Mr. Kelsey's Class

Walking the Solar System: Audio Tour

2010-01-18T14:58:00.000-06:00

I’m not even going to get into not updating the blog very much lately, that is a whole other blog post. I did want to tell you about a project that I have been working on. In 2008 a scale model of the solar system was installed in downtown Kansas City. Last year I received a small grant that allowed all of the seventh graders at South Valley Middle School to visit. It consists of eight foot tall stanchions with information about each of the planets and 3D images and tactile models. Before taking my students on the tour last year I created an audio tour that included additional science information as well as other subjects and Kansas City History. After taking the students on the tour last year I realized there were a couple mistakes and a few places where the audio tour could be improved. I recently finished the revamped audio tour. I worked with a professional writer and narrator to create a completely revamped audio tour. I also created a website and teacher’s guide to accompany the audio tour. Below is the link to the Walking the Solar System Audio Tour website. I would love to know your thoughts about the website, teacher’s guide or audio tour.

Walking the Solar System Audio Tour Website: http://sites.google.com/site/walkingthesolarsystem/

Florissant Fossil Beds

2009-07-14T21:49:00.001-05:00

Today I went for my second hike in Colorado. I have wanted to go to the Florissant Fossil Beds for a while so today I took the hour drive out to Florissant. It was absolutely worth the drive and the six miles I put in on the trails. Today was my longest hike to date but it felt great, even if I am a little tired now. Florissant is home to a petrified redwood forest. I’ve seen petrified wood before, even some big pieces but these things were amazing. Many of them were over 10 foot tall and over 10 foot wide. I started out the day by taking a one mile loop around that went by many of the fossilized stumps. Then I took two other trails for another five miles of hiking. It was gorgeous! Mountain views, meadows, huge boulders, and babbling brooks (okay so they were barely a trickle but still cool. One of the things that amazed me the most was the sound of the wind. It made this eerie sound that I had never heard before. Then walking across a meadow I saw the wind pushing the tall grass around and it really looked like the ocean with waves of grass. If you are ever near Florissant, I encourage you to stop by. The entry fee is a whole $3 and even if you don’t have much time, you can see three huge petrified stumps with almost no walking, then another 4-6 with a one mile, easy walk. I can’t wait to get to San Francisco to see the living redwoods at Muir Woods.

Skype

2009-07-14T15:28:00.000-05:00

I have used Skype before and was amazingly impressed with its performance. Last night I saw how amazingly cool it could be. In March I was able to teach my science class from Colorado using Skype. Last night my friend Bobby read a book to his daughter who has been in Hawaii for the last two weeks. How amazing is it that in real time they could interact over a book. I need to get some friends who live out of town so that I can Skype with them.

On another Skype note, last month Eric Langhorst, social studies teacher extrordinaire from South Valley Junior High, wrote an article for The School Library Journal about using video conferencing in the classroom. I am mentioned in the article and in the print version is a picture of me teaching from Colorado. It is the picture from this blog where I have the computer in front of me and I am wearing the glove from a space suit. You can read the article at: http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/article/CA6660875.html

Hiking Garden of the Gods

2009-07-13T15:42:00.004-05:00

Cathedral rock and the Moon

Today I spent a few hours hiking around Garden of the Gods. I think I went about 4 miles. I’m not exactly sure how far because I got turned around a couple of times and had to backtrack. It was a beautiful walk and I got some great pictures. I saw a ton of birds, lots of rabbits and one deer. Tomorrow I will be going to Florissant to walk around the fossil beds up there. I’m not exactly sure what all is there but it sounds like there is a petrified forest as well as some dinosaur stuff. It will be a pretty drive to get there and then a couple of miles of walking around. Today my wife was in a Space Foundation class learning about lunar and Mars bases. I can’t wait to pick here brain tonight. We are staying with some good friends and last night Bobby, one of the Space Foundation teachers, had a great conversation about space lessons for next year. He had a great idea that I can’t wait to investigate more involving Galilean telescopes and a project for kids to work on. Enjoy the pictures.

My resting spot after hiking more than 2 miles.

Falcon flying above the rock formations, I happened to capture this picture as he passed between me and the moon.

Geocaching

2009-07-02T10:42:00.002-05:00

I’m hooked. Last night I went on my first geocaching adventure and had a blast. I had never used my GPS in this way and wasn’t sure if it would work. I completely went out not expecting to find anything. Comet and I headed over to Stocksdale Park and started down the trail. The only problem that I had was that kept having to refresh the GPS to see my coordinates. I completely lost track of time and we walked a long way. About the time I thought I was getting close, the trail would change directions. Finally we got really close (I was actually able to get to the exact coordinates) and I started looking around. The hint was that the cache was less than 10 feet off the trail. I wasn’t sure how accurate my GPS was so I started looking around. At almost exactly the right spot, I found it. It was well hidden, you would not see it if you weren’t specifically looking for it. The cache was a black ammunition box. Inside were two ziplock bags, one with a log book and pencils and the other with some small trinkets. There was a ball, a pencil with a rabbit topper, an army man, and some Garbage Pail Kids. I used to collect those so that it what I took. I left a space pin. I signed the log book, re-hid the cache and started back out of the woods. When I finally got out of the woods, I realized that had I gone in the left hand entrance to the trails, the walk would have been around ¼ of a mile. As it was, we went closer to 4. There is another cache near there that I am planning on going and looking for today.

Do you see the cache?

Do you see it now?

Comet with the cashe, and log book.

Last Day of Summer School and First Day of Summer

2009-06-30T13:17:00.000-05:00

Teaching summer school isn’t that bad, it just delays the start of your summer vacation a few weeks. Tomorrow will start my “official” summer break. I can’t wait. I have a ton of stuff to do and the extra time to get it done will be nice, especially with a big trip coming up. I am also hoping to spend some time with a new activity that I have known about for a long time but am going to try for the first time tonight (Insert your own joke here). I’m going to try my hand at geocaching tonight. Geocaching is basically hiking with a purpose. People have hidden small caches of items. Some are easy to get to and others are more difficult. I will be starting tonight with a couple of easy ones at Stocksdale Park in Liberty. Basically you use a GPS to find the exact coordinates for where the loot is hidden. You write your name in the log book and then you can take an item if you leave an item. I will probably be taking some type of small space related item that I got at the National Space Symposium. If you would like to look into geocaching, you can register on their site for free www.geocaching.com. They offer a premium membership which I may eventually do but the free membership allows you to get the coordinates for your searches. I will post an update soon of how my hunt goes tonight. I’m also taking the dog so that could also prove entertaining.

Library Thing

2009-06-26T13:38:00.002-05:00

I am always on the lookout for cool gadgets and this is my new favorite. I think there are several others like it but this was the first on that I found. I like to share with my kids what books I’m reading, whether it be a book for school, or one that I’m reading for fun. I have tried in the past to add a list of books that I’m reading, and that I want to read to my web site and it is always a hassle to keep it updated. That’s where “Library Thing” comes in. This is a site that for free (up to 200 books) allows you to keep a list, add comments, and rate the books. The other cool thing is that it matches you with people with similar reading lists. The part that I like the best is that I was able to add a widget to this blog that shows the covers of those books. I think this is a great visual way to show how important reading is, no matter what you are reading. As a matter of fact, the reason I discovered this was because it was on another blog I was reading and one of the covers on their list was a book that I have been wanting to read. I want to explore this more and take some time to look into the book lists of others. Check out my list to the left but keep in mind I've only been playing with this for a day so I need to add more books.

http://www.librarything.com/

Dear Mr. Kelsey Blog

2009-06-26T13:27:00.001-05:00

After messing up this blog earlier today, I have managed to make quite a few updates to my Dear Mr. Kelsey blog. If you haven’t been there before, head over there and check it out. This is where I am attempting to post the letters I have received from celebrities. Today I inadvertently posted a bunch of posts that were meant for the Dear Mr. Kelsey blog to this one instead. The good news is I learned something new on blogger, you can import and export posts between blogs. I figured there had to be a way to do it but today I learned how. Here is the address for the Dear Mr. Kelsey blog. I will try to update it more this summer as I scan the letters. Right now I have over 250 letters to students. I have a lot posted on the blog but there are always more to add.
http://dearmrkelsey.blogspot.com/

A Return to Posting . . . Hopefully

2009-06-25T12:17:00.000-05:00

I have been absent from the blog scene for a while now. Last year, my first at South Valley Middle School, was an unbelievable whirlwind. It was a phenomenal year, probably one of the best of my career. I loved being able to focus on science and really create some fun lessons. It was a huge change to teach the same thing four times in a row but I found that this allowed me to make changes to lessons, and really have a good idea of what worked and what didn’t. This was definitely a change from the one and done mentality of elementary school. It was also nice to be able to spend time creating a lesson and know that I got to use it four times, instead of having to wait four years to do a lesson that many times. I am looking so forward to next year to try some new things, and go into the year having a better understanding of what middle school is all about. I already have some plans for beginning of the year activities, what my expectations will be, and some new projects for later in the year.

Broadcasting was also a blast to teach. I had 150 kids go through broadcasting this year and we never missed a deadline for a show. Each week, all year long we had a show on the air, even the week I was in Colorado. We had some amazing things happen for us this year. We had interviews with a Harlem Globetrotter, Author Darren Shan, John Walsh host of America’s Most Wanted, and Baseball Hall of Famer Bobby Doerr. We also covered a rally for VP candidate Joe Biden, and two of my kids got to shake his hand. We won several awards at the Reel Spirit Student Showcase and presented at the Capitol in Jefferson City.

This summer has been just about as busy as the regular school year. I have been teaching summer school (only 3 days left) and started the last two classes of my second master’s degree. I am also helping coach t-ball with my best friend and his son (this can also be read: I am now officially a cat herder). My wife and I are planning a HUGE trip this summer and I am looking so forward to that. I will be posting often from the road (hopefully tethering my Blackberry to the laptop will work as well on the road as it did the other day when I tested it).

We are going to be gone about 4 weeks this summer and we have some great places that we are going. We start out in Colorado Springs, where my wife gets to take a free Space Discovery Institute class from the Space Foundation. This will be her 6th class. She got this one for free because she was named a Space Foundation Teacher Liaison this year. I will not be taking this class, instead I will be doing some hiking around Colorado Springs. I will probably spend a day in Garden of the Gods, and I am planning on driving over to the Florissant Fossil Beds. There are also several other parks in the area that I want to hit.

After the week in Colorado Springs, we will be on the road for the next 21 days. My best friend is getting married in Jackson, Wyoming on the first of August so we are making a big loop through Los Angeles, San Francisco, and then to Jackson. I am really excited about a lot of the stops on the way. We will be going through a bunch of National Parks including: Canyonlands, Bryce Canyon, Zion, Capital Reef, Mojave National Preserve, Point Reyes, Muir Woods, The Grand Tetons, Yellowstone, and Golden Gate Park. We will also hit Goblin Valley State Park, this is where they filmed some scenes for Galaxy Quest. I’m excited about going to Donner State Park where the Donner Party made their winter camp. My wife is less excited about this. We also have a tour scheduled to tour the Jet Propulsion Lab and we will visit Ames Research Center, both in California. We also have several zoos and aquariums on our list as well as a couple of days at Disneyland. I’m also hoping to catch the taping of a TV show while in LA. Right now we have tickets to see Craig Furguson but we are hoping to get tickets to Conan O’Brian (it is a lottery) or maybe even The Price is Right.

I will be updating as we go this summer, and hopefully bringing back some resources to use in my classroom next year. If you have any suggestions, especially for science (or just cool) places to stop I would love to hear them.

Walking Tour of the Solar System

2009-05-12T18:32:00.002-05:00

Several months ago I wrote a Target Field Trip Grant for the seventh grade at SVMS to visit a walking tour of the Solar System. This is a one ten billionth scale model of the solar system starting with the Sun at 13th and Baltimore and ending with the Voyager spacecraft at Union Station. To help make this tour as good as possible (imagine 90 seventh graders walking in downtown Kansas City with nothing to occupy their attention) I created an audio tour to listen to as we walked the entire length of the tour. The audio tour ended up being 15 tracks long ranging in run time from three minutes to a little over eight. They included a lot of information about each planet and they included a lot of real NASA audio of launches, moonwalkers, and a couple from astronauts that I recorded while I was at the National Space Symposium. The tracks also included Kansas City history. My brother helped write the scripts for these sections. It was amazing what I learned while putting this together. I am my own worst critic. Having said that, there are a few things that I would change. The second half of the tour was pretty good. The tracks flowed well and timed out about right for each stop. The first half of the tour was a little rougher. The tracks were too long and need to be fixed. My brother and I are planning on revamping it this summer. Here are a few pictures from the tour as If you would like to download the tracks they are available by going to my classroom website. Click on the Solar System Tour link. If you do download it and especially if you walk the tour, send me an email and let me know what you think.

Mr. Kelsey's Class Website

Space Symposium Final Report

2009-04-05T21:38:00.004-05:00

Sorry for the delay in posting the final details of the Space Symposium but it ended up being a hectic end to the week. I think for this post I’m going to start at the end and work my way backwards. I got back to Kansas City around 11:00 on Saturday. I left Colorado Springs on Friday night because of predicted snow coming in. They were predicting anywhere between 3 and 10 inches of snow. I had driven through slick roads and significant snow earlier in the week and didn’t want to have to do that on the way back to Kansas City.

Friday was a field trip for teacher liaisons to Boulder and NOAA, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. This is where the National Weather Service for the Denver area is located, the National Space Weather Prediction Center, and Science on a Sphere. There is also a ton of scientific research about the atmosphere done here. Our tour started with going through security and then into the main building. The Knight also made the trip with me. An interesting fact about NOAA is that the national atomic clock is kept. When you buy a clock that sets itself, it is getting the signal from this building in Boulder, Colorado.

If you look closely, you can see the Knight in this picture.

Our first stop on the tour was at the Space Weather Prediction Center. This is where they constantly monitor the sun for solar flares, sun spots, and other anomalies. Space weather is important because it affects satellites, people that are on the space station, and causes the northern lights.

Monitors in this room always have a current picture of the sun.

Our next stop on the tour was at the National Weather Service. There were two main meteorologists who each had four different computer monitors and several additional ones nearby. One meteorologist is in charge of the short term forecast. He works mainly on what is going to happen in the next 24 hours. The other meteorologist works on the seven day forecast. They were very busy the day that we were there because of the incoming snow storm. One of the coolest things about the computers that they were working with is that they are so powerful they can look at multiple sets of data and overlap them to see what the weather is doing. For example, they can look at specific temperatures at locations within a few kilometers of each other. They can then overlap wind speed, or barometric pressure at those same locations. In order to accomplish all of these things, they need some high powered computers. We got to see their “super” computer. In 1992 it was the 8th fastest in the world. It is able to do trillions of calculations each second. It lives in a climate controlled room. Another interesting thing that I learned is that the National Weather Service has their own website where you can put in your zip code and look up TONS of weather data for your area. The address is: http://www.weather.gov/.

Meteorologist at the National Weather Service

The main reason that we came to NOAA was to see Science on a Sphere. You walk into this room and literally there is a living globe floating in the middle of the room. The video I put below does not come anywhere close to doing justice to how amazing this is. Basically they take all of the data from weather satellites and other sources and put it together into models that they then project onto the sphere using 4 separate video projectors. It is flat out amazing. They have over 200 data sets that they can project including Jupiter, Neptune, the moon, and satellite weather data. One of the cooler things that they showed us was current weather data. When I say current, it literally had data from the previous day. We were able to see the blizzard that hit Denver last weekend and the storm coming in. Some of the other simulations they showed included the Asian tsunami, and all of the air traffic around the world. That one was really cool because it showed day and night and the flights slowed down around midnight local time and then starts up again around 6:00 in the morning. I wish there was a science on a sphere closer so that we could go and see it. One other thing about the science on the sphere, it is controlled by a wii remote.

