Many students have been back at school for two days now. How’s it going? We have an early report from our good friend and perennial sophomore, Bubby Spamden.
Hi Mr. C.,
Well here I am, back again – 10th grader for, like, the 122nd year in a row!
I love it that school follows hot on the heels of the State Fair. In both cases there are lots of old favorites, just the same now as they year before and before and before.
Mr. Boozenporn always starts his “Life Choices” class with a speech about Adult Learning. He’s supposed to teach us about how important it is to have an active mind with a lot of interests all the way up to, and including, the moment when you croak. That leads us to talking about hobbies, and we always try to get him off track. Tuesday he went on and on about how he and Mrs. Boozenporn collect Back Scratchers. He’s no Gideon Weiss, but he and the Mrs. have about 28 of them hanging from hooks in the hall closet, or so he says.
I was just getting him to describe all the different ways he’s scratched his own back secretly in public when the bell rang. Too late to assign homework once again! I feel like a major league batter fouling off pitches. Last year I pushed our first assignment past the start of Fall. This year, I’m aiming for October!
Old standbys like Mr. B are great, but it’s the new ones that keep it interesting. This year, we have a first year English teacher named Ms. Kimball who has a bunch of ideas about how students learn.
Yesterday she started the class by having us read a little bit of The Odyssey out loud, then we practiced juicing up our writing with energetic verbs, then we had a quick multiple choice test on punctuation and we finished by reading quietly for ten minutes from The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Every day we have to sit in an entirely different chair in a part of the room where we’ve never sat before. And every week the whole class is going to turn their desks to face a new direction. And she does weird things to the lighting. It’s all part of a plan to get us to take in the same information in a slightly changed setting every time. She says all the variety reinforces learning, but I say she’s doing it to keep me off balance. I can’t get her to take a detour from the lesson plan when the plan is so twisty already! And I’m not getting any help from my classmates because they’re all wondering what she’ll do next.
But the challenge of coming up with ways to undermine her is what keeps my mind fresh. I’ve been a sophomore for a long time, but in Ms. Kimball’s class I feel like I’m 15 again! I might have to resort to the old live-toad-in-a-lunchbox trick!
I’m aiming for perfect attendance again this year!
Your pal,
Bubby
I told Bubby he might have met his match in Ms. Kimball.
It all depends on the size of the toad.
What classes have you taken as an Adult Learner, and how did it go?
Trail Baboon 
‘Morning, all. I’ve been incredibly busy at work again, so it has been difficult to find time to read or comment.
My job requires that I improve or even change my skill set frequently. The tech classes, though sometimes necessary, are usually pretty dull, but I have really enjoyed taking a handful of fiction and poetry writing classes as an adult.
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Rise and Shine Babooners!
I’m loving the cool weather and have a little energy again. Can’t wait for my walk this morning in the cool air.
Last Fall and this Spring I took a two week intensive course in a topic close to my heart called Dialectic Behavior Therapy Intensive. It cost a lot of money! It was at the U of M Radisson for a week in September and a week in March. The group that attended was from all over the USA and Europe, including Alaska. Frankly, I thought I might not make it through the experience. Here is what I learned:
In the 30 years since grad school I got really accustomed to controlling my own schedule.
That the Metro Transit card introduced the “Go Card” that makes riding easier once you know how to use it.
That you never stand up on the commuter bus before it is your turn to leave.
It is hard to sit still 8 hours a day.
The Alaska Mental Health Workers all think Sarah Palin is not a great mother and that she is ensuring they will always have jobs.
That my memory is not as good as it used to be.
That it is a good idea to do your very extensive and time consuming homework for Part II of the course more than 2 weeks before it is due and you are in a panic.
There is a lot of detail associated with this kind of therapy and I have to study it more.
As you can see I learned a lot!
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Palin is not a great mother? You must have her confused with another, less wonderful North Star. And what happens when you stand up on the bus before it is your turn to leave?
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The other passengers glare at you and say, “It is not your turn. You have to wait!” Really. That is what happened. Just to exit the bus.
