Being a good steward of the Earth

I am a recycling fanatic. I am simply unable to place an aluminum can in the garbage. I rip out the plastic windows in the envelopes so I can recycle the paper. I carefully separate my compostables from recyclables from the real trash. But it's taken on a more intensive twist in the past six months. I now try and avoid using the dryer. I've taken to stringing up some climbing rope on the back porch and having my laundry air dry. I've kept up my promise of taking public transport to work now averaging 3 times out of 5 in a week. I have also been making an effort to buy the energy efficient lightbulbs and replacing the bulbs in my house.

However, I've reached a new level of fervor. You see, at school, I have always kept a stack of papers that have been used on one side but were free of any marks or writing on the back. I have always been good about using the back sides of paper, but the pile just kept getting bigger and bigger. Then this past summer, I was cleaning out my files and checking to see if I could save the blank back sides of sheets (while carefully removing any staples from those sheets going to the recycling bin) and my scratch paper pile grew to over a foot. It was time to take action. So, I finally experimented with the department printer to be able to stick in paper into the tray in the correct orientation to print out onto the backs of my previously used pieces of paper.

When I hand my students something that has been printed off the stack, they are a bit confused. I'm hoping that they won't be after I continue to do this. Why do I do this you ask? It lets me sleep better at night. Therapy in my future perhaps?

Things to check out

So, during my absence from the blog, I've been saving up things that I wanted to mention or have readers check out. It's actually only two things. One is an action and the other is, well, a statement on the level of maturity of political discourse in our nation today.

First, we should all be aware of and work to replace the incandescent lightbulbs we grew up with to the energy efficient bulbs that are now on the market. The months of October and November are the Energy Star Change a Light Change the World Campaign. I replaced a burned out bulb a couple of days ago with one of these greenstar bulbs. Yes, they are expensive, but will last years longer than the energy inefficient bulbs most of us still have. Just do it.

On a completely unrelated topic, I found this following Schwarzenegger clip on the website of Democratic Treasurer Phil Angelides. What does this say about the level of political discussion in the United States. But you make your own judgement.

The 2005 All School Fair

I explain away the radio silence of the past month to one thing only......read the last posting. I must provide some history. The school "loaned" me one of the retired colorful iMac's back in 2003. I didn't know that one couldn't install OSX onto that machine and I killed it. The tech department was kind enough to "loan" me another iMac. Six months later, it was stolen from my home. A couple of months later, my grant was approved and I was "loaned" the iBook from which I am currently writing. In my first year of possession, I had to have the CD-ROM replaced, luckily it was still within the warranty. However this latest pain I have inflicted on the computer was a friend logicboard. After a week of diagnostics, the tech folks concluded they needed to send it to a place called "We Fix Macs" for a cost of $700. It took a while for the approval to spend this money and then another week to get the computer back to me. So, all told it's been about a month since I've had a computer and now it's back. I feel whole again. Also, now that you have the entire history of my computer issues (remember I also killed the loaner iBook as well), I felt in no way justified in asking for speedier service. It's back, and I'm overjoyed.

So, concurrent to the pain of not having a computer, it was crunch time in getting the All School Fair set up. Here's how it works. Groups of students in the high school, either advising groups, homerooms, clubs and sports teams get together to sponsor a booth at the fair. Asia club always offers a Dance Dance Revolution game, the Junior class delivers carnations and runs a second booth, the Marriage booth, which is a huge hit with the Middle School kids. The senior class turns the "big toy" into a haunted house. These are just some of the fair booths. But each grade in the Lower School also offers a booth. The 5th grade always does the cakewalk On the night of the fair, the older students run these booths for the entertainment of our Lower School students. Remember, since HRS is a K-12 school, many of the students running booths attended the fair as little kids and so there is a sense of continuity.