3D Simulation of the Earth on Science on a Sphere

Video Compilation of Science on a Sphere (World at Night, Tsunami, Weather, Air Traffic)

Taking another step backwards, Thursday was an interesting day. I attended a space career fair. I’m not looking for a new job, I just wanted to see what employers are looking for in future employees. I expected them to say that they needed people that were good with math, science, and technology. They did say those things but they also said some stuff that I was not expecting. For example, Space X said that they were looking for people that had a high degree of responsibility and autonomy. They want people that aren’t afraid to get their hands dirty and that were able to work independently. Other companies said they were looking for people with ethics and integrity. One company said a line that I thought was really great. The company representative said, “we can train you technically – we can’t teach enthusiasm. We are looking for ‘spark’.” It was really interesting to see all of these companies that are truly in need of highly qualified employees. One company said that right now 1/3 of their employees are eligible to retire. NASA is in the same position; many of the people that helped NASA get to the moon, and start the space shuttle program are either retired, or ready to retire. Another big idea that I got from listening to these people talk was that no matter what you like to do, there is a job for you. Literally any job you can think of, someone in the space industry needs you.

After the job fair, there was a small luncheon. The main speaker was Anousheh Ansari, the first female space tourist. She was really interesting to listen to and she talked about education quite a bit. She also said some things about achieving your dreams. Check back to this post later, I have audio from here speech that I will be posting later.

Me with Anousheh Ansari, first female space tourist

Thursday afternoon I got to see a couple of really interesting speeches. The first was a panel discussion between the heads of the Chinese, Japanese, and European space agencies. It was really cool to see these rivals interact with one another. Today (Sunday) there was a launch of a satellite from North Korea. One of the questions asked was if these countries would be willing to cooperate with the North Koreans on space travel. There was a very awkward silence about that question. After the panel discussion I was able to get the autograph of Jean-Jacques Dordain, head of the European Space Agency.

Overall, the Space Symposium was an absolutely amazing event. It was really cool to be in the audience with generals, astronauts, and congressman and just be one of the crowd. All of the teachers had a great experience. My thanks go out to Bobby Gagnon, Bryan DeBates, Ian Probert, and Elliott Pulham of the Space Foundation. They put on a great event and even though education was not the main focus of the Space Symposium, it was definitely a major component. An especially huge thanks to Bobby, Brian, Chrys, and Lisa. I know they all worked their tails off this week and it was completely worth it!

Also, congratulations to Kayla for winning the first contest from the blog. She emailed me today and told me that she had been reading my updates. She will be getting a prize after spring break. Here is another chance. If you have read this post, and are a SVMS student, and email me you will get a prize.

Okay, I know that this is a long post but I had a chance to write down some of the big ideas I gained from the Space Symposium. I don’t really know a better way to do this than to just list them. Some of them are teaching ideas, some of them are ideas for students. They are all kind of jumbled together so bear with me.
· Rick Soria, the teacher that won the Alan Shepard Technology in Education Award said during his speech an idea that I thought was great. He said, “when you go fishing are you going to use bait that you like, or bait that the fish like?”
· JPL (the Jet Propulsion Laboratory) want to get the American public to share in the inspirational adventure of space exploration. I thought that was a cool mission statement.
· Voyager 1 is currently 10 BILLION miles away and is still sending back signals. These signals take 14 hours to get back to earth.
· You can follow JPL on twitter.
· There are people that work at JPL that have spent their entire careers studying one of Saturn’s rings. Talk about specialization!
· The Mars Science Lab will launch in 2011, it is a nuclear powered rover the size of a small car that weighs almost a ton.
· The DAWN mission will visit Vesta in 2011 and Ceres in 2015.
· So far there have been 343 exoplanets discovered (planets outside our solar system). The Kepler mission will look for earth size planets by looking at 100,000 stars for 4 years.
· Space missions are selected from proposals and one of the components that is used in selection is the educational aspect, how they are going to educate the public about the mission and how the information gained will be used for education.
· There is one accident for every 60 flights into space.
· General Ed Eberhart said that, “we can’t be adverse to risk. It’s not easy, it’s never going to be easy.”

Space Symposium Day 3

2009-04-01T20:08:00.003-05:00

Our traveling knight next to a (from left to right) a piece of foam from the external tank of the space shuttle, a piece of metal from the external tank (front), and exploding nut that holds the shuttle to the ground for a few seconds before liftoff, and a space shuttle tile.

Teaching a lesson back to South Valley Middle School from the Space Foundation booth at the National Space Symposium.

Today was a little less hectic than yesterday but it was still pretty amazing. The morning started by watching a big panel discussion between 5 former commanders of the US Space Command. There were 5 generals on stage and one Admiral. They talked about their time in the military and what they accomplished at Space Command. General Ed Eberhart was the commander of NORAD on September 11th. I was hoping to stick around after their talk to get a chance to meet them but I had to get to the exhibit hall to teach the lessons back to South Valley. For today’s lessons I was able to get an actual food tray from the Space Shuttle along with some samples of the food. These were actual samples that were to go up but had expired. I also got a small swatch of space suit material that showed all of the different layers that go into it. And finally, I got a real Apollo era space suit glove. The first lesson I taught while over in a corner of the convention hall. The second lesson I got permission to actually sit at the Space Foundation booth. There were probably over 100 people that walked by as I taught including generals and probably some astronauts. After teaching the two lessons, I had to drive to Denver to take my wife to the airport. She will be back in Kansas City at 9:45 tonight. On the way back from Denver I drove through a pretty good snow storm. There is more snow predicted for later in the week. I’m hoping that our field trip on Friday to NOAA doesn’t get cancelled.

Oh, and one more thing from today, I saw Bill Nye, the Science Guy, walking around the exhibit hall. He looks just like he does on TV. I’m hoping to get a picture with him tomorrow.

Astronaut Videos

2009-03-31T23:54:00.003-05:00

Space Suit Video

2009-03-31T23:28:00.003-05:00

This is a short video made of still pictures of my wife putting on the Apollo space suit. The last two pictures are of her trying to get out of the suit.

Space Symposium reaches out to the next generation

2009-03-31T23:20:00.002-05:00

This is a link to a news story about the Teacher Liaison workshop. For a brief second you can see Sarah's head. My groups lander didn't work so well. The astronauts (marshmallows) kept getting flung out, not good if you are an astronaut.

To watch the story, scroll down and click on "Space Symposium reaches out to the next generation"

http://www.koaa.com/news/

Space Symposium Day 2 – Teacher Liaison Workshop Day

2009-03-31T22:53:00.005-05:00

My brain is mush, I’m tired and I absolutely can’t wait to teach lessons back to Liberty tomorrow, and in my classroom after spring break. We knew that today was going to be really cool and it absolutely lived up to its billing. We started the day with the deputy director of the Jet Propulsion Lab, Lt. General Gene Tattini, talking to us. He walked us through a bunch of different things that JPL does including some of their 19 current mission, and some of their upcoming missions. One of the most exciting missions that he talked about will be launched in 2011. It is the Mars Science Lab. It will weigh close to a ton and will travel distances measured in kilometers, not just meters. It truly is the size of a small car and will not rely on solar panels, it will have its own plutonium powered nuclear generator. That will be a fun mission to follow. Also as an update, the Spirit and Opportunity rovers that were originally supposed to last for three months, are now going on 5 years of service. Lt. General Tattini also talked about the study of exoplanets (planets outside our solar system). Currently there have been 343 discovered but only one of them is earth sized. Most are the size of Jupiter or bigger. The Kepler mission that just launched this month will be looking for earth size planets. As you can tell this was an information packed presentation. I took over four pages of notes and I know that I missed some stuff.

Lt. General Gene Tattini

Our next speaker was Stephan Feldman, the president of the Astronaut Memorial Foundation. He talked about the foundation and the memorial at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. I’ve been to the memorial before and never really “got” it until today. It is a 50 foot tall by 40 foot wide reflective marble wall with the names of the astronauts who have perished in the line of duty. It is reflective so that the names look like they are in the clouds. I thought that was pretty cool. He also talked about the Alan Shepard Technology in Education Award. This award is sponsored by the AMF and the Space Foundation and the winner got regocnized at the opening ceremonies last night. I applied for the award this year. I didn’t win, and didn’t really expect to but I got a letter saying that I was a finalist. We found out today that there were four finalists, I don’t know if I was one of the four but I will definitely be applying again next year.

After those two got done speaking we spent most of the rest of the day doing teacher stuff. We learned about lessons involving space suits, space walking, landing on the moon and Mars, as well as got a ton of great information about other programs to bring back. I will be sharing some of the space suit information tomorrow when I video conference the lesson back. I don’t want to give too much away but I have some cool stuff to be sharing.

Mr. Gagnon (one of the amazing Space Foundation teachers, also a really good friend)

Probably the highlight of the day was a session called “The Astronaut Show: Down to Earth With the Guys From Space.” They brought in Shuttle Astronauts Fred Gregory and Jim Reilly, both flew on three shuttle missions. The third speaker was Livingston Holder. He was an astronaut but his flight was cancelled after the Challenger disaster. They all had some great stories and some great advice for kids and teachers. The videos below are a small part of what they had to say. Probably the biggest idea that I got from them was that no matter who you are, or where you live, or what your background, you truly can become whatever you want. I think Livingston said it best when he said, you know I didn’t get to go into space but on my journey I’ve gotten to do some really cool stuff.

Astronaut Jim Reilly

Livingston Holder

Fred Gregory, first African American Space Shuttle Commander

Another really cool thing happened at the end of the workshop today. One of the presenters had brought along a real Apollo space suit, this was a training suit used when we were going to the moon. My wife got to try it on! I am so jealous. After looking at the pictures you will understand the next thing I’m about to say. I would have loved to have tried it on (see picture of me in the helmet) but you would have needed a crow bar and some WD-40 to get me into our out of it. Check out the pictures of Sarah in the space suit.

Houston, we have a problem - My head is stuck!

I didn't think she was going to take the suit off.

Even Chrys from the Space Foundation got into the act.

Tomorrow Sarah has to fly back to Kansas City but before she leaves we will be hitting the exhibit center along with a little Knight (there is some really cool stuff to take his picture with). We are only two days into the week and it has been unbelievably cool, I can’t wait to see what tomorrow will be like and I am completely excited to bring the things we learned today back and use them at South Valley.

P.S. This is the 150th post I've made to this blog! Woo Hoo!

P.S.S. Check out how snazzy I look in the suit - you don't see that too often.

National Space Symposium Opening Ceremonies

2009-03-31T00:11:00.003-05:00

Opening Ceremonies of the National Space Symposium

Where do I start? The opening ceremonies were absolutely amazing. The Space Symposium is at the Broadmoor Hotel. This is one of the nicest hotels you will ever see. It is beautiful. It is nestled right next to the mountains. It has its own lake and a huge championship golf course. My wife and I showed up early and waited around for the doors to open. As people started showing up, we got to see some friends that work for the Space Foundation and some other teacher liaisons that we had met last summer. Once they opened the doors we went to our seats. We were literally six rows back, right in the middle. We had AWESOME seats. As people start coming in it was really a game of trying to pick out who was who. A congressman, Charlie Walker, walked in that I recognized and another one was pointed out to me. The governor of Colorado was there as well as several astronauts. We also saw the Chinese delegation including one of their taikonauts (Chinese word for astronaut). He was actually wearing his flight suit (see picture below). Neil deGrasse Tyson came in, he is a pretty famous astrophysicist and a really funny guy. Finally the opening ceremonies started with the Colorado Springs Symphony playing the Star Trek theme song. Now, I’m not usually a big fan of that type of music but they were amazing. Everything was choreographed to videos that played on a huge screen behind them. This is the 25th anniversary of the space symposium and the video was a retrospective. I actually got choked up when they showed a picture of the Columbia astronauts that were lost when the Space Shuttle burned up on reentry.

After they played, the president of the Space Foundation spoke. He was followed by the Governor of Colorado, Bill Ritter. What impressed me most was that both of them talked a lot about education. As a matter of fact, after the governor spoke, all of the teacher liaisons were asked to stand up and they turned the spotlights on us and everyone applauded. It was pretty cool to know that a bunch of congressman, astronauts, and astrophysicists were applauding what we do, really cool also to be standing next to my wife for that part.

Next up they gave out a bunch of awards including the Alan Shepherd technology in education award. I actually applied for this award this year and was finalist. The guy that won did a huge state wide program in Florida. My project wasn’t nearly as cool or as large in scope but it was cool being a finalist. I will try again next year.

As the ceremonies closed, my wife and I made our way up to the stage where we got a chance to meet the Chinese Taikonauts as well as Neil deGrasse Tyson, and one of the congressmen. I was also walking around and saw Ron Sega, who was a space shuttle astronaut and got him to sign my program.

Chinese Taikonaut

Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson

When we left there, we went to the exhibit hall which is really cool. I will post pictures of it later but all of these space companies were giving away all kinds of stuff. As a matter of fact, I’m going to be giving away some of it in class after spring break and for the first SVMS student to email me and tell me that they read this, they will get a special prize.

Finally we walked over to the actual hotel (the other stuff had been in a big exhibit hall) and had a desert reception – weirdest desert reception ever, they had a chocolate bar with strawberries, etc. but they also had pizza and mini cheeseburgers. It was all good but an odd mix.
Overall it was an absolutely exhilarating night. Things like this get me really fired up to get back to the classroom and incorporate some of what I’ve learned. It was great to know that on this big stage (7,500+ people in attendance) the Governor of Colorado, and the president of the Space Foundation both made it a point to talk about education and how important it was. They recognized all of the teachers and made sure that everyone there, that was not a teacher, needed to support education. Really powerful stuff!

To end the night, my wife and I walked out to the terrace at the Broadmoor that overlooked the lake and there was the crystal clear sky, crescent moon, and Orion looking down on us. What a perfect end to a great day and the beginning of a fun week.

Bobby and Emi, our good friends that we are staying with in Colorado Springs, Bobby works for the Space Foundation and does amazing things to help teachers bring space into their classrooms!

More Pictures

2009-03-30T10:54:00.006-05:00

Views as of 12:30 (Kansas City Time)

Balancing Rock (Mr. Willett pictured left)
Current view as of 11:00 (Kansas City Time)

Theiophytalia Kerri (Means of the Garden of the Gods)

These are more pictures to go with my lesson.

Video

2009-03-30T10:40:00.004-05:00

Here is a video I just took from the deck of the visitors center.

Pikes Peak is hidden by the clouds.

The View From Here

2009-03-30T10:35:00.002-05:00

I'm getting ready to use Skype to teach a lesson back to South Valley. We've tested it and everything seems to be working. I'm including some pictures here to give you an idea of where I am teaching from. It is snowing but the sky over the mountains is starting to clear up, you can just about see Pikes Peak. I'm adding these pictures because I'm not sure how much my web cam will show. Enjoy the view.

Almost to Colorado Springs

2009-03-29T15:16:00.003-05:00

Pikes Peak

I took this earlier today, I thought the shadow of the car looked like "Shrek"

Despite the blizzard warnings, horrible weather in Kansas City yesterday and the worries of many, including myself, we are almost to Colorado Springs. There is actually very little snow on the ground. It is 58 degrees and very windy. I can see Pike's Peak out the front windshield now. I'm always amazed at how cool the mountains look. Tonight will be visiting with our friends that we are staying with, then off to bed early. We will be getting up early tomorrow to Skype a lesson back to South Valley. I have a wireless card and I'm planning on teaching the lesson tomorrow from the visitors center at Garden of the Gods. I can't wait, I've wanted to video conference lessons back from my travels for a long time. In the past I've had kids to activities to follow along with what I was doing, I've blogged and I've even called my class but this trip is cool becuase I feel like the kids really have an opporunity to experience the Space Symposium right along with me. I've had about 8-10 kids that have started following me on Twitter and I told the kids to email me questions this week based on the blog and my tweets. I'm looking forward to getting those emails.