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Excellent post, Jacque. If I get time to write a real answer a bit later today, I’ll try to say it as well as you have here.
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I spent 15 years as an adult trainer, training, or trying to, a group who are at least one of the three worst groups to train–teachers–probably the worst. (Other two groups are pastors and doctors, doctors may include therapists.) So I will 1) answer this with a book or 2) keep my mouth shut. I think we all prepfer I choose option 2. Anyway, I have important things to worry about, and Worrying is a skill I cound train well to anyone.
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On, and for those of you who asked, I rode to work today only the minimum distance of three miles. If you look at the radar over Mankato right now, you will see why.
My wife, by the way, is going to make the second most momentous decisions of the last 20 years of her life, and I do wish she could get training on how to make this decision since she has been at it for 8 months–what dress to wear as the mother of the groom.
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i’ll bet she will pick the right thing. what are you wearing? did they get you a monkey suit or do you get to wear your own duds?
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As long as it’s a separate look from the MOTB, right? Enjoy the big day!
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Oscar Wilde defined the “total eclipse” as “the groom at a wedding.” Even more eclipsed are, no doubt, the father and mother of the bride. My wife has purchased four dresses to choose from, a choice to be made before packing. We all keep telling her that the four are very close to indistinguishable.
What I am wearing: it’s an outdoor wedding. The father of the bride is newly-blind and being a curmudgeon about what he is wearing. He is a gruff but loveable man, repaired automatic transmissions for 40 years. Best guess is that if they can get him not to wear jeans or shorts they will have done well. My son told me to wear what I want; that the men in the wedding party are just wearing black suits. Their goal is to make all the clothes except the bride’s dress be what people can wear elsewhere. So I went shopping for a cheaper end suit. My choices were black or black or black or black, and then, finally a black one that I chose.
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I’m sorry your wife is so conflicted, Clyde. Brides have some reason to sweat the decision of a gown, as they have the star role in the pageant, but MOB is a small, supporting role. Tell her to buy the most boring dress she can find, for she doesn’t want to distract attention from your daughter. Or if she insists on making an impact, she can go in her underwear and give people something to talk about.
Being a wedding photographer only increased my contempt for weddings. The American wedding is most tortured and irrational of our cultural celebrations. Don’t get me started.
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Ben: my wife thinks she is being daring if she wears gray instead of black; she is a “winter” don’t you know. I think she is channeling all of her Russian female ancestors. The MOTB is born and bred San Diego, where they consider yellow a dull color. The bride and the pastor marrying them, my daughter, figured out long ago that there is no danger they will look anything alike. The most excited two members of the wedding party are the flower girl and ring bearer (for a long time he said “ring burier”), who lobbied for the job.
tim–I am painting a sunset over the pacific at La Jolla based on photos, notes, and sketches I did two years ago. As I paint this and see the colors in the sky and water and on the sand, I see where people in that part of the world get those colors they use for dress, houses, and everything–beautiful bright colors, not the colors of an unassuming Minnesotan or a drab Russian.
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steve–my wife is the MOTG. It’s our son’s wedding, so she is even less significant. And as my last post shows, she did pick boring, she just doesn’t think she did.
as a fomer pastor, I agree, weddings are a tortured waste of money that have little anymore to do with their original purpose. Many a daughter- and mother-in-law have been separated for life by the wedding planning process.
My daughter made her wedding as cheap as she could and it still cost $4000 10 years ago–a picnic in the park catered by Hy-Vee with games, popcorn, 1919 root beer floats and everyone but the bride, like this upcoming wedding, wearing clothes that were practical.
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PS I based much of how I taught HS English on the research and theories of the cognitive theorists (and not all of their theories are as research-based as they claim, but I loved them and they worked for me). So I did many of the things Bubby is complaining about, and the janitor complained to. Unlike Bubby, almost all of my students liked that I moved them around and that I sometimes made quick change of topics. And I advised kids to try studying in a stimulus-rich environment, which, as you can imagine, was not popular with all parents. The kids all pretty much said they already were.
