Letter supporting Wisconsin Journal Article - Green Energy needs to be goal!

Last week I wrote here about an editorial in the Wisconsin State Journal which I support and expanded on.  I also wrote a letter to the Journal about it.  The optimist in me hopes this can be the start of something bigger for our schools and our students.

I would ask if you feel this is something Wisconsin should push for please contact your representatives, involving ourselves in the process is the only way to get action.

Letter:

Wisconsin must be proactive about green energy. It's a way to reduce dependence on fossil fuels and a wise investment in our future. Wisconsin's goal should be to include our schools and students.

My school has used green energy to help students learn the skills the world requires. They have researched and completed multiple solar projects. Using solar energy means a long-term reduction in cost to operate our school. Once the panels are paid for, the energy keeps coming. It is proactive and creates a powerful learning experience for students.

The Wisconsin Legislature should help schools meet ambitious goals for producing their own power. Students can lead projects, find ways for their schools to do the work and reduce their costs. Students are an untapped resource -- their drive makes amazing things happen.

Our Legislature should help fund schools so all districts can generate 10 percent of their power. While green energy is great, students leading and creating it is too positive an outcome not to invest in.

-- Scott Anderson, math and physics instructor, Juda Public School

Wanting to become a teacher - Planning Time (Part 2 of ?)

So I knew I wanted to be a teacher.  I knew that there were two things to get done, one, find a route to becoming a licensed teacher,  my Mechanical Engineering degree was not going to do it.  And two, plan our family's finances so we could survive the first few years of teaching which were going to be extremely lean pay.  (This comes back to the question of who do we, John Q. Public, really want to teach, the low pay keeps great people away - period.)

I knew that my Bachelors in Mechanical Engineering would not allow me to teach, but I hoped to be just a few courses short - like 36 credits short.  But the first couple of places I check wanted me to finish a Bachelors in Education, well over 75 credits plus a math major degree (another 24).  Darn hard to work and go to school for....  -- well forever.

Then I found St. Mary's second career education program in Minneapolis, Minnesota, it gave credit for my BSME and was a masters program - I simply had to take 36 credits and complete my math minor (5 courses).  It gave some credit for my real life experiences as a manager and had the simple goal to put good people, who would do the work, into the classroom.  The best part is it had night and weekend courses, so I could work and do school.

But to do this the family and I had to live in the Twin Cities.  So I begin to unwind my emotional attachment to the company I was working for, because while I could not see anyway out of their impending bankruptcy, my heart pushed me to hang on.  (The question about I would have ever become a teacher is fair at this point, I think yes - but my kids would not have been toddlers.)  But I started searching for employment in the Minneapolis area with the thought that it had to be perfect,  it had to be win for the employer and myself, that was spring of 2003.

As things became worst at my job, my desire to teach increased and in the summer of 2003 I found a company searching for job shop manager where my engineering background had value.  The plan was to take about 7 years for me to complete the course work and save upto 40% of our salary, we (my wife and I) figured that would make a nest egg so we would be okay the first 5 years of teaching. 

My wife and I then downsized everything.  Any cost was cut, every dollar we saved. We knew we would need for her to be back to work (at this point my 3 children were 5,3, and 2 years old).  We knew we had to not "keep up with the Jones," we bought a cheap house, removed car payments, made vacations no thrills (little kids don't need thrills anyway), etc.  We just made ourselves live on 40% of my salary, period.


 And I signed up for one night course - a Foundations of Education course, the first course of what I thought would be long process.  I attended the first night and was so excited about the passion of the instructors that I immediately marched down and signed up for enough classes to cut my college time from about 7 years to about 3 years.

So instead of two days per week, I went to four -- that is where we will pick up in the next post, working and taking 9 credits per semester.

Wanting to become a teacher - How I changed careers (Part 1 of a few?)

So I have been asked about becoming a teacher from another career (Engineering to math/science), what it takes, why I did it, am I happy, etc.  So this is the first post of a multi-part post in how I moved.  First, if you are moving for the number one joke -- "The 3 best reasons to teach - June, July & August"; DON'T do it.  Teaching takes a desire, it is hard work from September to June, and you spend plenty of time in July and August working on curriculum etc.  My hours per year are most likely surprising.

I worked less total hours in my 12 month, 50 hour per week engineer/manager job then the 9.5 months of teaching and summer curriculum.  But also don't let hours stop you from moving, changing to a teacher has been the single best career move of mine in the 20 years I have worked.  I am more than happy (though like every job there are hard moments).

And if you think you can just get in front of class and do it, and a lot of people think that, you are most likely sorely mistaken.  (I am sure someone can, but I know most cannot).  Though I am not sure education programs really get you 100% ready either -- depends on the program.  It is really a journey you must want to do -- a desire to be beyond mediocrity, when I came into teaching as a second career simply being a teacher for me was not enough.  I wanted to be excellent at the craft.

A little history, I was a young man who believed the cliche "Those that can do, those that can't teach."   So as I went to college at 17  and selected the the most well paid career in my fields of interest, math & science -- Mechanical Engineering.  I liked math and science and thought teaching was interesting but its salary was about 18K starting where engineering was about 42K starting.

So I took the money path, graduated and took a job in engineering within a manufacturing environment.  I liked the problem solving but every time the "new-ness" wore out I found myself looking for another challenge/opportunity.  I move thru 5 engineering/managing jobs in about a decade with 3 different companies -- I always moved up but I was always moving.  The reality of my life for me occurred after 9/11, as the small business I worked for struggled with lagging sales and eventually went into bankruptcy.  I worked my ass off trying to keep the business afloat, but after laying off over 100 people, having an ulcer and really soul searching I knew I wanted a change.

At this point, at about 33 years of age, I sat back and said what do I really want to do....  At any point in my career I felt I had been successful, I am a problem solver by training (and nature).  But when I thought about my accomplishments they were all general.  I knew that in any given year, month or day I was part of a team that fixed this widget or that widget. But when I tried to remember the actual widget - rarely could I describe it with any detail.  I was missing the human touch.  I was missing the feeling of having a truly lasting impact on the world.

So once I admitted that money was only as important as the need to be "comfortable" - I saw myself working with young adults.  But a family of five with three kids under 5 cannot live on a starting teacher's salary...  Anywhere...  So there would need to be planning.  So how do I get there from here. 

I had to get my teaching certificate in Wisconsin which required college courses, plan on how to student teach, and all the while support my family during the college portion but also save for the truly lean years of pay during the first few years of teaching.

My next post will weave how I looked at colleges, and what my thoughts were on student teaching.  It will be on my first steps of action.

Jim Wright -- Response to Intervention (RtI)

So a couple of days ago my district sent me to see Jim Wright present in DeForest Wisconsin on RtI (response to intervention).  It was a good day, though Mr. Wright had a ton of material to cover meaning it was a lot of "lecture" versus time working on the concepts he showed.

The best thing was his website http://www.interventioncentral.org/.  It gives many tools for RtI from assessment to checklists to....  many things.  The site requires some time to work thru but the list generators are quick and fairly intuitive http://www.interventioncentral.org/tools/academic-survival-skills-checklist-maker

Overall I felt like RtI is a lot of things I do and some things I didn't, but I did not document anything.  Now the goal is to document and follow thru, which is a good thing (gut-feel is no way to do anything)!  Because if we are not documenting and measuring are we really doing any long-term good?  It is a tough thing cause it adds another thing but I think once I get a "system" figured - how I attack, how I follow-thru, etc that things will be easier to manage.

And as I work at it - I remind myself - to help each student on their individual journey.