Finally, a Post

2009-03-22T16:32:00.000-05:00

I’ve done a really bad job of updating this blog lately. I’ve been trying to figure out the best way to use this with my new teaching position. With teaching the same lesson four times it has been a logistical issue on updating, and which class to update about. I’m still working on that. I have been doing some stuff with Twitter and each of my classes has a twitter account that we have been using to summarize what we have learned at the end of each class. We are just in the beginning stages of this.

This year has been unbelievably busy but really great. I’m loving South Valley Middle School. As a matter of fact, I was just named the SVMS teacher of the year. Broadcasting has been great with a whole bunch of cool interviews including a Harlem Globetrotter, John Walsh of America’s Most Wanted, and Baseball Hall of Famer Bobby Doerr. We have interviews coming up with John Wathan who used to play for the Kansas City Royals and a former Major League umpire. I’m also working on starting a SVMS: Knightly Knews blog.

The reason that I’m starting to update again is that one week from today I will be driving to Colorado Springs, Colorado to attend the National Space Symposium. This is a who’s who of space. I had the opportunity to attend four years ago when I was named a Space Foundation Teacher Liaison. This year I get to go back. I’m going to learn a ton while I’m out there but I also get to see my wife be named a Teacher Liaison. She was one of only 29 teachers in the country this year to receive this award, and the only one from Missouri or Kansas.

The Space Symposium lasts for an entire week and this year I get to stay for the entire thing. (My school is awesome with helping me go with professional development days!) On Monday I will be teaching two lessons back to South Valley. For these lessons, I plan on setting up shop at the Garden of the Gods. I’m hoping to have web cams going. That night are the opening ceremonies. This is where I met Buzz Aldrin the last time (check out my profile picture). To cap of this evening is a desert reception at the Broadmoor Hotel with fireworks. Tuesday is an all day workshop for Teacher Liaisons. I can’t wait for this day. Sarah will receive her award, and then the rest of the day are workshops. I know the teachers and know that whatever they are teaching us I will immediately be able to bring back and use in my classroom. We also have several guest speakers. The first is Lt. General Eugene Tattini who is the CEO and Deputy Director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Following him will be a round table discussion with astronauts Fred Gregory and Jim Reilly as well as Livingston Holder who has been a part of many different NASA programs. On Wednesday I will be teaching a couple more lessons back to SVMS and Thursday I will just be attending sessions for the general symposium. On Friday I will have an opportunity to visit NOAA in Boulder, Colorado. I’ve heard about their science on a sphere presentation and am looking forward to that.

My plan is to blog each day when I have a chance (probably each night) but I will also be twittering (tweeting? – still not sure of the proper terminology for twitter – but twittering sounds more manly than tweeting). You can follow me on twitter by visiting: http://twitter.com/mkelsey36 . You can also see the full schedule of events by visiting the Space Symposium website at: http://www.nationalspacesymposium.org/. You can also learn more about the Space Foundation and the great things that they do by visiting http://www.spacefoundation.org. The Space Foundation offers some amazing professional development workshops, an online lesson bank and has been instrumental in me getting to do many of the cool things that I have done in the last couple of years. Because of them I got to go on the Weightless Flight of Discovery, and attend the launch of STS-118.

If you can’t tell, I’m getting really excited about going to the Space Symposium. Stay tuned for more updates.

Bigfoot and Straw Towers

2008-08-20T19:37:00.002-05:00

I can remember setting in boring science classes where you just read out of the book and answered questions in the back. I really try not to be boring. Sometimes you have to cover some science content to get to the cool stuff but usually there is a way to do it so that it isn’t “boring.” Today we did a couple of different activities that I thought were fun. First, in Science Investigations we created straw towers. The kids had to work as a team to create the tallest free standing straw structure that they could build in five minutes using nothing but straws and tape. The kids did really well. We combined classes with Mrs. Brown’s class. Enjoy the pictures.

In science, the kids had homework last night to read an article about a supposed Bigfoot carcass that was found and stuffed into a freezer. We had a great discussion about that and it was pure coincidence (Don’t you love it when things work out or like they said in the A-Team, “I love it when a plan comes together.”) Today in the Kansas City Star there was an article that said the guys are now saying it was a complete hoax. I also brought in a couple of letters that go along with Bigfoot. One is from the guy that took the famous video of bigfoot and the other is from a guy that claims to be the guy in the ape suit in that video. Check out the Dear Mr. Kelsey blog in the next few days for those to be posted.

First Day of 7th Grade

2008-08-19T15:02:00.001-05:00

Remember back when you were in school and you were all nervous about a new grade, a new teacher, or a new building? I definitely remember that and have relived it today. What an amazing day. I’m excited, worn out, my voice is gone (the plague of all teachers on the first day of school) but what a great day. I have some great kids. It was really cool to see some of the kids that I had in class in the past again. It was also nice to see a few familiar faces. The morning flew by and the afternoon did as well but it is hard to teach the same thing four times in a row. Luckily next week I will only teach the same thing twice.

Homeroom and Science Investigations went so fast just trying to get some of the basics done. Really all of today was expectations and getting to know the kids. That is one of the hardest things for me is learning all of the kids names. I have a few down but nowhere near all of them.

Broadcasting was really cool. I think that the kids were excited about what we are going to accomplish and a little nervous about all the work they have in front of them. I am confident that they will rise to the challenge. The broadcast kids did have homework today – they had to go home and watch TV, watching for the rule of thirds. I think the kids will be really surprised when they see how much it applies to everything on TV.

In science, we went over a lot of different topics including listening to the launch of the Space Shuttle. For homework tonight the kids have to read an article about the supposed Bigfoot that a couple of guys found and put in a freezer. I think it will lead to an interesting discussion in class tomorrow.

Almost Finished!

2008-07-24T19:45:00.000-05:00

Right now it is 7:28 pm and I am (hopefully) almost finished with my 90 second news story. We have been working since yesterday at noon on this news story. Our assignment was to go to Branson, Missouri and find someone interesting and create a news story about them. This time we were given a little more freedom and length to get it accomplished. Our target time was between 75-90 seconds. When we got to Branson we were kicking around a few different ideas.

We thought about doing a story about miniature golf, or an old time photo studio. We thought the photo studio might be interesting because we could do some old time effects on the video. We went into a photo studio and didn’t really find anything interesting. So my partner, Bob, and I decided we were hungry so we went to dinner at a Ruby Tuesday’s. Our server came up and we asked him who was interesting in Branson that was within walking distance. He said, “Even though I work at a Ruby Tuesday’s, I’m kind of interesting.” Daniel is going to be trying out for American Idol in a couple of weeks in Kansas City. That in itself was a pretty interesting story. Then he told us that he does the voice of the robot hillbilly at the IMAX theatre. They have a robot dressed up like a hillbilly at the theatre that talks to people and Daniel uses a microphone to do his voice. Now we had an even better story. Then the clincher was when he told us that he uses the robot hillbilly to get girl’s phone numbers and that he met his girlfriend that way. We had struck film making gold.

We were in Branson until around midnight last night and we have been editing the 20 minutes of video that we shot since 10:30 this morning. Our teacher has to come by and give us final approval but we are really close to getting done. The teachers are then putting them all together into a full news broadcast. When I get a copy of that, I will post it on here. I love our story but I’m so tired of it right now that I could puke. I think that is one of the things that is cool about this camp is that it is so hands on that it really makes you feel what our students will be feeling coming up.

On another related note, after everything I’ve learned this week, I dread looking back at the old KMH broadcasts. Not because the kids didn’t do a good job, or do exactly what I asked of them. The kids that have worked on KMH for the last seven years have been awesome. It is just that my knowledge base was so low. There are so many really simple things that I just didn’t know. Those simple things make the job of putting a news story together harder because you have so much to look for but I think the quality of our future broadcasts is going to be well above what we have done in the past. I haven’t had a TV all week (Yes, it is killing me) and I can’t wait to get home to watch it so that I can see where these same techniques are used.

More Drinking out of the Fire Hose

2008-07-21T22:30:00.001-05:00

I started broadcast camp on Sunday and again, I feel like I’m trying to drink out of a fire hose. I’m staying in a dorm room at Drury University. I’m roommates with guys from KC, Arkansas and Ohio. In my class there are people from 17 different states. I was even setting in class today net to a woman who knows my cousin that lives in South Carolina. Talk about a small world. Our first night of class was on Sunday and we immediately jumped into things. We actually didn’t get out of class on Sunday night until around 9:00 and that isn’t even out “late” night. This is the first formal education I have had in broadcasting and I have learned so much already. I have been trying to figure out how I’m going to teach my kids the basics of broadcasting while getting our first shows together. I had a few ideas that I was kicking around before this class and now I’m overloaded with ideas.

One of the cool things about this class is that we do lectures in the mornings about how to do different things, then in the afternoons we have assignments to practice them. Last night we had to work on different kinds of shots (Wide, Medium, Tight, Action, Reaction) and we did this by video taping a guy playing guitar. Today our assignment was to create a one minute movie with no sound that told a complete story (beginning, middle, end). We were given a topic and then we had about 2 ½ hours to brainstorm, make a shot list, film/act, and edit. I think ours turned out really good. Out topic was “Silly campers are locked inside a van.” So myself and one of my roommates, Bob, acted like we were dead and then scared our camp counselors. Eventually I will get a copy of that story and post it on here. We definitely made some mistakes but overall I was happy with the results. I think tomorrow we are talking more about putting a news story together so I’m pretty excited about that.

Tonight we went to Lambert’s restaurant, home of the Throwed Rolls. I ate way too much but had some great conversations with teachers from all over the country. If you’ve ever been to Lamberts, you know that it is always a long wait. I figured we would be there for hours when our teacher told us to listen for “Davis party of 44.” It actually only took us about a half hour to get everyone seated. I sat next to a teacher name Marty (again, small world) from Pennsylvania, there were also teachers from Arkansas, New Jersey, Iowa, South Carolina, and St. Louis at my table. I think was is really cool is to hear ideas from others who are excited about teaching. I don’t know how you could go to a class like this or the Space Foundation classes in Colorado Springs and not leave wanting to get back to the classroom and try this stuff out. It is 9:40 on Monday night, I already feel like I’ve been through a week of class but I will probably be up later staring a presentation for the first week of school for broadcasting. I hate the let these great ideas get out of my head.

Back in Class

2008-07-11T13:53:00.004-05:00

In my space suit!
The cardboard tubes are sun spot viewers
Viewing sun spots (DO NOT LOOK THROUGH A TELECOPE AT THE SUN)

I’m back in class in Colorado Springs. This time the class is Astronomy Principals for the Classroom: Kinesthetic Astronomy. It has been so much fun so far. The last couple of days we have been learning about telescopes and observatories. Tomorrow we have a lesson on black holes and then tomorrow night we are doing a star viewing. I just got in from looking at sunspots through a telescope (NEVER LOOK AT THE SUN THROUGH A TELESCOPE). What we did was hold paper up next to the eye piece and let the telescope project an image of the sun on the paper. The only bummer was that there were no sun spots today. Check out the link below to see if there are currently any sun spots.

Update – last night was our night viewing and it was really cool. We had 10-12 telescopes set up and were looking at the moon, Jupiter and Saturn. We could even see the rings on Saturn. Today is our last day of class. I’m kind of sad because this is my last Space Foundation class. I’ve taken five of them over the last 3 summers. They have all been amazing.

Looking through the telescope looking at the moon.

Jupiter

Picture of the moon I took through a telecope

Summer Trip

2008-07-11T08:59:00.003-05:00

I haven’t updated for a while because I have been crazy busy. My wife and I are currently on a three and a half week trip. We have gotten to see and do some amazing things. We are taking classes in Colorado Springs through the Space Foundation. We have finished up one week of class that was about the Biology of Space Travel. For the class we learned soooo much that I will have to go through my notes to remember it all. A couple of the highlights were riding the Barany Chair. This is a chair that spins really smoothly. They block out all other senses – so basically you wear a blindfold and ear muffs. You have to show which way you think you are spinning. I started out correct and then at some point while I was still spinning I felt like I was stopped, then I felt like I started spinning the other way. Then the teacher stopped me from spinning and I still felt like I was going. It was over 30 seconds before I felt like I was stopped. It was really an odd sensation. It has to do with the inner ear and how it senses directions. Kind of cool because it really made the microgravity flight and what I was feeling make more sense. During class we also designed space suits – of which I was my teams model – build glove boxes like they use in space and designed plant grown chambers. I also go some cinnamon basil seeds that flew with Barbara Morgan on STS-118. I can’t wait to get them home and start growing them.

Me riding the Barany Chair

After class got done on Friday we drove south to Albuquerque, New Mexico. I had never been there before but it was a pretty city. While there we went to the zoo. It was pretty cool with lots of animals that were on display in a way that made them pretty easy to see. Our next stop was really cool. We went to Meteor Crater in Arizona. This is the best preserved meteor impact site on the planet. It is a hole a mile across and 570 feet straight down. This is where NASA trained the Apollo astronauts on what to look for when they got to the moon. We took a tour that took us a half mile around the crater. It was really impressive. Apparently you can take a magnet and go through the dirt and pick up pieces of the original meteorite that were vaporized and re-solidified into little balls.

Standing at Meteor Crater in Arizona

After leaving Meteor Crater we took off for the Grand Canyon. I had never been there before. We were trying to make it by sunset. We missed it by about 10 minutes. When we first walked toward the edge (Note: I do NOT like heights so for most of this trip I was really pushing myself and getting outside my comfort zone. It took a while but I ended up on a trail that was right at the edge and dropped over a mile into the canyon.) My first impression of the Grand Canyon was that it honestly looked fake. It was so big/enormous/huge/massive that at first I couldn’t comprehend how big it was. We stayed about a half mile from the canyon at Yavapai Lodge. If you have a chance to go to the Grand Canyon, I highly recommend it. The night we got there it happened to be the night of a star party. This is where amature astronomers bring out their telescopes and let people look though them. We saw several different galaxies, and Jupiter. We could see the bands of Jupiter and four of the moons. The next day we spent most of the day at the Grand Canyon. We took a bus ride that dropped us off at several points where you could walk out onto cliffs that were dangling by a thread over the canyon. Seriously, who looks at the Grand Canyon and says to themselves, “you know I think we should put a trail out on that 2 foot wide rock but lets leave the guard rails off. “ Apparently the National Parks Service. Still, the park was beautiful and I am still impressed with the magnitude of the Canyon. I would go back in a second.

My wife and I at the Grand Canyon. This is about as close as I got to the edge.

Yesterday we drove to Phoenix, Arizona to go to the zoo (my wife loves zoos and I drag her to all kinds of historical and scientific places – battlefields, meteor crater, petrified forest, Hoover Dam, etc. – that the least I can do is go to a zoo occasionally.) This one just about killed us. We got there at 9:00 and the temperature was over 100 degrees. Even the giraffes were laying down. Snakes were going, “man is it hot!” Coolest thing at that zoo were the turtles. I counted over 40 turtles in a little pond that you walked over to get into the zoo. That night we went to an Arizona Diamondbacks game. It was way cool. I played baseball in college and love going to games. I tried out for 20+ major and minor league teams when I was in college so I really enjoy seeing other ballparks and how they do things, especially now that I work for the Royals occasionally. We got hooked up with some free tickets and a personal tour of the field. They have an amazing facility. The prices are pretty reasonable (I got a hat and T-shirt for $15). They even had sushi (I passed) and Chinese food. The Diamondbacks won and we had a great time at the game. Thanks Casey!