Now here is the eptitome of the book about adult training I am not writing: I dare you, dare you to try applying these strategies to adult training.
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Greetings! Most of the classes I’ve taken as an adult have been software classes to improve my secretarial skill set. Generally, those I’ve done well and learned fairly quickly. I’m not sure how I’d do now — I used to do fairly well with technology, but now that I haven’t worked in an office setting for 8 years, I barely know how to use a cell phone!
About 6 years ago, I learned a type of bodywork called BioSync, which was 2 weeks of intense training. It was totally opposite of anything I learned before and was very experiential. It was a wonderful class, but it took me a long time to feel comfortable and know the protocol without referring to manual.
Now that I’m in karate, I guess I’m constantly learning new forms and curriculum with each new belt level — and once again, I’m very slow to pick up the form and learn all the moves. But once I know them, it’s ingrained kinesthetically — I don’t even think about the actual moves — just improving technique and incorporating feedback from my instructor.
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I have to do 40 hours of continuing education every two years. I can pick and choose what I want to attend as long as it is sanctioned by either the American Psychological Association or the North Dakota Board of Psychologist examiners. My favorite conference is the the one given by the Association for Play Therapy. You can purchase really cool toys and games from the vendors there, and the attendees are kind of, well, playful. Sometimes going to conferences is the only way we get out of the state, so I usually don’t mind having to attend.
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Morning!
Way back in the mid ’80’s my Mom and I took a basic computer programming class at the local college. Created very simple flow charts on the Apple IIc computers using the really old 5.25″ floppy disc. Learned enough to know I didn’t want to do that anymore, But it was interesting to a point.
We should be learning something every day right? Yesterday I learned, from a salesman, what distance I can span with an LVL beam on 16″ centers!
Last year I took a two day ‘Electrical Workshop’ dealing with some basic safety but also grounding, portable power feed systems, safety and some of the electrical code. Lots of numbers…
Had a theater rigging class before that. Again, safety is stressed above all but it also comes down to doing your math. Kids, math is important!
This morning, so far, I have learned I really need to listen to my little voice and bring my coat– even if it’s not raining when I leave the house…
Enjoy the day everyone!
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so how far can you span an lvl beam on 16″ centers?
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Long enough for my purposes tim, which was 12′ – 14’… (insert all legal disclaimers here) .
I should have mentioned when I gave up theater for a while I took banjo lessons to fill my time. Then theater hunted me down again and the banjo is under the bed gathering dust. Someday though…….
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ben under the bed is not a good idea. leave it leaning up against the wall and study on the u tube lesson stuff to get a little better. 1 new piece a month. in 20 years tyou will be 20 years older regardless whether you add banjo into the mix or not. might as well play 5 minutes a day or 3 times a week and amaze yourself how you progress on a yearly basis. it doesnt have to be the beverly hilbillies rright off the bat. just learn travis picking and 3 chords and go with that for the first year.
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i love taking classes. since getting out of school i have taken courses in many different venues of art, painting drawing water color, sculpture, intaglio, etching
i have taken car mechanic, wood shop various classes,, karate, massage,
music therapy, harmonca, piano, sax, many guitar methods,
uncountable sales and negotian classes, management both of others and of self,
fast pitch softball pitching, coaching clinics, wellness classes: feldenkraius, meditation, yoga,
fun stuff all.
someone told me once i should pick an area of focus and stick with it. i just can’t do it. i am a mile wide and an inch deep.
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I have that same tendency to skip around from one interest to another. A friend once told me in psychology circles it’s called “failure to obsess”. What’s the opposite of obsessive-compulsive?
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Well, I would say being interested in lots of things just means that you find life and the world fascinating and you can’t get enough of it. That’s not really the opposite of obsessive.
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Flakey and delightful and interested. and interesting.
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obssessive-impulsive?
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What a fascinating question, Linda. What IS the opposite of obsessive-compulsive? I’m not wild about the phrase “failure to obsess.”
