but the wheels were already in motion.  I really don’t think 4th/5th grades got much out of the younger lesson, but fortunately we had time at the end to do the intended lesson, well half of it anyway.  It was an important lesson so we had to fit it in.  I taught them the Romans Road to salvation.  This is a series of four key verses from the book of Romans.  Here’s where I get lazy now and cut-n-paste from another site.  You may notice that there are five verses here (6:23a and 6:23b are one), but Romans 10:13 is covered by 10:9-10 so as a “repeat” it doesn’t count:  😛

Does anyone view the videos I post?  There have been no comments at all on either the Godtube one I posted two weeks ago, nor on the Archie videos.  Are they just uninteresting?  No time maybe?  I’m thinking of posting more videos, but if no one watches them then there’s probably no point.

As for this site, I suspect if I continue it will have to undergo a name change.  Now that I am no longer on a track to teach, at least for now, I am not likely to go back to subbing.  I usually enjoy it, but it really doesn’t pay the bills.  If I was capable of running an online business in addition to it I would probably continue, but I have to find a real job, doing what is still to be determined.  I still believe God was trying to tell me something those years ago when I was reading an article about teachers. I can only trust that if it wasn’t to be a teacher, then that something is still out there waiting for me to determine what it is.