Today we are on our way to Las Vegas. We will be there for a few days over the 4th of July. Right now I am in the car typing this. My wife is driving and we are about 40 miles from going over the Hoover Dam. I really want to see it and later this week we will be coming back to take the tour. A cool side note about the desert. Right now I am watching 4 dust devils work their way across the desert. Kind of weird coming from tornado alley, the instinct is to go dive into a ditch but they are kind of cool to watch. After I take the tour of the dam, I will post more.

A Change in the Blog

2008-06-06T10:52:00.000-05:00

The name of this blog officially changed today from Room 42 Daily to Mr. Kelsey’s Class. I’m not sure if I like this title yet but it will work for now. I have been enjoying my time off since school let out. I’ve been to a T-Bones game, went to see Indiana Jones, slept in a little bit, and had a day of technology training. I got some details finalized for the broadcast program for South Valley Middle School. The name of the program will officially be the Knightly Knews. It will begin the year as a weekly broadcast and hopefully by the end of each quarter we will be doing daily broadcasts.

In two weeks my wife and I leave for Colorado Springs for two weeks of classes offered through the Space Foundation. We will both finish up the first half of a master’s degree this summer in curriculum and instruction with an emphasis in space studies. Between the two classes we are taking we have 9 days off and will be driving to the Grand Canyon, Meteor Crater, Phoenix for an Arizona Diamondbacks game, and then a few days in Las Vegas. Once we return from Colorado I have a week off and then I go to Springfield for a broadcasting camp. It will be a busy summer but it should be a lot of fun. Be sure to stay tuned for updates.

How Far is It

2008-04-28T14:13:00.002-05:00

Today in science class we created scale models of how far it is from the Earth to the Moon. The kids predicted that the moon would be no more than 2-3 meters away on our scale model. When they actually created the model they were amazed at how far away it was. (It is 10x the circumference of the earth or 240,000 miles away.) In our model the moon (a baseball) was about halway down the hall from the earth (a globe).

Where the Red Fern Grows

2008-04-21T11:23:00.001-05:00

Today we started reading my favorite book of all time, Where the Red Fern Grows. For this in class project we will be reading the book both together and independently. Students will then respond to questions that are posted on the Red Fern Book Blog. For these questions, I really want the kids to bring in their own personal experience. Some of the answers I have seen on this project in the past have been touching, funny, and unbelievably thoughtful.

I would love for anyone interested to join us on our journey through the Red Fern. Don’t worry, I won’t grade anyone but the students. If you are in need of a copy of the book, let me know and I will be glad to loan you one. I have 5 copies left. First come first served. If you want to answer the questions with us, you can log in as anonymous and answer the questions. The only thing that I ask is that you put your name on the post so I know who it is coming from. If you have any questions, feel free to email me.

Red Fern Book Blog Link:
http://redfernbookblog.blogspot.com/

Room 42 Daily Featured in Cable in the Classroom Magazine

2008-04-16T10:25:00.000-05:00

Yes, you read correctly. This blog is featured in this month’s edition of Cable in the Classroom Magazine. There is a great article about how I use the blog to communicate and there are some great pictures there also. Click on the link below and then click on the Homeroom to Home link.

http://www.ciconline.org/cicmagazine-may08

Adopted Soldier

2008-04-15T20:19:00.002-05:00

Okay, so I’ve been really slacking lately and not getting updates on here. I will attempt to rectify that in the future.

Today we got a special surprise. Several Months ago we “adopted” a soldier who was stationed in Iraq. He is the future brother in law of one of our kids. We sent him a big batch of letters and a small care package. I found out last week that he was in town on a two week leave and wanted to come by and thank the kids for sending the stuff over. Today Kerry stopped by and the kids were completely surprised. We had a great talk about what it was like in Iraq (we learned about the food, bed times, body armor, and the kids). We also sent home with him one of the flags that went on the weightless flight. Check out the pictures below!

Exchange City Pictures

2008-04-02T10:08:00.005-05:00

Finally, I have found an extra minute to post the pictures from Exchange City, sorry for the delay.

A New Opportunity!

2008-03-31T20:13:00.001-05:00

It became official today. I will not be returning to Manor Hill next year. I have accepted a position at South Valley Middle School. While I am sad to be leaving Manor Hill, I am excited to be starting a new position. I have been at Manor Hill for the last 9 years. Actually, I have been there for the past 9 ½ years, since I student taught there as well. It will be really hard to leave that last day of school this year. At South Valley, I will be starting a broadcast program. I will actually have a studio and we will be producing live daily broadcast. I will also be teaching seventh grade science. I think both of these will be a lot of work, very challenging and a lot of fun. I told the class today and at first I don’t think they quite knew what to think but when I told them that I could be there teacher again in two years, they actually cheered. That meant so much to me.

Playing for the KC Royals . . . I wish!

2008-03-27T20:28:00.001-05:00

Okay, this really doesn’t have a lot to do with school but I thought it was really cool so I wanted to post it. I have a new summer job. I will be helping run the scoreboard at Kauffman Stadium this year. It is nothing major, and at this point I don’t even know exactly what I’m doing or how many games I will get to work. I'm sure that my job will be very minor, however, just going to the first meeting last night was really cool. The scoreboard is PHENOMINAL! Imagine the size of the old scoreboard only this time it is all (no border) high definition. They had it on last night when I drove up and I couldn’t believe how awesome it was. Literally peoples jaws will drop when they walk into the stadium next year. A couple of cool things that I got to see last night were the control room (multi-million dollar). Wall to wall computers and video equipment, my KMH brain was spinning. They also use a program called Final Cut Pro that I have looked at using for KMH. Just the scope of what they do and the equipment that they use was amazing. Next week I have another meeting where I think I will find out more of what I will be doing and they will be doing a detailed run through of what a game will be like. I will post updates when I know more.

MAP Prep

2008-03-25T19:35:00.001-05:00

This week we are going to work really hard on getting ready for the MAP test. To do this we are taking some practice tests and we will be going over them in class. I think it is really important for the kids to not only know what questions they got right or wrong but also to see why they got questions wrong. This week we will also be hitting our normal math lessons hard in order to get to the beginning of unit 9 which involves coordinate planes. I have a feeling that this might be a skill that is tested on the MAP test.

Spring Break

2008-03-24T19:56:00.001-05:00

Wow, this whole blogging thing really seems foreign to me after having basically not blogged for the last three weeks. I had the flu which knocked me out for a week. I have never had anything hit me like that. I was so sick that when I was home, I did nothing other than eat a little soup and sleep. This week has been spring break and I did a lot of little random things. My wife and I went to the zoo one day, and saw the movie Vantage Point. I worked on a grant for next year and did some work around my house. I even got a new barbeque grill put together. I even got a chance to get some reading done. I’m currently reading Honeymoon with My Brother, a book that was recommended to me last summer. I can’t put it down. It is really good. I’m also reading a biography of Chris Kraft, a member of mission control for much of the Apollo space program. I also had an opportunity to hit several book stores and picked up a few books. I hate finishing a book and not having something new to read. I got a book by Bob Woodward, who was a part of the Watergate scandal during the Nixon administration. I got a book written by Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins about the trip to the moon. I also got a book called 102 minutes about the World Trade Center. Those should keep me busy for a while.

We have one week at school before the MAP tests start. This week we will be working on several different projects that we need to get done so that when we have limited time because of the MAP test, we will be able to get some things done. The biggest thing about the MAP test is to make sure that the kids are at school every day and at school on time. We will start right after school starts and go basically until lunch. Anyone that comes in late will have to sit in office until we get to a break, then will miss the afternoon to take makeup tests.

Math Casts

2008-02-28T13:29:00.003-06:00

Despite the short day, we were able to get a lot accomplished today, especially for our Math Casts. I don’t know if I have mentioned this project or not. The students have each been given a math problem. They now must create a short movie explaining exactly how to solve this problem. Students are working in pairs and today spent a good deal of time just figuring out the steps needed to solve the problem. (Most of them could solve the problem easy enough but had trouble breaking it down into steps and explaining each step). Next week we will work on our final storyboards and on creating the steps and taking digital pictures. The last step will be putting it all together in Movie Maker and narrating it. Once all of the projects are done, I will post them online and students will be able to watch them to review for their test.

Enjoy your long weekend!

More Wax Museum Pictures - Finally

2008-02-27T08:25:00.002-06:00

After much delay, and looking at my house, I found the cable to connect my old camera to the computer and I was able to download the lat two wax museum pictures. Brittany and Madison, sorry about the delay. You both had great costumes and did well on your presentation. This was even the first year that I had a "peg leg."

Parent Teacher Conferences

2008-02-26T12:45:00.002-06:00

Just a short post today about Parent Teacher Conferences tonight, I know I won’t have much time after school to get anything posted. As soon as school is out it will be a quick dinner (at 4:00) time for a quick pit stop and then conferences until almost 8:00. I look forward to seeing everyone tonight. Remember, these are student led conferences, so the kids need to be in attendance. If they are not present, conferences will be really short. If you are unsure of your conference schedule, click on the link below to go the Room 42 web page. The schedule is on the front page, just scroll down to see it.

Room 42 Web Page

Exchange City Mania

2008-02-25T15:48:00.000-06:00

Two words pretty much sum up this week. Exchange City. This week will be spent on getting ready for Exchange City. Applications, resumes, cover letters, shop meetings, interview, and a million other little details to get ready for the day. Tomorrow we meet with Mr. Fisher to go over interview techniques. Our class will be doing interviews for their jobs on Monday, March 3rd. Students need to dress appropriately and will need to have their resumes, job applications, and cover letters done by then. We have two hours of computer lab time in the next two days, I am pretty sure that we will get all of that done at school in plenty of time.

Extra Pictures

2008-02-22T16:14:00.002-06:00

As I was looking through some pictures on my computer today I came across a couple additional photos that I thought I would share. These are pretty much just random pictures of different class projects that we have worked on this year. Also, I have not forgotten, I am still looking for the cable that I need in order to get the rest of the Wax Museum pictures off my old camera.

Happy Unexpected Snow Day Part 2

2008-02-22T16:02:00.002-06:00

I really was not expecting the call this morning saying that we didn’t have school. I love the snow day but I know that we have to make it up, probably at the end of the year. That won’t be as much fun. I have actually gotten a lot done today. I wanted to take a little bit of time to post some pictures of the lunar eclipse this week. I braved the cold and spent probably too much time outside taking pictures. If you didn’t get a chance to see it, you missed a great show. A lunar eclipse is when the Earth passes between the moon and the sun. Basically the earth casts a shadow on the moon. Everything started about 7:45 and you could just see a slim shadow starting to creep across the moon. At around 9:45 the shadow completely covered the moon. Now, you could still see the moon but it took on this really cool reddish shade. The pictures here in order and are fairly small. I had a really good camera (Thanks again Brian and Gina) but the moon is a really looooong way away. The pictures are good enough, however, to see the shadow. Enjoy the pictures. If anyone else took any that turned out well, I would love to see them.

Happy unexpected snow day!

2008-02-22T15:57:00.001-06:00

What did you do on your snow day? I got to go to school. I was already scheduled to be gone for a technology conference in Lee’s Summit. So when I got the phone call this morning saying that school was cancelled, I was almost ready to leave. There was a debate about if we were going to go or not. We decided to go so I spent the day in Lee’s Summit. I’m actually in a session right now about email and blogging. I presented a session today about how to create a news broadcast program. My session went really well – I really think that a couple of the people in my session might be going back to their schools and start a broadcast program. It kind of stinks that I didn’t get to sleep in today on the snow day (my wife had school in KCK) but I think I have learned a lot today, not only from the sessions that I was in but from the other teachers that went along. I am always amazed at what great ideas a group of teachers in a van (on really bad roads) can come up with.

Eclipse and Pictures

2008-02-20T14:49:00.002-06:00

Just a few pictures today of our Exchange City Job Fair. Also, don’t forget that tonight is the total lunar eclipse. The observatory at William Jewell is open but you can see it from your back yard. It will start around 7:45 and be in totatlity (when the earth completely blocks the sun from hitting the moon) around 10:00. If you go out to see it, stay warm!

Hectic Schedule

2008-02-19T15:41:00.000-06:00

Today the fifth grade teachers were working on our schedule for the next few weeks and let me tell you, hectic is the word to describe it. With trying to coordinate Exchange City lessons, lessons with Mr. Fisher for Exchange City, interviews with Mr. Williams and Mrs. Cunningham, and the lessons we have to teach, it has been difficult. We think we finally have everything scheduled. Not only do we have to schedule all of that but we have to schedule all of that around Spanish, strings, computer lab, library, and book fair preview, and an early release. We think we finally have a schedule that will work . . until something else comes up.

Today the kids created posters for the different shops at Exchange City and tomorrow they will be traveling around looking at the different posters to see which shops, and specifically which jobs they want at Exchange City. Later this week we will be working on applications and check book writing practice. Mr. Fisher has already begun the process of creating resumes and will soon hit cover letters. Also, all of the kids will be interviewing for their jobs this year. We will talk about interview techniques and appropriate dress. Right now we are scheduled to interview on Tuesday, March 26.

VFW Award

2008-02-18T21:10:00.002-06:00

This weekend I was honored to receive an award from the VFW. My mom is a member of the local ladies auxiliary. My grandfather was a WWII veteran who served in Germany as a barber. I was chosen from the Liberty post of the VFW and entered in the district competition which I won. I got to attend the district VFW meeting on Saturday to receive my award. I have to tell you, it is a very powerful thing to be in a room of so many men who helped protect our country. One of the coolest things from the meeting was the pledge of allegiance. That group of people, didn’t just say the pledge, you could tell by the conviction in their voices that they mean every single word of it. Several students were honored for participating in the Voices of Democracy essay contest. This is a contest open to students in 6-12th grades. I highly encourage students to enter this contest when they can. Each of the winners not only received recognition at the district meeting but also a nice certificate or plaque and the top winners even got savings bonds.

The award that I won was for teaching patriotism and citizenship. In my application I talked about writing letters to soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, bringing flags with me on the microgravity flight, and included pictures from some of the historical places that I have been that I use in the classroom. From what I understand, they said that I was close to making it to the national competition. It was a great honor to get this award from the VFW. I will be proudly displaying my certificate in the classroom starting on Tuesday.

Great Picture

2008-02-18T21:07:00.002-06:00

I had to post this picture because I thought it was awesome. This is my little niece, riding her Space Shuttle that we got her for Christmas.

Space Station

2008-02-15T19:54:00.002-06:00

I just got in from freezing a little bit but also taking some really cool pictures. The International Space Station docked with the Space Shuttle passed over Liberty tonight. It was unbelievably bright. I will post later how to see it when it comes over. The way that I took these pictures was by shooting an 8 second exposure. The three pictures I have posted here show just the space station (looks like a streak) just coming into view. The second is taken as it passed near the moon (not literally but from where I was looking it was near the moon). The final one, and one of my favorites is of the station and shuttle passing over Manor Hill.