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I think the opposite of obsessive-compulsive is a Liberal Arts major…
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I don’t think there is really an “opposite”. If you don’t have OCD, you don’t deal with anxiety through the rigidity or irrationality of obsessions or compulsions. You could still have anxiety but cope with it in a different way. My husband has many traits of those with OCD, yet he has an extremely wide and varied number of interests (interests that he approaches obsessively).
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flakey for sure
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One of the most disturbing Continuing ed courses I attended was one on suicide. The presenter was good and the topic timely, but we had to watch a long video of actual people jumping to their deaths from one of the bridges in San Francisco. The researchers set up a camera on the bridge that recorded 24 hours a day for several months, and then they interviewed family and friends of the victims, and even one jump survivor. I felt pretty traumatized watching these people climb over the edge and plummet into the water. The presenter was so accustomed to seeing the video I think he forgot what it was like for those of us who were seeing it for the first time.
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i went to piper film club in the 70’s and yearly they would have gross out night with slaughterhouse, nazi concentration camp and traffic fatilaty films. one of the favorites was a clip where the subject was shaving and he would nick himself and youwould twinge, then he’d cut himself again and pretty soon the guy is dripping blood all over and the camera showes the sink filling with blood. pre saturday night sick humor or monty pythin where the knight has his arms cut off and wants to fight some more then back to some morbid documenteries. odd feeliing walking out of the theater.
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went back to school in my 30s for a new profession. everyone should wait for college until they are old enough to appreciate it. some are 18 when that happens. i was 30 (late bloomer) and many courses – years of professional continuing ed, now goat clinics, cheesemaking classes, and lately Fond du Lac Tribal and Community College started offering codger class (or some euphemism for that 🙂 so we’ve taking some from our local naturalist, Larry Weber. one on mushrooms coming up next week.
and every day i’m a learner out with the goats. OT, but just had to say: i think yesterday afternoon was one of the most pleasant times in my life. the air was cool, the sun was warm, the Girls and i were out in the pasture. they all were lying in the grass, chewing cud. Dream was in front of my legs and turning around every few minutes to rub her nose on my knees. i did a crossword puzzle (with only a few pieces chewed off by the Girls). what a peaceful, beautiful time.
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What a sweet pastoral picture, Barb!
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I am a devotee of Peter Senge, who defines all succcessful organizations, including businesses, as learning communities. I am appalled by how many teachers are closed to learning. How can you be a teacher and be closed to learning.? How? To be closed to learning is to be dull. Look at the zest for life and her job we can sense in Donna. Bet she is constantly learning and improving, whether on her own or in classes; most of what I learned about how to teach I learned on my own. There were no classes on cognitive theory then.
I twice worked with college instructors; arms folded and staring off into space and then telling me that if it was worth knowing for their job, they already knew it. Oops. Sorry. I wasn’t going to get started. But promise I will not talk about, . . . well, . . . . I am not going to talk about it.
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as a student you sure can tell when the teacher is putting in their time…and there are a lot of those. i think the idea of having the students grade the teacher has merit. it is not blackmail it is reality
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Clyde: I took six grad classes from David Noble, a terrific and extremely funny history prof at the U of MN. He announced at the start of the “History of the South” that in this class the History of the South would stop in the mid-1920s. Why? Because that’s as far as he had read when he was awarded tenure and didn’t have to study anything any more. He was kidding . . . mostly.
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I took my voiceover classes for seven years. I’m told by others that it was way too long to just take classes but it worked out. I’m part of a talent agency and I get occasional gigs, so no complaints.
My wife takes quite a few classes at community colleges. She’s currently taking one on Japanese in preparation for a possible upcoming trip.
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Seven years is a long time, TGITH. I used to pal around with a guy who did voice-overs for a living. He said it was a good job.
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It’s hard to ‘break down the door.’ But once you’re in, you seem to be in unless you burn your bridge by being unprofessional. I’m non-union, so I’m not getting chances at big national spots or anything like that. But of the 5 spots I’ve done, only one was less than an absolute blast. And, yup, even being non-union, it’s a pretty good part-time job.
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I went to college with Peter Coyote, who does a lot of narration and voice-over stuff, including Ken Burns’ stuff. Fascinating guy.