So what's the hook here for the older students? Ahh, it is the red "PLAY" ticket. Each time a person wants to play at a booth, they must hand over a set number of tickets to the booth sponsor. Each group collects there tickets over the course of the evening and turn them in to business office which credits the groups account thereby providing the group or club money with which to run its activities for the year. Essentially, the fair is its own economy for the three hours it exists every third Friday evening in October. Some booths had activities that were games and if the participant won, they received a blue "WIN" ticket. These "WIN" tickets could be redeemed at the prize booth. A red "PLAY" ticket had a value of 25 cents and a blue "WIN" ticket had a value of 10 cents.

What did I do? I was the coordinator. It was like herding cats. The Athletic Department was in charge of food (BBQ). A colleague of mine was in charge of musical entertainment. Another colleague was in charge of the prize booth. I had liasons in both the Middle and Lower School. So, I realized that my role was to simply play air traffic controller. Making sure that preparations were done in the correct order and at the right time so the next thing could happen.

So, here are some pictures of the fair. I know you all have been waiting for these...

The Fair was on Friday October 21st, and as of Thursday afternoon, less than 15% of the fair was set up. But in a rush of activity, things were in place and ready to go by 6PM Friday evening. Here is a group of students from the BSU setting up their booth.

This is a typical booth structure, which is constructed from PVC pipes. The design was created and fabricated by a former colleague who has since left the school. The attempt to put together this structure has flummoxed even the most engineering minded adults and students in the community. Luckily, I had a colleague who had put them together in the past create the first one for me and which I used as a template.

This year, the Athletic Department unveiled their brand new deluxe BBQ. Hats off to the chefs. I dined on a perfectly cooked steak sandwich!

Entertainment? You got it. Here is the dance troupe FADE

Every year there is a fair theme. Off the cuff, I chose an Arctic/Antarctic theme. Little did I know that declaring the fair theme was the most significant decision I made in the planning process. So, that sign I'm wearing has written on it "x=r*sinO". I was a polar coordinate. Get it?

Here's the Junior Classes very popular and lucrative Carnation booth

With a stroke of luck (as in they were the first group I saw when i found out the Student Council would not sponsor the astrojump), the Junior Class ran the astrojump, which is a huge cash cow.

The cakewalk run by the 5th Grade

Show off your skills at the Latino Clubs goal kicking booth.

Protect the penguins at the 6th grade bowling booth. That's legendary 6th grade teacher Jim J. there with the white hat and his trademark khakis and running shoes.

The sophomores in the Sarkar/Dwelley homeroom earned a good chunk of money with their Wheel of Fortune game. My statistics class is able to calculate the mean value (either loss or gain) on each and every bet. It's the calculation of finding the mean of a discrete random variable. Easy.

My colleague Bob W., dean of the 9th grade, has the class run the prize center.

These two Charlie's angels are two of my Geometry students. The one on the right is the 3rd and last child in the Dantzker family. I have had the priviledge of serving as the advisor to each of the three kids. They are a great family and have great to me over these past nine years.

I was visiting a friend of mine and he had this bear sitting in his living room. I made some comment about it and he said he had no use for it and wanted to get rid of it. I asked if he would be willing to donate the bear to the fair as an auction item for a club to raffle off. He generously gave the bear to me and I handed it over to the Revelations club.

I think the raffle winner went home happy.

So, some closing comments. It was a thankless task, but one in which I had the benefit of meeting some of my colleagues in the Lower School with whom I have never spoken. My one large disappointment came with my fellow faculty members. We all say that we want to have our students plan ahead and then follow through with their committments. But it was more than just once or twice that I had faculty members bail on me or committments they had made to students. We adults have to model the behaviors we want from our students. It's no wonder they don't have a clue as I watched more than one teacher completely ignore what they preach.

I'm off the soapbox now. It's done and over with. But I immediately get hit with the whammy of writing interim comments on each of my students. I have, at this moment, 0 done and 73 to go. They are due at 8AM on Tuesday November 1st. Wish me luck!