Happy Valentines Day

2008-02-14T14:10:00.002-06:00

Today I want to tell you about a lesson that I did in class today. Usually I don’t go into this much detail but I think this is a really cool lesson that is centered on a great (and the research I have done – true) story. A couple of weeks ago I talked to the kids about writing positive comments for each other. We talked about what a really good comment would be. We then used a blog (mainly to save me time) and the kids wrote a comment about each student in room 42. This week I have been compiling those lists. Today in class I read a story (see below) about a teacher, student, and soldier in the Vietnam War. You might want to read the story below now. After reading the story, we read the book The Wall and talked about the monument in Washington DC. After that, we unfolded a miniature scale model (see picture) and found Mark Eklund’s name. I also showed them a tracing of a real name on the wall (by the way, anyone heading to DC anytime soon, I would LOVE a tracing of Mark Eklund’s name). The last part of the lesson was to pass out each kids own list of positive comments. I think they really enjoyed reading these, and I love doing this lesson on Valentines Day. On a side note, I was talking to a former student yesterday who was in my class 8 years ago. She still had the list of positive comments that I had done back then.

Here is the story:
He was in the first third grade class I taught at Saint Mary’s School in Morris, Minn. All 34 of my students were dear to me, but Mark Eklund was one in a million. Very neat in appearance, but had that happy-to-be-alive attitude that made even his occasional mischievousness delightful. Mark talked incessantly. I had to remind him again and again that talking without permission was not acceptable. What impressed me so much, though, was his sincere response every time I had to correct him for misbehaving - “Thank you for correcting me, Sister!” I didn’t know what to make of it at first, but before long I became accustomed to hearing it many times a day. One morning my patience was growing thin when Mark talked once too often, and then I made a novice teacher’s mistake. I looked at Mark and said, If you say one more word, I am going to tape your mouth shut!” It wasn’t ten seconds later when Chuck blurted out, “Mark is talking again.” I hadn’t asked any of the students to help me watch Mark, but since I had stated the punishment in front of the class, I had to act on it. I remember the scene as if it had occurred this morning. I walked to my desk, very deliberately opened my drawer and took out a roll of masking tape. Without saying a word, I proceeded to Mark’s desk, tore off two pieces of tape and made a big X with them over his mouth. I then returned to the front of the room. As I glanced at Mark to see how he was doing, he winked at me. That did it! I started laughing. The class cheered as I walked back to Mark’s desk, removed the tape, and shrugged my shoulders. His first words were, “Thank you for correcting me, Sister.” At the end of the year, I was asked to teach junior-high math. The years flew by, and before I knew it Mark was in my classroom again. He was more handsome than ever and just as polite. Since he had to listen carefully to my instruction in the “new math,” he did not talk as much in ninth grade as he had in third. One Friday, things just didn’t feel right. We had worked hard on a new concept all week, and I sensed that the students were frowning, frustrated with themselves and edgy with one another. I had to stop this crankiness before it got out of hand. So I asked them to list the names of the other students in the room on two sheets of paper, leaving a space between each name. Then I told them to think of the nicest thing they could say about each of their classmates and write it down. It took the remainder of the class period to finish their assignment, and as the students left the room, each one handed me the papers. Charlie smiled. Mark said, “Thank you for teaching me, Sister. Have a good weekend.” That Saturday, I wrote down the name of each student on a separate sheet of paper, and I listed what everyone else had said about that individual. On Monday I gave each student his or her list Before long, entire class was smiling. Really?” I heard whispered. “I never knew that meant anything to anyone!” I didn’t know others liked me so much.” No one ever mentioned those papers in class again. I never knew if they discussed them after class or with their parents, but it didn’t matter. The exercise had accomplished its purpose. The students were happy with themselves and one another again. That group of students moved on. Several years later, after I returned from vacation, my parents met me at the airport. As we were driving home, Mother asked me the usual questions about the trip, the weather, my experiences in general. There was a lull in the conversation. Mother gave Dad a sideways glance and simply says, “Dad?” My father cleared his throat as he usually did before something important. “The Eklunds called last night,” he began “Really?” I said. “I haven’t heard from them in years. I wonder how Mark is.” Dad responded quietly. “Mark was killed in Vietnam,” he said. “The funeral is tomorrow, and his parents would like it if you could attend.” To this day I can still point to the exact spot on I-494 where Dad told me about Mark. I had never seen a serviceman in a military coffin before. Mark looked so handsome, so mature. All I could think at that moment was, “Mark, I would give all the masking tape in the world if only you would talk to me.” The church was packed with Mark’s friends Chuck’s sister sang “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Why did it have to rain on the day of the funeral? It was difficult enough at the graveside. The pastor said the usual prayers, and the bugler played taps. One by one those who loved Mark took a last walk by the coffin and sprinkled it with holy water. I was the last one to bless the coffin. As I stood there, one of the soldiers who acted as pallbearer came up to me. Were you Mark’s math teacher?” he asked. I nodded as I continued to stare at the coffin. “Mark talked about you a lot,” he said. After the funeral, most of Mark’s former classmates headed to Chuck’s farmhouse for lunch. Mark’s mother and father were there, obviously waiting for me. “We want to show you something, his father said, taking a wallet out of his pocket. “They found this on Mark when he was killed. We thought you might recognize it.” Opening the billfold, he carefully removed two worn pieces of notebook paper that had obviously been taped, folded and refolded many times. I knew without looking that the papers were the ones on which I had listed all the good things each of Mark’s classmates had said about him. “Thank you so much for doing that,” Mark’s mother said. “As you can see, Mark treasured it.” Mark’s classmates started to gather around us. Charlie smiled rather sheepishly and said, “I still have my list. I keep it in the top drawer of my desk at home.” Chuck’s wife said, “Chuck asked me to put his in our wedding album.””I have mine too,” Marilyn said. “It’s in my diary.” Then Vicki, another classmate, reached into her pocketbook, took out her wallet and showed her worn and frazzled list to the group. I carry this with me at all times,” Vicki said without batting an eyelash. “I think we all saved our lists.” That’s when I finally sat down and cried. I cried for Mark and for all his friends who would never see him again. The density of people in society is so thick that we forget that life will end one day. And we don’t know when that one day will be. So please, tell the people you love and care for, that they are special and important. Tell them, before it is too late.

Unwrapping

2008-02-13T15:19:00.001-06:00

Today was spent working on science. The entire 5th grade actually had subs today. (At last report, the class was doing great) We spent the entire day unwrapping science GLE’s. A GLE is a grade level expectation. The unwrapping process is actually kind of cool but very time consuming. I won’t go into the whole process of it but let’s just say that we have been working for most of the year to get these done and we finally completed the task today. We also were able to plan out some upcoming science lessons. I love planning. I really do. I love the ideas that I can come up with on my own and I also love bouncing ideas off of other to see what they think. Mr. E and I have a great relationship in that way. Many times we are on exactly the same page but sometimes we are on complete opposites. What is so cool about this is that even when we disagree – bottom line is we both know that we are trying to do what is best for the kids. A lot fo times I will disagree at first and then after hearing his entire idea, like it. And he is the exact same way with me. We got a ton accomplished today including finishing up the unwrapping process as well as getting our next couple of science units planned out.

Tomorrow is the valentines party and I have a very special lesson planned. I will be sure to take a couple of pictures and post them tomorrow.

Hot

2008-02-12T16:21:00.001-06:00

That pretty much describes the day. When I got to school this morning the air conditioner was on. I got it turned off but the heat cannot be turned off so we had a hot room today. The kids did a great job of not complaining and getting their work done. We were able to finish up a science experiment and learned to subtract positive and negative numbers. We will definitely be reviewing that concept more in the upcoming days.

More Pictures Coming Soon

2008-02-11T15:32:00.000-06:00

I have two more pictures to post of the wax museum. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a memory chip in my camera when I took the pictures – don’t worry, I still have them – but I need a particular cable to connect to the computer and for the life of my, I can’t find it right now. I am going to look at home again tonight (I looked for about two minutes this morning) and once I find the cable, I will put the pictures up.

This afternoon was dominated by science. What I have been really impressed with is how much effort the kids have been putting into planning the science experiments we do. The kids have a Science Methods page that they use that walks them through the scientific method. It also has them detail who is going to do what during the experiment and makes them list the different steps. We are still working on getting them done the first time without some help but the progress we have made has been amazing. The kids spent a huge chunk of the afternoon just planning the experiment for tomorrow. I think this will be our most successful experiment yet (maybe not in results but in using the scientific method.)

Wax Museum Pictures

2008-02-07T15:15:00.001-06:00

Solid, Liquid, and Gas Molecules

2008-02-05T15:45:00.000-06:00

Today we had an opportunity to do a little bit of role playing. We played the roles of the molecules in a solid, liquid, and gas. It was really interesting to see the kid figure out that when they were a gas they could spread out and have more energy. It was especially funny when they were a solid and had to gather really close together.

Tomorrow is the Wax Museum. I’m a little nervous right now that speeches and costumes are not going to be finished in time. The kids have had a week to work on this. All of their research was finished in class so they should be good to go for finishing up their speeches. I love presentation day because the costumes are always great. I can’t wait to see them. Be watching here for pictures.

Liberty Tribune

2008-02-04T15:34:00.000-06:00

If you haven’t seen it already, KMH: Patriot News was featured in the Liberty Tribune last week. We had a huge article about us and a great picture of Hadei and Darcy. It was even above the fold (that’s newspaper lingo for an important story that is placed above the horizontal fold in the newspaper. This is a big deal because when the newspapers are in the boxes those stories show). I am extremely pumped about this article and about the fact that we have produced four weekly broadcasts and have a road map to produce a lot more before the end of the year.

Click on the link below to go to the online article:

http://www.kccommunitynews.com/articles/2008/02/01/liberty_tribune/schools/doc47a0ad4d1fb8c158476508.txt

Wax Museum

2008-01-31T15:51:00.000-06:00

Yesterday we started working on our Wax Museum projects. I love this project because it is really different from a lot of others that we do. For this project the kids are researching revolutionary war figures. They then create a business card for their person and a short speech as if they were that person. The final step is to create a costume. The costumes are the really fun part. There is a $10 limit. I DO NOT want the kids to rent a costume. I want them to make it. Some of the best costumes I have ever had are ones that were made from a $3 suit jacket from the thrift store or from a brown paper bag. You can bet that I will be posting pictures of the costumes. For our presentations, the kids will become their person and will give their speech whenever someone “pushes their button” (Stickers on their desk). We basically have all of our research done and now the kids can concentrate on their speeches and costumes.

KMH: Band of Vultures

2008-01-30T20:10:00.001-06:00

Today KMH: Patriot News got an opportunity to present our program at the Show Me TechKnowledge Student Showcase. This is a type of lobbying event put on my MoreNet. They are the people that provide all of the Internet connections for schools. Basically they want to show what great things the students of Missouri are doing with technology.

We left this morning at 4:30. Yes, you read that right. We left liberty at 4:30 in the morning. A huge thanks to the parents for getting the kids there. We also traveled with the broadcast students from South Valley Junior High. We set up our booth in Jefferson City at about 8:00. We had a quick breakfast in Boonville at McDonalds. I have to say, our booth looked really good. We had a big display board, an “on air” light, a clacker, a stack of handouts and business cards as well as a laptop with our broadcast playing on a loop all day long. Last week the kids began working on a little speech that they could use to tell people. We were so busy getting other stuff ready to go that the speech got put off and only got finalized last Thursday. On the bus on the way down, the kids started practicing and almost immediately after getting set up we had people coming to our booth to see our project. After a short bout with the giggles, the student did amazing. I cannot tell you how proud I was of them. We were keeping tally marks to keep track of how many people the kids talked to (31 was the winner and a total of over 94 people that we told about KMH). I stressed with the kids that they had to stop people to tell them about our program. They did AWESOME! They were actually nicknamed the “vultures” because anyone that came within 50 yards got tracked down and told about KMH. There is no way that I could have gone up to adults – much less state senators and representatives – and started a conversation but the kids did it and it was really cool to see them get more confident all day long.

There were several highlights of the day. Highlight #1: Representative Tim Flook stopped by the booth (he is a former Manor Hill student) and asked us if we wanted to go into the chamber for the opening of the House of Representatives. Representative Flook then got the attention of the speaker of the house and introduced us to everyone and they gave us a big round of applause. Our names will actually be in the official register. I’m not sure how to find that online but if you know, please email me. Representative Flook then stopped back by the booth to do a mini interview. Highlight #2: Representative Holsman took the time to stop by the booth for a photo op with the kids and a quick interview. I have bad feeling that the audio from that interview may not turn out but he was really great with the kids.
Highlight #3: Seeing the kids really embrace the roll of representing Manor Hill, and Liberty Public Schools and do a phenomenal job with it.

Highlight #4: Senator Luanne Ridgeway stopped by our booth and talked to the kids and did a mini interview. When she was done she asked us if we had a couple of minutes. We of course said yes. She said, “follow me. The Senate isn’t in session right now lets go onto the floor and take a look around. Bring your cameras.” So we followed her down onto the floor of the Senate and got to go to her desk and she gave a great guided tour of the room. This was way cool. I had never been in the Senate Chamber before and to be on the floor was really a great experience for the kids. Then she said follow me again and took the kids up to the podium at the front of the room. Podium is the wrong word, it is really the dais. She explained how to preside over the senate. She then banged the gavel and took several pictures with the kids. She then took us over to the House floor and showed us around there, and finally took us into the Thomas Hart Benton mural room. She was fantastic with the kids.
Highlight #5: Our final stop of the day was at Central Dairy. If you have ever been to Jefferson City and have not stopped at Central Dairy, you haven’t really been to Jefferson City. They have the best ice cream in the world. My dad used to take my brother and I there when we were kids and we would get a banana split that was larger than my head. We all got a large ice cream (4 scoops) and it only cost $10!
Overall it was a great trip for everyone. We got a lot of compliments from everyone not only about KMH but also about how well the kids did. Almost every adult that talked to the kids came up to me and told me what a good job they did.

Top Ten

2008-01-27T13:55:00.000-06:00

A friend of mine, Eric Langhorst has a podcast that he produces that is unbelievable. If you want to check it out, go to http://www.speakingofhistory.blogspot.com/ . Many of the ideas that I use in class, I have “borrowed” from him. I have been lucky enough to attend several technology conferences with Eric and many times I get more out of our conversations than I do from the sessions. Eric has been named the Missouri Teacher of the Year and I cannot think of anyone who is more deserving.

Recently on his website he talked about his top ten pictures from 2007. I thought this was a great idea. Anyone who knows me knows that I take a TON of pictures. (1500 in a week at Disneyworld, another 1200 in a short week for the space shuttle launch, 800 over two weeks of class in Colorado Springs with the majority of those being taken while scared to death going up Pikes Peak.) I thought it would be a cool idea to do a top ten pictures of 2007. Now I will say that I didn’t take all of these pictures. I will give credit where credit is due. Some were taken with my camera, just not by me. I may end up adding a couple others later just because it was SOOOO hard to narrow it to ten. Here they are.

Number 10
This picture was possibly taken in 2006 but it was really close to midnight. This one was actually taken by my wife at my cousin’s wedding. On the right is my dad, and on the left is my uncle Paul who has since passed away. Even in the last year of his life, he was one of the toughest guys I have ever known. He had the strongest hands of anyone I've ever met.

Number 9
This picture just makes me smile. I took this one using Steve’s camera. Steve is the guy in the picture. Steve has a great camera. While I was in Florida for the space shuttle launch, we had some time to go to the beach. I don’t swim so I became the official group photographer. I think this picture looks great, like a real surfing picture. I say a “real” surfing picture because the truth is that while they were really surfing, where this picture was taken they were close to shore and there was only about a foot of water. Number 8A

Okay, so I was having some technical difficulties in finding the picture I really wanted to use for number 8 so for now I've included this one (which is one that I wanted to include anyway but didn't know where). This is of my wife, brother, and sister-in-law. The part that I really like on this one is where it was taken. It was taken by my cousin at a creek near Jefferson City. Actually near my mom's hometown of Loose Creek (this might actually be Loose Creek). Anyway, when my brother and I were kids my dad would take us to this creek to skip rocks. I was way better than my brother.

