Why I am a teacher.

I decided to redo the floors in my back bedroom when my last roommate moved out.  Old growth fir so the potential to look beautiful.

Step 1: Tear out the old carpet.  Apparently the guy installing the old carpet had a deep seated fear of sliding as he felt the need to hold down the carpet with approximately three bushels of staples.  Pull out the old carpet, pull out the old underlay, pull up the old carpet strips, pull out three bushels of staples using barb wire fencing pliers. 

Yup, they work great.  Unless the staple is smashed into the wood, then you have to gently slide a knife blade under the smashed staple and pry up until it either comes out or is high enough to grab with the pliers.

Now I have to sand the whole thing smooth.  Turns out I didn't actually get all the staples, it just seemed like it.  Staples tore up the sanding belts on the sander.  Recheck the whole floor now that I know what they look like.  (Hint: they look like places where you took out smashed flat staples).

By the time that's over I've about had it with refinishing floors and, as Churchill might have said, it was not the end, it was not the beginning of the end, but it was, perhaps, the end of the beginning.

My buddy comes over and announces that it isn't ready, it has to be hand sanded to get something done.  Not sure what, but that's what he says.  Hand sanding.  He sands about twice as much as I do in the same amount of time and he's sixty three years old.

Now it's ready to putty.

Let that dry for a while and sand.  Again.

At least this time there are no staples.  I already ran over all of those.  I am so tired of sanding but at least I can use the belt sander.

Oh, no.  I can't.  The belt sander doesn't strip it down enough.  See all the light bits?  Yeah, that's putty.  It has to go away or the finished floor will look like putty.

Hand sanding.  Once again.

Now that is a nice looking floor.  As soon as I finish sanding by hand (oh, did I mention that I have sanded about one fifth of it and am bored out of my mind and my thumb hurts?), I get to stain it, resand it, varnish it, resand it, varnish it, resand it, varnish it (not sure if there's a resand after that last one).

Who would EVER want to do this as a job?  I, on the other hand, get to stand in front of a bunch of cheerful, motivated students, all ready to enthusiastically learn math.  My life rocks!

Except that I still have to finish the floor.  Or sell the house.

No One Can Say "Rubbish" Except the Teacher

Really, I had to have that rule in my classroom.  One of the students said he didn't know how to solve a simple math problem.  I knew better so my response was "Rubbish, of course you do, answer the question".  Those of you who are thinking I was being mean, relax.  I knew he could do it, and sure enough, he did.  However, the response caught on and the whole class was saying "Rubbish" every other word.  Finally I had to make a rule: No one can say "rubbish" except me, it's my word and mine alone.

Teaching can be a blast, some days.

"A" Grades for Teachers?

Yup. Turns out that in many education classes most students get an A. Wish there had been blogs back when I was taking education classes. OTOH, the language that I probably would have used to describe the drivel that I was exposed to and expected to spout back would have most likely earned me a lifetime ban from blogging.

George Leef has an interesting article over at the Pope Center.

$25,000 and two years of my life and I would say that absolutely none of it made me a better teacher. Know what made me a better teacher? Four years in the classroom and three or four teachers who were willing to spend time working through various classroom management ideas with me to figure out what would work for me. Yep. That's how long it took for me to figure it out. Wonder if I had spent a couple years in the classroom as an apprentice, Japanese style, if I might have been able to do it in two and been four years ahead of the game? Not to mention what I could have bought with $25,000. Let's see. My car, my Harley, and my credit card would all be paid off in full.

June 21st, A New World Order

Was puttering around this morning and realized that I was missing going to school and seeing my kids. I guess it's official. I've been assimilated.