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Oh yes…the -legendary- Peter Coyote
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There is one medical facility I go to that asks you on its medical history form – after all the checkboxes for various diseases, questions about your parents’ maladies, and the inquiries about whether you feel safe in your home – what method of learning you prefer. I’m always a little stumped by that. I guess I feel that you learn best by doing, but my usual approach when I’m trying to learn something new is to look for a library book on the subject.
I take a test annually for VITA certification – a test given by the IRS that qualifies you to be a volunteer tax preparer. It’s open book, so you don’t have to commit everything to memory, just know where to look for the answers when you need them. I like that sort of test, because it seems to me that’s the way life usually works.
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Samuel Johnson said there are two wasy of know: 1) to know it and 2) to know where to find it.
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Was Samuel Johnson a physician?
(j/k)
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now that we know you are a physician that question takes a different slant. if my doctor doesn’t know where to find the answer i want a different doctor
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My last comment on this topic I promise, but Dale wants to talk about education, which has made me feel more passion for the career I am leaving than I thought I felt anymore.
Ten years ago research said the three vital things to include in adult training, in order of importance and maybe sequence of presentation: 1) How will it change what I do tomorrow. 2) What will I get out of this. 3) How do it do it.
Now, I will go apply my real skill, worrrying, and shut up about education.
Good day, all.
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We won’t hold you to that promise if you decide to break it later. 😉
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Good Late Morning to All,
I have been busy getting ready to go on vacation, but finally found time to check in here. I haven’t taken a lot of adult classes, but I have been involved in adult education using the “farmer first” approach. This is an approach where farmers are asked to talk about something they are doing that other farmers might want to learn to do.
This “farmer first” technique usually works very well because farmers tend to listen more closely to what another farmer has to say than they would to an educator who isn’t a farmer. Some farmers who don’t think they would be good at being educators, turn out to be very good. There are some failures such as the farmer who was only willing to say “I have planted three kinds of cover crops – alfalfa, rye, and vetch” and that was all he would say.
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This is a paraphrase of several people: One of the failure of modern society is the built-in resistance, casued by both structural and personal risks issues, of workers of all types to learn from and teach each other. It is one of the great failures of American industry.
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It would be good to see a “people first” approach where we are all teachers and students helping each other if that is the sort of thing you are implying, Clyde. I don’t know much education theory, but I think I agree with what you have indicated.
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Yes.
I am still eager for you to take your trip. When you leave? Come back? Who going with? Man I hope it’s a great trip!!
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I’m traveling through N. Dakota and Montana to Glacier National Park and back via S. Dakota and will be gone for about ten days starting soon. I am taking this trip with my wife. Thanks for your interest in my trip.
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You will probably drive right past my town on your way out. If you get a chance, stop off at Theodore Roosevelt Park or the Painted Canyon rest area for some spectacular sights. Its greener out her than I’ve ever seen it.s
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Amen to what Renee just said. Medora is a tourist trap but the park is specatacular, especially on the rare green days.
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glacier has one of my favorite roads. going to the sun road. i think it is the only main road going through the park . take lots of time savor it going both directions. stop often and listen to the waterfalls and wind in the trees a spectacular place. my other favorite road is beartooth pass. teddy roosevelt on the way out and on the way back you could feasably go through red lodge montana down the beartooth pass and on to south dakota through jackson hole. an exceptional round trip that may add a couple of miles but wow
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I took only one course–a Coast Guard boating course–as an adult (if “adult” is defined by age, not necessarily maturity). I quickly learned how cynical all those years in grad school had made me. That was a conventional course that anyone could pass if they simply played the game and memorized answers to obvious questions. I did so well in the course that the guys in charge wanted to recruit me to teach it, but within four weeks I didn’t remember a single thing they “taught” me. Just as I expected.
Real learning has nothing to do with classroom smarts. For real learning you have to give a damn about the subject. Then you have to either practice the subject or put yourself actively in the mind of someone who does it for real. What I learned best in all my school years was how to do a slick imitation of someone who understood a subject.