Number 8
This picture was taken actually by nobody. While we were going up Pike’s Peak, we stopped at this beautiful valley (not really a valley but I’m not sure what else to call it, actually it was more like the top edge of a valley or at least we could see the valley below.) No one took this picture because we sat the camera up on a mini tripod. I love this picture because even though I’m smiling, I’m scared to death. The actual name of the place where this picture was taken was Devil’s Playground and it is the last stop before you get to the top of Pike’s Peak.

Number 7
This one was taken from the rehearsal dinner at my wedding. In it are my dad and brother, my cousins, Mr. Eltiste, my wife’s brother and cousin, and a couple of my other good friends. We had given everyone baseball bats as gifts for being in the wedding.

Number 6
The only thing I don’t like about this picture is that it is taken over a parking lot. What you want to look at are the clouds in the sky. They actually aren’t clouds. That is the trail from the Space Shuttle 4 or 5 hours after the launch. They were completely lit up at sunset. It took us a long time to get back to Cocoa Beach after the launch and we went to this little place on the beach to have dinner and as we were walking to the car we noticed the clouds, there hadn’t been another cloud in the sky all day long. It was an absolutely perfect way to end a great day. Number 5
This one was taken by the photographer for Zero G. I just love this picture because I think it pretty much sums up the microgravity flight.
Number 4
Okay, so I had to include a couple of Disney photos. I read that something like 4% of all pictures taken are taken at Disneyworld! I don’t doubt that, I definitely added my to that total. I actually don’t know the name of the person that took this one, it was a member fo the Dream Squad. As my wife and I walked into the park these two people came up to us and asked us if we were going to be riding one of the roller coasters. We said yes and they asked us which one. We told them Tower of Terror. The whole time I’m thinking, “sweet – we’re going to get front of the line passes” Boy was I wrong, they asked us to help open the park. We got to be the first ones into the park, had to say some lines for the opening ceremonies and got to ride in Walt Disney’s car to the front of the Tower of Terror. Then we were the only two in the car to ride it. Talk about amazing. This picture is fairly rare, notice that there is no one in the background. You never see that, there are always people in all of the pictures. Number 3
I took this one and it is one of my favorite pictures of all time. My wife, Sarah, latched onto this HUGE stuffed animal and started to give me those puppy dog eyes. It is a good thing that we flew to Florida because otherwise I’m pretty sure that Eeoyore would have been coming back to Liberty. Number 2
Nothing can ever come close to capturing the power and awe that you experience at a Space Shuttle launch, you truly have to be there. I love this picture, it is one of only 4 that I took during the launch. The first three just show little bits of smoke coming out and then I got this one.

Number 1
No explanation needed.

Internet Safety Night

2008-01-15T09:19:00.000-06:00

Tonight is Manor Hill’s first ever internet safety night. I am really excited about this event, I think it is going to go really well. My only concern is how many people are going to show up. I know that other schools have had similar events and have had really low turnout. I think this is an incredibly important topic, one that a lot of parents are not aware of. If you were on the fence about coming, even if you have smaller kids, I would definitely encourage you to come. First let me say that there is going to be free babysitting for school age kids available. Second, we are going to be giving away a door prize to someone that comes tonight. Office Depot donated an MP3 player for us to give away. Finally, I am doing the first 45 minutes of the presentation and I frankly, scared myself with some of the information that I found. I like ot think of myself as a technologically savvy guy. I use technology extensively in my class and at home. My wife and I actually set up a wiki page so that we could keep track of shopping lists, recipes, etc. I was absolutely amazed at some of the things I learned while researching this presentation. I read three different books and looked at a bunch of different articles and web sites and every one of them presented something new. I am anticipating many gasps tonight when parents see what I have in the presentation. I have some acronyms that kids are using for text messaging that will blow some people away. I surveyed the entire 5th grade at Manor Hill about internet safety and the statistics are startling! Next, I have a mini presentation called “The Orange Penguin” that shows one scenario of what could happen online. Finally, I end the presentation with a list of hints for parents to help keep their kids safe. Many of them are common sense things but I am hoping that after the first part of the presentation they will really sink in. I told my class yesterday that don’t be surprised if their parents come home tomorrow night and want to talk.

The presentation tonight will end with Mrs. Green, our school librarian giving a talk about all of the really cool things that can be done online. She is going to show how to access some of the library resources, pay lunch accounts online and hopefully end the evening on a really positive note. If time permits, I also want to show a short (5 minute) video called “Shift Happens”. There are two versions of this video and I like the original better than the updated one. They both have basically the same information in them. It is basically statistics put to music but they are amazing, especially when you put them into the context of what our kids are up against in a global society. I don’t have a link to put below but if you search on youtube for shift happens, you will find it. Also, check out the link below to the Internet Safety Night web page I have set up that has the handouts and presentations that I will be using tonight.

Internet Safety Night Web Site

Post Number 100

2008-01-10T14:32:00.000-06:00

This is officially my 100th post. I never dreamt way back over the summer that I would actually get to 100 posts. Not much to say today, other than thanks to anyone out there who is actually reading my ramblings. It seems like I have gotten a lot of great opportunities since I started writing this blog and I have really enjoyed sharing them. I know many days it is just about the normal stuff going on in Room 42. I hope that in the future I will have more interesting adventures to post on here. Nothing really big coming up yet, other than a few presentations that I am making. Next Tuesday is Manor Hill’s first Internet Safety Night. I am actually really excited about this and hope that we have a great turnout. We just found out today that we will have an MP3 player to give away that night to someone in attendance. I am also presenting a broadcast “how to” session at a technology conference in Lee’s Summit next month and probably will be doing the same presentation at our Empowering Excellence conference in February. KMH: Patriot News, the broadcast club that I sponsor was selected to go to Jefferson City at the end of January to present to the state legislators. And finally, I am presenting a microgravity class in march at a gifted student conference. As you can see, even though I don’t have any immediate plans to see a shuttle launch, or be weightless, it is already a busy 2008. Thanks again for reading!

Triangle Trade and Millionaire Project

2008-01-09T21:11:00.001-06:00

I wanted to post a couple of pictures of the triangle trade lesson we did today. I don’t know that you can really tell what is going on. To illustrate the triangle trade I put pictures up to represent each of the countries involved (Africa, Colonies, Britain). Then I strung yarn across the room representing each of the trade routes. Then I hung signs and arrows on them telling the goods that were traded and the direction. The coolest part of this (besides having yarn strung all across the room) is that to illustrate what happens when one of them decided to not trade any more, I cut one of the strings. We then see that quickly the rest of the triangle collapses.

We also worked on the millionaire project today. I have put most of the information online. Click on the link above to go to the class web site and then click on Millionaire. This is where all of the information is housed. Ask your child what there theme is and how they think they are going to spend their million dollars.

Less Zombie Like

2008-01-08T15:32:00.000-06:00

The kids were definitely less zombie like today. We were able to get a lot accomplished. We learned to use slide rules today to add and subtract fractions. This was the first of many steps to becoming proficient in addition and subtraction of fractions. Next up will be common denominators. I like the slide rule lesson, even though it can be confusing, because it really shows that we are putting the two pieces together to add. We will be using the slide rules later in the year to add and subtract positive and negative numbers. Today we also started working on another science experiment. This one involves lifting books to see how much force was used. We didn’t get to the experiment today because we spent our entire time planning the experiment. We had a little trouble with the fact that “hard” or “easy” aren’t measureable and we need to use terms like more force, or less force. Tomorrow we should get done with the planning and actually get to the experiment.

Zombies

2008-01-07T16:04:00.001-06:00

I guess I should expect this a little bit but the kids were a little on the zombie side today. I’m always excited to start back and I had a work day on Friday of last week to get back into the swing of things, which helped. The biggest thing that we accomplished today was reviewing the expectations. I literally pulled out my list of procedures and expectations from the first day of school and went over them. I always like reviewing those when we start back. We also had a good discussion today about forces that effect movement, mainly gravity. We had a lot of fun figuring out how much we would weigh on different planets and the moon. Just think, Hope would only weigh a little over three pounds on Pluto (I know, not technically a planet but old habits die hard, and I have a letter from Jim Christy who discovered the moon of Pluto)

Happy New Year!

2008-01-04T12:56:00.001-06:00

I hope that everyone had a great break, ate a lot of good food, got some rest and is ready for a great 2008. I had an awesome break myself. I got to spend a lot of time with family, got caught up on some sleep, and did a lot of stuff around the house. I am totally recharged and ready to get started next week. We will be finishing up a few units when we start back as well as starting a few projects. The biggest project will be the millionaire project. There will be lots more information about this later but basically each kid will need to spend a million dollars on one theme.

Already looking at my calendar for the next couple of months, it is going to be a busy 2008. January 15th is the first ever Manor Hill Internet Safety Night. I am busy working on a presentation for this evening. I applied and was accepted to present at a technology conference in Lee’s Summit in February and I will be doing the same presentation on February 15th at our district in-service, Empowering Excellence. And the most exciting news, that I just found out today, is that KMH: Patriot News has been accepted to travel to Jefferson City to present to the state legislators at the Show Me TechKnowledge Student Showcase. We have done this before and it is a really fun day for the kids. We will probably be leaving really early in the morning and coming back late that night. It is a really long day but a lot of fun. I will be putting more information up about that, and will likely blog while we are there.

Happy Holidays

2007-12-20T13:21:00.000-06:00

Sorry for the lack of posts lately. With the holidays coming up it has been busy and my wife and I have both been sick. (As of this writing, we are both on the road to recovery). I wanted to take a minute to wish everyone a happy holidays. I hope that everyone has a chance to spend time with family and have a nice, relaxing holiday. Eric Langhorst, a teacher at South Valley Middle School – and the Missouri Teacher of the Year, recently put a podcast up about sharing and recording family histories. I think this is a great idea, and one that I have been trying to get my dad to do. My dad has a ton of great stories and I am trying to get him to record them. I am hoping to get more of his stories on tape over the break. I encourage you to listen to Eric’s podcast about how to accomplish this. While you are there, you should listen to some of his others, they are absolutely amazing. You can get to Eric’s web site, Speaking of History, by clicking on the link below.

http://www.speakingofhistory.blogspot.com/

Also I wanted to put up a few more pictures of some of the science expereiments that we have been working on. Have a great break!

Reading Buddies

2007-12-20T13:13:00.000-06:00

Here are some pictures that I promised the kids that I would post last week and just didn’t get a chance to put up. Every student got a brand new reading buddy. This is a friend that loves to listen to student writing. I really want the kids to get into the habit of reading what they write out loud. It is amazing how many mistakes you catch when you do this. Enjoy these pictures or Room 42 with their reading buddies.

Two Weeks Left

2007-12-07T15:40:00.001-06:00

We have two full weeks left until the holiday break. I know that I am looking forward to the break but I am also looking forward to the next two full weeks. We have a ton to get accomplished. Today we took a math test and I have a feeling that this group is going to do really well in Unit 6 which deals with data and probability. We are also jumping into colonies with a giant poster project. Not only do I mean that this will be a large project but also, the finished posters will be huge. We had a great discussion today about some of the errors the kids made in the science work that we did this week and the kid have an opportunity to re-do one of those assignments. Next week we will continue our work on forces and begin to look at simple machines. Enjoy the weekend, and hopefully the weather will be nice. I’m heading north to Des Moines, Iowa to meet Brooks Robinson, Baseball Hall of Famer. I’m hoping for nice traveling weather tomorrow.

Snowball Fight

2007-12-06T15:36:00.001-06:00

Today we had a giant snowball fight in Room 42. We did this to practice calculating speed. We did not go out side and get snowballs (no matter how tempting that would have been) instead, we made due with indoor snowballs. We also went through our Newton’s Third Law sing along again. Ask your child to sing you the song about Newton’s Third law, they would love to sing it for you!

Quick Notes

2007-12-04T15:35:00.001-06:00

I just want to mention quickly that there are some changes on the horizon for collecting homework and makeup work procedures. We had discussed this earlier and it looks like we will be trying out the new system either next week, or the week before break. I am excited about this system and I think that it will work well and shouldn’t impact grade at all, especially if the kids are turning assignments in on time. More to come on this topic later.

Multiple Topics

2007-12-03T15:58:00.001-06:00

Where do I begin? I have a bunch of different topics to talk about today.

Adopt a Soldier
First, we are going to adopt a soldier for the holidays (our package won’t get there until after Christmas). I am collecting different items to send over. There is a whole list on the newsletter for last week. Mainly we are looking for non perishable stuff that we can send over. Beef jerky, crystal light packets, granola bars, CD’s, DVD’s, etc. What I told the kids is to think of what would put a smile on someone face. I am wanting to send the package sometime at the end of next week. Also, anyone that wants to contribute a dollar to the postage fund, it would be greatly appreciated.

Roller Coasters
Below are some of the pictures of the Roller Coasters that the kids turned in today. I have not graded them yet but I can’t wait and I wanted to post some pictures. Newton’s Laws

Newton's Laws

Today was our first day of studying Newton’s Laws. We did this by completing a series of observations including yanking a tablecloth out from under some dishes. I did tell the kids not to attempt this at home (we had plastic dishes). Here are some pictures also of the kids working on these centers today.

Roller Coaster Mania

2007-11-30T15:39:00.000-06:00

My wife and I in front of our favorite roller coaster from our honeymoon, Expedition Everest!

I have a room full of roller coaster engineers. Today we learned how to calculate speed, velocity, and acceleration. I decided that instead of just giving them a bunch of problems to do I would have them create their own. The students had to design a roller coaster. Let me tell you, I will need a vomit bag and a helmet to ride some of them. Then they had to decide how long their track was and how long it would take the coaster to travel the track. From this information they then have to work out the speed, acceleration, and velocity. I can’t wait to see the finished products on Monday. I plan to post pictures on here of their work.

Thinking

2007-11-29T15:40:00.000-06:00

I did a horrendous thing today. I made the kids think. The fifth grade team of teachers recently planned out our new science unit. We planned several activities and experiments and one of the things that we planned was reading from the science book. I know that this reading can get complicated and a little dry at times so I try to spice it up a little. For example, tomorrow the kids are designing roller coasters. Today, however, I created an activity guide (fancy name for a worksheet) that guided them through the reading. It had a series of questions on it that were not directly in the text, they required the kids to actually read and understand what they had read in order to answer the questions. We went over part of it in class and the kids did great on the first question and everyone missed the second one we went over. The reason they missed the second one was because they didn’t go back and use what they had learned in the first question to answer the second. I was really happy with the effort the kids put in and I can’t wait to see their finished work tomorrow. I also can’t wait to see their roller coasters.

Another Eggsilerating Day

2007-11-28T15:29:00.000-06:00

Okay, I will spare you the egg jokes today. We did finish up our Eggsperament (not a joke, the actual name of the lesson). The biggest thing that we worked on today was graphing. Remember when you were in school, or for your job, when you make a graph you color in the little bars. Apparently the people that wrote the MAP test didn’t like that part of graphing so the kids will actually be counted off if they color in the bars and go even slightly outside the lines. So to eliminate any chance of a kid loosing a point for something silly like shading we are practicing drawing graphs without the shading. This makes for odd looking graphs but if it helps us on the MAP test, I’m all for it.

Today we also finished taking notes on our second explorer. The kids are choosing two explorers and eventually will write a compare and contrast essay about them. The last two days we have been taking notes. Tomorrow we will begin to work on the compare and contrast part and if time allows we will even begin writing our introductory paragraphs. Be watching for drafts of this essay to be coming home soon!

An Eggstra Eggciting Day in Room 42!

2007-11-27T15:43:00.001-06:00

You guessed it. Today we did an eggsperament involving eggs. We had to be eggstremely careful not to break them. The students eggsuded confidence as we eggstended our science knowledge. I started the lesson by eggsplaining the rules and safety reggulations for the day. I didn’t want anyone to eggsploit their opportunity to use the eggs. I also didn’t want anyone to drop an egg, say an eggspletive, and get sent into eggsile (safe spot) for not following direggtions. There was no eggscuse for not handling the eggs properly. I know that the kids were eggsausted from the holiday break but we all need to just eggshale and get ready for our eggscursion into the wonderful world of science. The actual eggsperament involved the kids using their eggstremeties to take a hard boiled egg and spin it. They then had to eggsamine what happened when they stopped the egg. After that, they eggschanged the hard boiled egg for a raw egg. They then repeated the process being sure to be eggsact in their measurements. The entire process today was absolutely eggsilerating, and that’s no yolk!

What did you do over the break?

2007-11-26T15:32:00.001-06:00

I hope that everyone had a great break. I know I was able to get caught up on some stuff here at school, plan some new lessons, spend some time with family and even go on a camp out. Yes, that is right, I camped out Thanksgiving night at Nebraska Furniture Mart. I didn’t even really have anything big on my list. My best friend wanted two of the big TV’s that were on sale so I camped overnight to help him get one. There is just one word that sums up the opening of the store. ZOO! It was absolutely crazy. After that, I don’t care if I ever go shopping again. Not for groceries, clothes, anything.

Today I stressed with the class that we have four full weeks of school left and that we have to be productive every day. No taking time off because we are tired, the room is hot, it is a Monday, or the day after a break. Also, just a hint about tomorrow, it will be a very Egg-citing day in Room 42.

Weather Changes

2007-11-19T15:50:00.001-06:00

With a big weather change heading in and a break coming up, things have been a little kooky here at school. We have been going on business as usual but some of the behaviors have been a little off. We had a discussion today that just because Turkey Day is coming up that is no reason to quit early. These are two valuable days of school that we will be using this week.

Today we continued our focus on note taking in social studies as well as kept working our way through fractions in math. I am dead serious when I say that this group is picking up on fractions faster than any group I have had before. A great example was today. Instead of me teaching the class how to convert between fractions and mixed numbers, most of them figured it out on their own. I then had a student review it with the class. I think we have fractions down.

Math Party Day

2007-11-16T15:51:00.001-06:00

What an awesome day of math games! Thanks to all of the parents who came in today to play math games with us. I think it is awesome that as a school we had over 150 parents show up to play math games with their kids. What a great message to kids that math is important enough for my parents to come to school during the day. Below are some pictures of the day!

Veterans Day and the Chiefs

2007-11-12T13:07:00.000-06:00

As everyone knows, I am a Broncos fan. I have been since I was in kindergarten. My best friend moved to Denver and brought me back a Broncos shirt and ever since then I have been a fan. I had an opportunity to go to the game yesterday. I have included a few pictures I took. The reason I mention this is actually to complement the Chiefs. Not on their play (the Broncos pretty much beat them up) but for what they did at halftime. Yesterday was Veterans Day and they had several really cool things going on. First, there were a ton of soldiers that watched the game from the sideline which I thought was cool. There was a fly over by the Stealth Bomber. Way cool! The biggest cheer of the day was for a WWII veteran that had been shot down over Germany, captured and was a prisoner of war. Everyone stood up even though they made no announcement asking everyone to stand. It was by far the loudest cheer of the day. At half time they unfurled a big flag on the field and had a tribute to fallen soldiers. It was really moving. As the players came back onto the field, almost all of the Chiefs stopped at the sideline and watched, rather than warming up. I was really impressed by this. Like I told the kids today in class, take a minute to thank a veteran for what they have done, give them a hug, buy a buddy poppy. They didn’t do what they did for recognition but what they did was a huge sacrifice and should be honored. Happy Veterans Day.

My wife and I at the game. Notice, she didn't wear Broncos gear. She is a Chiefs fan.

Giant flag unfurled at half time.

Hat I got signed before the game. Two coolest autographs John Lynch (Big J toward the right side) and Pat Bowlen the owner of the Broncos (upper left part of the bill)

Photo Update

2007-11-09T13:02:00.000-06:00

Here are some pictures of things that have happened in Room 42 in the last couple of weeks!

Mayor Steinkamp with KMH

Dan Mears AKA: KC Wolf with KMH

KMH preparing to interview KC Wolf

Interviewing the Mayor of Liberty

Happy Halloween - no, this is not our normal school atire.

Mummy in the making

Little Red Goldie Hood

Our Udderly-Amazing room mother who put together our Halloween Party

Mr. Cool Guy hanging out at the St. Louis Arch two weeks ago.

Slacker Part 2

2007-11-08T16:23:00.001-06:00

Wow, I did so good for so long and the last two weeks have not been good for updating the blog and a lot of stuff has been going on. I will work backward starting today with a quick run down of events.

Thursday – Today we had the Mayor of Liberty come in to do an interview with KMH. He was incredibly nice and was great with the kids. I always think it is amazing when people take the time out of their busy schedule to come in and talk to the kids. Today we also finally finished our oil and water experiment. I found the video online of oil and water in microgravity. Drum roll please . . . They MIX! They do not separate in zero gravity. That really surprised the kids today. We watched the video and finished up our experiment pages.

Wednesday – I was gone for a meeting in the afternoon and in the morning we worked in the computer lab and the library learning about our visiting author, Roland Smith.

Tuesday – We held small meetings to discuss writing. We also worked on classifying monsters in a dichotomous key.

Monday – My birthday and I had a meeting in the afternoon. The meetings I was in this week were to evaluate companies for a new attendance and grade book programs for the district.

Slacker

2007-11-01T15:46:00.001-05:00

Okay so I have been slacking this week and have not updated the blog. Not to make excuses (but here they are) Monday I was worn slick after CHAMPS, Tuesday I was sick, Wednesday was Halloween and I forgot, so here is the post on Thursday. It has been a busy week. First, let me say that we had an outstanding day of CHAMPS, one of my all-time favorites. The kids followed directions, we had a great drug awareness assembly at the end and in general I think the kids got a lot out of the day. Second, I want to thank Mrs. Callstrom for hosting the Halloween party. Parties are always hectic but this one ran really smoothly. I will post pictures later. Today I was gone half a day for a meeting, and I missed half a day on Tuesday because I was sick. The kids did a great job for both subs. That is always a great sign of how good a class is, by how well they do for a sub. So far we haven’t had any problems. Keep up the good work. I also finally found the oil and water video that I have been looking for. I am planning on finishing editing it tomorrow and bringing it in so we can finish our experiment.

Student Reference Book

2007-10-24T15:41:00.001-05:00

This is just a quick reminder that the Student Reference Books need to be taken home every single night (except for most Fridays). The reason behind this is that almost every single night the kids will have homework in math. It will either be math boxes, or journal pages. Either way, we want them to have this great resource right at their finger tips if it is needed. 98% of what is in the math journal is covered in the Student Reference Book. The reason I mention this today is because right now there are four student reference books setting on student’s desks that didn’t take them home. There was even a notebook left here at school. I can’t even begin to imagine how this student will do their homework without their notebook. Also, remember that if your child ever forgets something feel free to bring them back up to school. There are janitors here until 9:00. You may have to knock on a door to get their attention and they might grumble a little bit but the bottom line is they will let you into the classroom.

More Pictures

2007-10-23T10:12:00.000-05:00

Here are a few more pictures. The first group is of the kids riding a rolling chair to simulate what it was like to be in zero gravity. It works as a very basic simulation because the kids were able to see how hard it was to control yourself in two directions. It also worked on showing the kids what it was like to try to catch the mass of someone else when they were flying-rolling toward you. The last picture is my attemp to recreate our tennis ball experiment with snowballs. When I woke up Saturday morning to an inch of snow on the ground.

Microgravity Pictures

2007-10-22T15:47:00.000-05:00

Just a quick post today with the pictures from Colorado. They were finally published online today. You can check out the entire album at http://www.gozerog.com/photos . I am in the Colorado Springs flight. Click on the galary in the middle of the page. The video should get here in the next 2-3 weeks.

KMH: Patriot News

2007-10-21T20:03:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I briefly mentioned that KMH: Patriot News, the broadcast club that I sponsor won first place in a video competition that we entered. I just want to say how proud I am of the students in KMH from last year. They did a phenomenal job all year long but especially on their entry into the Reel Spirit Awards. My goal last year when we entered that contest was to touch nothing. The winning broadcast, which you can see by going to: http://www.liberty.k12.mo.us/~mkelsey/KMH , was completely done by the kids. They wrote the scripts, filmed the segments, edited the video, and did all of the green screen effects. I didn’t do anything on that broadcast. Sometimes, especially at the beginning of the year I will center a camera shot for the kids, or do a green screen effect but for that broadcast, it was all the kids. They did an outstanding job. I am super excited for those kids. I can gauruntee that we will be entering again this year. I am typing this on the airplane coming back from Colorado Springs and I can’t wait to get back to school on Monday and see the trophy.

More thoughts about zero G. Our coach told us that for the next couple of days we would feel a little odd after having been weightless. He isn’t kidding. It hits at odd times and doesn’t last long but every once in a while I have a feeling that makes me think about floating around. It isn’t so strong that I feel like I’m floating but it feels like that first second of weightlessness when you just feel like you are getting lighter. Flying today hasn’t been a big deal, I haven’t had the urge to yell, “Feet down – coming out” and I haven’t grabbed onto anything to hold on. But I’m also not on the ground yet. I know that the kids are wondering about something and yes, I will be wearing the flight suit to school tomorrow!

Way Too Short

2007-10-20T16:23:00.001-05:00

Flight Path we took over North Dakota

My team!

I just got back a little while ago from the microgravity flight. What an amazing experience! It was unbelievable but WAY too short. It felt like we had barely gotten into the air when it was over. When we got to the hotel this morning, we had a light breakfast (2 small muffins and a banana) then we got into our flight suits. They are really cool with a Weightless Flight of Discovery Patch, and the Zero G logo as well as a name tag. The tag was upside down. From what I was told this is a Navy tradition that Navy pilots do not get to turn their wings upside down until after they have landed successfully on an aircraft carrier. After the flight, the commander met us at the bottom of the steps and turned our name tag and we got a picture taken. After getting cameras stowed away, experiments put away, and got briefed we watched a short movie about all the stuff we would be doing. It was really heavy on safety. I probably heard a hundred times that safety was the number one concern. I was a member of the gold team. We got gold bracelets (like the live strong ones) and gold socks. We put those into a pocket for later. We then made a final pit stop (no bathrooms on the plane) and headed out to the bus. Before we got on, we got wanded with metal detectors and the bus took us straight up to the airplane. Once we got off, we took a bunch of pictures, both of the whole group and just the gold team. It was really cool because almost all of the gold team knew each other from summer classes through the Space Foundation.

Once we got onto the plane, we set in regular seats for takeoff. I was really glad because it was a very turbulent takeoff. Our airspace was over North Dakota. Once we got past the turbulence we got out of our seats and took a few more pictures, then all of a sudden they said we had ten minutes, just enough for a safety meeting, getting out the cameras and planning what we were going to do during the Martian and lunar parabolas. We decided just to enjoy those and we did. We then got the call to lay down and we started pulling Gs. My head was toward the cockpit and my feet toward the tail. Laying down, it wasn’t too bad and you could not tell at all that we were going up at a 50 degree angle. That was one of the really odd things. During take off every time we hit turbulence we could tell the plane was moving and shaking. It was actually pretty disorienting. Then once we got to our area (we were at the front of the plane) I never could tell if we were going up or down. When we first got to Martian gravity, it was awesome. I was doing one handed pushups and just kind of bouncing all over the place. And then we got the call, “feet down coming out” and we scurried back to laying down. Then we pulled more Gs and got the call of Lunar 1 coming up. Again, we got into push up position and you could push yourself up so high that you could almost stand up. Really an odd feeling and very hard to describe. We also did some frog kind of leaps. We couldn’t really jump because we would have smashed our heads but we could king of frog/superman jump toward the camera, loads of fun. Then we had the second Lunar parabola and we all tried to pile on to Kim’s back and let her do pushups, that wasn’t very successful because it becomes so hard to control your body even in 1/8 gravity.

Next, we had a few minutes to prepare for our first zero gravity parabolas. We decided to just enjoy those and man did we. It is really an odd sensation to just float up off of the ground. You kind of have to help yourself get up with a little push. When I say little, I mean with a finger, not all of your fingers but a finger. I made the mistake later of pushing up very slightly with my feet. I went crashing into the ceiling.

Our next parabola we decided to play catch. We had brought some tennis balls for an experiment but the ball we used was cooler. Me. I folded up into a little ball and Bobby and Brian pushed me around the cabin. Then for the next three loops we played catch literally with each other.

Video and picture note. I did not get very many pictures, or much video. It was so hard to steady the camera that it just didn’t work. In 4-6 weeks I will be getting a video from Zero G with all the footage and the pictures should be online by tomorrow.

Next, we got out our experiments. I got out the higher mass ball and the lower mass ball. We did that for one loop and let me tell you, an object in motion really does stay in motion. When we hit the first balls together, they did something (Don’t want to give it away yet) but then Bryan got the tennis ball and completely missed the other ball and it sailed off and I still don’t know where it went.

Kim did a flying pig experiment that didn’t work very well because of technical difficulties and Bobby had a Jacobs’s ladder toy that did some crazy things. After those parabolas, we were down to four and did a few group things like linking arms and flying like superman. We also tried to crawl around the cabin. I really stunk at that. I made it about half way up one wall and then just kind of floated off. Spiderman has nothing to worry about.

Probably the coolest part was the second to last parabola. I didn’t do anything than just kind of push myself around but at one point I ended up spinning upside down and got totally disoriented. I had absolutely no idea which way was up. I thought I was grabbing onto the ceiling and it was the floor, then I thought I had the wall and it was the ceiling. I absolutely know why they say that there is no up or down in space.

Overall it was a phenomenal experience that I would do again in a minute but it was too short. It was one of those things that was amazing but if I had it to do over again, I would do some things differently. I can’t wait to see the video and still pictures. Sorry that mine aren’t very good but when you are floating around and have absolutely no control over which way your body is going, it is tough to focus on taking a picture.

These were the only two pictures I took while actually floating! That is not a sweat stain on Kim, someone had water that got loose.

Group photo, I will post a better picture later when I get them. I'm the tall guy in the middle, right under the o in zero.

Micro-gravity Update

2007-10-20T08:57:00.001-05:00

This is Mrs. Kelsey. Mr. Kelsey just called me and told me that their airspace is over North Dakota. He doesn't have flight number but he said that you can go and look for the COS airport code. Then you will have to look for a flight that is departing and landing from Colorado Springs. It is the only flight that does that this morning. Have a great weekend and Mr. Kelsey can't wait to share all his excitement and pictures with you on Monday.

Dallas

2007-10-19T20:16:00.001-05:00

I've made it half way to my destination of Colorado Springs. I'm just putting a short post up now to put this picture up that I thought was cool. This is the flight path that my plane took. I don't have much time because they moved my gate and I only have a few minutes. Also, if you are in my class, or not, and want to send me an email, I would love to hear from you. Probably won't check things until after the flight tomorrow since it will be late when I get in and an early day tomorrow.

Microgravity Hodge Podge

2007-10-18T21:07:00.001-05:00

Okay, here it goes. I am going to attempt to give out all of the information that I know about my upcoming flight. I think I have touched on a few of these things in previous posts but I have found some really cool pictures in the last couple of days to go with it. First, the picture below is the plane I will be flying in on Saturday. This is not a doctored photo, this is actually the angle that it will go up on. A normal airplane takes off at a 20 degree angle. We will be going up at a 50 degree angle.