And yet, in spite of all those blue books and essays, I came away with a vivid sense of what it is like to really learn, and the beauty of that memory haunts me today in spite of my cynicism. Learning is so wonderful when it happens that it is a tragedy it doesn’t happen more often.
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“Study without desire spoils the memory, and it retains nothing that it takes in.” – Leonardo Da Vinci
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“And wisdom is a butterfly, and not a gloomy bird of prey.” W. B. Yeats
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Late to the party today. I am like a lot of folks here, an unrepentant learner. Since college (and grad school) I have taken classes in Italian, tap dance, writing, database development, Adobe Flash, a couple of computer languages…if I’m not learning something, I don’t feel alive. If I can’t take a class, I will pick up a book about something (history, the environment, most anything really) and learn what I can from that.
When Husband is done with his turn at grad school I have grand plans to pick up another instrument. I took flute and piano lessons as a kid, and would love to learn trumpet or violin (or both). If I took violin, I might have to find a Hardanger fiddle teacher to learn that style. That might keep me busy for at least a few years. 🙂
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oh, oh! Hardanger fiddle – the devil’s music!!!!
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don’t wait u tube learn it now
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i’ve always said that i learned from every class or experience i’ve ever done:
1. how i want to do something or 2. how i do NOT want to do something and i am always grateful for either of those lessons.
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You are a fine person, barb.
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I know I promised, but I got bored and my passions rose again: barb, I once sat at a retirement party next to a wonderful colleague who worked his way up from teacher to principal to supt. The retiree was a man who went into teaching so he could coach (save us from all those old farts, please; but the schools are full of them). In addition he failed at it. He proudly taught science out of a 4o-year-old textbook at the end of his, dare we say, “career.” At his party he read a list of all of the changes and programs and instructional models that came and went in his career and how stupid they all were and how proudly he had ignored them all.
At the end of the list, the supt. turned to me and said in amazement at the list and the retiree’s bitterness that he had learned something important from everyone of those things.
There you go, barb. Your attitude or intellectual death and so often too death of the spirit.
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Dear Clyde and Barb,
Thank you for saying those wonderful things about me as a human being and as a teacher. I will have difficulty falling asleep tonight because hearing all that admiration equals at least two Red Bulls. But there’s a bottle of wine under my bed – I hid it when Kay last visited – so take comfort knowing I will get my rest and shall rise up slowly but surely tomorrow to face another day of adoring fresh faced first graders eager to learn whatever I may happen to decide, once I drag myself out the door and have 3 cups of coffee in me.
Blessings, Donna
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So get Kay back to us, if you’re so wonderful, and all that I said.
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if this sounds a bit smug – not to worry – i harbor mean thoughts and i am not always a good person.
i agree. i’d wish i had Donna for my first grade teacher (but unfortunately, she wasn’t even born yet!)
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“In times of change, learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.” Eric Hoffer
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“The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically… Intelligence plus character – that is the goal of true education.”
– Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Like like like!
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amen alanna
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clyde put this one on the next list please
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Garage sale today here, so it’s been hard to break away – very interesting group of people coming through!
I’ve taken everything from psychology to blues guitar to dance history to feng shui. I was amazed how well I did in these classes when I was there because I wanted to be. But I learned the most though from a Kindergarten-First Grade Workshop I took after my first year of teaching Kdgn. in San Francisco. St. Anne’s of the Sunset (just south of Golden Gate Park) had 40 kids per class, and as a rookie I was a bit out of my league that first year – standard methods courses barely touched on kindergarten. Then I discovered this wonderful 2-week workshop during the summer. Learned how to develop a staggered schedule (half the kids come in from, say, 8:30 – 11:00, the other half from 9:30 – 12:00), implement parent volunteers… I was very energetic and had a principal who let me try all kinds of things that made the next 2 years much more manageable.
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OT, if baboons are OT, but I forgot to put this up a few days ago when I ran across it. A quote from Paul Bowles: the rear end of a baboon looks like a sunset on a grocer’s calendar.
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