I don’t know my flight number yet. I will try to call my wife and have her post it to the blog on Saturday morning so that you can follow along if you want. The web site is http://www.flightaware.com/ . Basically you can go into the site and enter whatever information you know (tale number, flight number, airport, etc.) and follow along with the flight. Even if you don’t follow along in real time, you can go back in later and see the path that we took. I’m really interested to see where we fly. My guess is that it won’t be over the mountains. I would guess that we will actually be over western Kansas for most of the flight but I don’t know. Some of the other flights from California and Washington D.C. have flown out over the ocean. They try to put us away from all other aircraft because in the past when other pilots have seen a plane going down at a 45 or 50 degree angle they have put in distress calls.

I meet up with everyone at a hotel in Colorado Springs at 7:00 on Saturday morning. We then have a briefing and a light breakfast. We are supposed to avoid milk and eggs but instead have more bread type foods. Fine with me, I don’t like eggs and love cinnamon rolls. Then we have the TSA screening. I thought this was kind of odd that it was at the hotel rather than the airport. After that we get on a bus and head to the airport. We actually go out on the runway to load up on the plane. I think they will be taking some group pictures out there. We are supposed to take off at 10:30 Colorado Springs time. That is 11:30 Kansas City time.

When we load up onto the plane there are 35 seats at the back that we will set in for takeoff and landing. Once we get up to cruising altitude we will get out of our seats take off our shoes and put on colored socks. The socks tell us what part of the cabin we are supposed to be in. The main part of the plane is a padded room. (insert your own joke here). In each of the three areas, there are two video cameras. We are also allowed to bring cameras and video cameras. I am bringing both.

Once we start flying our parabolas, we will go out and lay down in the cabin. We do this to help us pull the G forces. In the bottom of the parabolas we will be pulling almost 2 G’s. It shouldn’t be too bad but when you get 2 G’s right after being weightless it might be a little disorienting. That is why we lay down. The first parabola will be a little shallower and will simulate the gravity on Mars (1/3). The second two parabolas simulate lunar gravity (1/8) and the remaining 12 parabolas will be zero gravity. They come in sets of three. The first three we have no experiments planned. Each of the last sets of parabolas we have some simple experiments planned. I’m not going go into those too much since I have already done that.

While I don't know my flight information yet for the microgravity flight, I do know my flight information for Friday and Sunday. These are just normal flights but if you want to practice or see "Where in the World is Mr. Kelsey," the information is below:

Friday, October 19

Leaving KCI (MCI is the airport code) flying to Dallas (DFW) - 6:00

American Airlines 1069

Leavign Dallas flying to Colorado Springs (COS) - 8:25

American Airlines 829

Sunday, October 21

Leaving Colorado Springs flying to Dallas - 11:15

American Airlines 1882

Leaving Dallas flying to Kansas City - 3:40

American Airlines 2036

I have a couple of main goals for the flight. Obviously I want to enjoy it. I don’t think I will be able to keep from having fun. Second, there are a couple of pictures that I want. One of me and my friend Bobby with one of us right side up and the other upside down. I also have a mystery picture I want. I will tell more about that later, after the flight). I also want to get good usable video of the experiments.

One of the kids asked me today what I am looking the most forward to on the trip. I wasn’t sure how to answer. There are so many things that I think will be amazing but probably what I really want to savor is the first sensations of being weightless, the first parabola of zero gravity where I will be laying on the floor and will just float off of the ground. I think that is the part I’m looking the most forward to.

Reading Buddies

2007-10-18T15:33:00.000-05:00

Today we spent some time with our reading buddies sharing books and reading to each other. I am hoping that before I leave for Colorado Springs I will have time to update the blog with some information about the flight specifics. My plan is to do that either tonight, or tomorrow at the airport as I wait for my flight. If anyone has specific questions, I would love to try to answer them. The kids have been asking really great questions that I have tried my best to answer but some of them have been tough questions.

Microgravity Discussion

2007-10-17T15:59:00.000-05:00

We had a great discussion today about the microgravity flight. I slightly changed one of the experiments to fit better with the state Grade Level Expectations (GLEs) so we talked about that today and decided on our hypotheses for both of the experiments. The kids had some great questions about weight and mass and about the mechanics of how the whole flight is going to work. Here are some basics.

We fly in parabolas. The top of the parabola is where we are weightless.
The first parabolas will simulate Martian Gravity (1/3).
The next two parabolas will simulate Lunar Gravity (1/8).
The last 12 parabolas will be zero gravity.
We are conducting three basic experiments (mixing oil and water, Newton’s Laws – hitting balls of different sizes to see what happens, and a weight vs. mass experiment)
You can follow along with the flight in real time at www.flightaware.com

The kids had some great hypotheses about what is going to happen in each excperiment. I have listed them below.

Microgravity Oil and Water Hypotheses
· I think the oil and water will separate with a little empty spot in the middle (Brandin, Rafael, Charlie, Hope)
· The oil and water will mix but will be in the middle of the bottle. (Allie)
· I think the oil and water will float to the top of the bottle and stay mixed because there is no gravity to cause them to separate (Madison)
· I think that the oil and water will both go to the top – I think they will stay separated but I don’t think it will matter which one is on top – random. (Logan, David, Nick)
· I think the oil and water will stay mixed because there is no gravity to tell which one is heavier or lighter. (Amanda, Kaide)
· I think that the oil and water will mix then piece by piece will separate similar to on earth. (Jake)
· I think the oil and water will separate and float in the middle of the bottle. (Hadei)
· I think the oil and water will go to the top of the bottle and remain separated. (Monse)
· I think the oil and water will not mix because the water will be on the top and the oil on the bottom - opposite of earth. (Michael)
· I think the oil and water will float to the top of the bottle and stay mixed. (Creyana, Brittany)
· I think the oil and water will mix and float together in the middle of the bottle. (Marressa)
· I think the oil and water will separate into separate globs and not mix. (Justin, Keevan)
· I think the oil and water will separate because of no gravity (Chasity)

Microgravity Balls of Different Mass Experiment Hypotheses

Ball with a smaller mass hitting a floating ball with a bigger mass.
· When the small mass ball hits the bigger mass ball, I don’t think the bigger massed ball will go very far. (Brandin, Madison, Logan, Jake, Kaide, Hadei, Marressa, Chasity, Charlie, Nick, )
· I think the small ball will hit the bigger ball small ball will not move very far (Allie, Monse, )
· I think that results will be the same as on earth but the balls will travel farther. The balls will travel the same (small hitting large, or large hitting small) (Rafael)
· I think when the small ball hits the larger ball, the small ball will rebound away. Bigger ball will move slightly (David)
· I think the ball with the more mass will go about 10 ft. when hit by the ball with less mass. (Brittany)
Ball with a larger mass hitting a floating ball with a smaller mass.
· I think the ball with the smaller mass will travel about 10 ft. when hit by the ball with more mass. The results will be the same no matter which ball hits the other. (Brittany, Chasity, Hadei)
· I think both balls will travel together. (Nick, David)
· I think smaller ball will only travel a little and the larger massed ball will follow it forward. (Charlie, Monse,)
· I think smaller ball will travel slightly farther than the larger ball did in the other experiment. (Marressa, Allie)
· I think the results will be the same no matter which ball hits the other. (Rafael)
· I think the smaller ball will go really far because the larger ball has more mass. (Kaide, Logan, Madison)
· When the larger mass ball hits the smaller mass ball, I don’t think the smaller massed ball will go very far. (Jake, Brandin)

Hall of Fame in Search of Members

2007-10-16T15:40:00.001-05:00

The book blog hall of fame selection committee (Mr. Kelsey) is in search of book blog posts and coments to add to the hall of fame. Remember that just because you get a good score does not necessarily make you a hall of famer. The example we used in class today was John Candelaria. He used to pitch for the Pittsburg Pirates. He was good, not great but good. He even threw a no hitter. He is signing autographs at a show in two weeks. He is charging $14 to autograph a baseball. Bob Gibson, who was one of the most dominant pitchers in baseball history, is charging $99 for an autograph and an additional $20 to put HOF on it. He dominated the game for a span of several years. I think this is a good example to show the difference between good and amazing. I had a couple of posts and comments today that were close to Hall of Fame status but not quite. I also talked to the kids about the important things on the blog to remember. First, a ton of kids have been messing up the citation information. There is a link on the blog that explains exactly how to put that information. Second, the genre. We have talked about genre, they studied it in fourth grade, and Mrs. Green is always going over it. They need to be specific. Instead of saying fiction, tell me what kind of fiction. Finally, a lot of kids are not giving evidence to back up their opinions. They are telling me what they like or don’t like but they don’t explain why. This is a huge part of the grade and a big MAP skill. Read some of the posts and when you get the grades back, go back in and see how they did. I try to put the date that they were submitted on the evaluation form. You can always help your child grade their own work before they turn it in.

Kachina Dolls and Classifying

2007-10-15T19:41:00.001-05:00

Sample Kachina "Powerful Moose"

Today we worked on two big projects. The first was classifying. One of the big skills that the kids need to know for the map test is how to classify vertebrates. We worked with Mrs. Green today on learning all kinds of facts about a specific class. Tomorrow students will be sharing their information with teammates so that we have a complete classification chart. We will be having a classification test on Friday.

We also spent time today creating Kachina Dolls. These were dolls created by Native Americans to represent different spirits. We did one as a class for a made up spirit (the powerful moose). I am anxious to see how the kids do on these when they turn them in tomorrow.

Slam Dunk Lesson

2007-10-11T11:29:00.000-05:00

To work on how many degrees there are in a circle we practiced our slam dunking abilities. The kids had all heard of a 360 slam dunk but I don’t think that many of them had made the connection to the number of degrees in a circle. Below are some pictures of our high flying activities today!

Hunting Whales with Sticks

2007-10-09T15:50:00.001-05:00

Yes, the Northwest Coast Indians hunted whales using spears from canoes. Today we discussed them and watched a short video about them and tomorrow the kids will be learning even more about them. I cannot imagine the bravery that it took to go whale hunting with basically a stick. Even if you did manage to kill a whale, you still have to get it back to shore. It is almost beyond comprehension.

Today we also went over our math tests. They were not pretty. For the class there were only 4 Cs and those were the top grades. After going through the tests, the kids kept a tally of how many small, careless mistakes they made. It was amazing that the class shifted from everyone getting a C, D, or F to everyone getting an A, B, or C. I think going over the test really opened some eyes to doing quality work.

T-12 Days and Counting

2007-10-08T15:45:00.000-05:00

In 12 days, I will be floating around somewhere over Colorado. Today in class we did the first of two partial experiments. We have already done the experiments I will be doing in zero gravity here on earth and today we started the process for conducting the experiments in zero g. Today we worked on oil and water. We asked questions that we wanted answered and began to form hypotheses. I was pretty impressed with some of the thoughts the kids had. Tomorrow I am collecting them and will run a more detailed list but so far the kids have come up with:

· The oil will float to the top of the bottle with the water at the bottom leaving air between the two.
· The two will mix in the middle of the bottle because there is no gravity so the oil wouldn’t go to the top.
·One will float to the top and the other below it forming layers, this is random and if shaken again, the other might go to the top.

I can’t wait to see the whole list tomorrow. We really worked on getting a lot of specific information into the hypothesis so that anyone that reads it knows exactly what we think will happen.

Manheim Steamroller

2007-10-07T14:55:00.000-05:00

Last night right after school my wife and I drove to Ames, Iowa to see the Manheim Steamroller Concert. I was invited because I am a Space Foundation Teacher Liaison. I had absolutely no idea what to expect. They are more famous for their Christmas music than anything. All that I knew was that it was a “space” themed concert that is sponsored by the Space Foundation and that the former director of Kennedy Space Center, Jim Kennedy had told me about it when I was in Florida. We left at 4:00 and the concert started at 7:30. It is a three and a half hour drive. We literally pulled into the parking lot on fumes with about ten minutes to spare. We got our tickets from will call and the lady said “you guys have good seats.” She wasn’t kidding. We had seats in the 9th row almost right in the middle. When we walked in there was a huge screen with the space shuttle and a countdown clock. The only sound was of Mission Control going through the countdown. Needless to say, I was excited. The auditorium was really cool with a whole series of balconies. I don’t know how many people it held but it was full.

The house lights stayed up until it got to 20 seconds before liftoff. Then the lights went down and the countdown kept going. When it launched, the sounds were amazing. For just a second I was standing back at Banana Creek watching/feeling/experiencing the space shuttle launch. It was the first time since the launch I have felt that rumble in my chest. I thought I would at the NASCAR race and I completely didn’t. This morning my wife and I were talking about it and without me saying it, she mentioned that you could feel the launch rattle your chest. That was a cool moment because I really felt like she experienced a part of the launch with me, three months later. They showed nothing but the launch until about 2 minutes into the launch. Then all of a sudden, the screen was yanked down and the music started blaring. The great thing was, they didn’t stop the sounds of the launch, or mission control. That was all part of the music. I bought their CD and it is the same on the CD. Their music is definitely different from what I normally listen to (country) but it was really cool. After the first couple of space songs from their album called “Music of the Spheres” they played a few far out songs from their other CDs, a couple of which are now on my wish list. The third song was probably my favorite. It is hard to describe but I remember thinking that this might be what imagination sounds like. I know that sounds weird but when you hear it you will understand.

The rest of the first half of the show was good, there were a couple of songs that I didn’t absolutely love but for the most part, they were really good. Oh, I almost forgot, after their first two space songs (which also had video of a landing that was really cool too) Jim Kennedy came out on stage. He did about a 15 minute presentation on the history of space travel. 50 years ago on the 4th of October was when Sputnik was launched, the first satellite. His presentation was good, but it wasn’t really anything I hadn’t heard before. Probably the neatest part of it was hearing the people around me and their reactions. They obviously weren’t space nuts like me but it was obvious that they were impressed. There were a lot of oohs and aaahs.

The second half of the show started out in a really cool way. Up on the big video screen behind (which for the entire show had space images, and galaxies up on it) the band was a picture of Clayton Anderson who is currently on the space station. He opened up the second part of the show with a tour of the space station and telling us that he hoped we enjoyed the show. Talk about a really cool way to start a show. They then played another series of songs from their new album one of which included a remake of the Star Trek theme song. They also played some music from their other new album which is a Halloween album. That music was weird. I bought three albums (they came in a package). Their new Christmas album which isn’t released until Monday, a 3 disk Halloween set and Music of the Spheres. It was pretty cool, they were also selling NASA stuff last night.

Overall, it was absolutely worth the trip and I will probably go back to see them for the space concert again. One of my favorite things from the concert (other than setting next to my wife) was watching the piano player. He was amazing! He had a funky grand piano and a keyboard setting on top and he would play both at the same time. Than at one point, he was playing a piano with one hand, a drum with another and sometimes he would pick up a tambourine type thing and play it and the piano or drum. Like I said, he was amazing. The last thing was that it was obvious that Chip Davis, the leader of the band/drum player, and all of the other people in the band looked like they were having an absolutely great time as they played. You can tell they love their job. I wonder if that is what I look like when I’m teaching? I hope so.

Future Teachers

2007-10-05T13:10:00.000-05:00

Not much to write about today, this is more of a photo blog. The pictures are of the students teaching each other today during our jigsaw tournament. I was impressed with how well they did. Each student prepared a lesson plan, activity guide, and game to play with their “class” of two other students. Who knows, maybe in a few years one of them will be teaching across the hall from me.