Control Track

... I found a use for the 150 proof rum I bought to make twinkies flambee. It is so powerful, haven't been able to put it in anything because it is so overwhelming. We didn't have any regular rum, so we used this in some eggnog and that stuff is so thick the rum can't punch at you through it.

btw: twinkies flambee is a total disaster.

Caffeine has replaced tobacco as the boneheaded addiction du jour. Long after both have faded from fashion something else will replace them. I've been addicted to both, neither really did anything for me and both had an adverse impact on my health.

It will be a political year.
Jeremy Kalin, our state rep will want help walking the county door to door. I think Rick Olseen our State Senator will want help too. I am supporting Rebecca Otto for auditor and hope to march in some parades with her - at any rate I signed up for that. Don't know who I am supporting for Governor. Margaret Anderson Kelliher is making a good pitch - and I would like to see a woman run. RT Rybak of Minneapolis has my ear too. But there are alot of people running for that office, it will be a rough and tumble primary season.

Oh, and Franken is emailing people to send money to State Senator (St Cloud) Tarryl Clark's campaign to unseat Michelle Bachmann. Some people, you look into their eyes and just see the 60 Cycle Hum. Michelle is solidly in that category so I'll be sending a check to whatever warm body is running against her.

Its already starting....

I have to get up in less than 6 hours.  Why am I awake?  I'm completely off coffee but had two mugs at lunch; can it still be keeping me alert 12 hours later?

Just been wondering about ip version 6.  This could be cool.  Could really change the internet.  Every device gets an address.  So I claiom prmolina.com, then start adding registrations: mycell.prmolina.com, mfridge.prmolina.com, theirxbox.prmolina.com, hercell, mycar.  Right now the Durango has a check engine light on.  If it was registered, I could just call Pat and tell him to check it out at reddurango.prmolina.com.  He downloads the info and orders the parts.

Start thinking about it, and the whole net neutrality thing becomes increasingly important. 

If you haven't seen it, this seems to be going around Facebook.  I love it.
"
No one should die because they cannot afford health care, and nobody should go broke because they get sick. If you agree, please post this as your status for the rest of the day.
"

I'll probably leave mine up for a the long weekend.

I'm impressed with the increased quality of vids on you tube.  The HD really comes down nice.

Second year in a row, though, that I've been disappointed with what I came away with.  Next year I think I will spend some time on my own, there really is alot going on at this event and I am disappointed in myself because I haven't done the subject justice up to now.

I'm off to take the kids up to UW Superior for band camp.  About 6 hours.

I posted two marching band clips to youtube today.  Friday I upgraded Pinnacle Studio to version 12 and have been testing it out.  The "post to youtube" option works, but locks me to one quality option.  There wasn't a watch in HD option when this was done and they went up kind of fast for there ever to have that option appear.  I may back these out, create large high quality versions of them and then upload them later.

The Pride Parade was fun, as it always is.  Nothing like what we take the band to. 

But our church only fielded 4 marchers, all of us holding (clutching) the big church banner, that was a little forlorn.  All the Unitarian Univesalists marched together, maybe 25 total.  3 or 4 banners, 3 or 4 kids.  We had a nice set of drummers, and the theme was UUs Out for Marriage.  We were right behind the UCC crowd.

There is one older (hetero - I think) couple who are there every year with a sign that says "Grays for Gays".  I think they just show up, not officially a part of the parade with a number or anything.  They were at the end, watching everyone go by and I mentioned I had seen them here in previous years to the person holding the banner next to me; she nodded "they go to everything". 

Afterwards I walked around Loring park with one of the church board members.  Middle school teacher, former Peace Corps volunteer and a patient listener.  Really appreciated having M. there with me.  I've done the Loring Park after the Parade thing alone in the past as well as with church members and alone it really isn't as much fun.  We paid 10 bucks each for a coke and a bad Gyro.  I just don't know about that.

This is an easy one to teach, and I think difficult for the kids.

First is Amy's story, which is a page long story with nonsense words substituted for real words - globber for dog for example.  It is designed to get them to understand the need to use accurate vocabulary during a conversation about something important.
Second is New and Changing Feelings Discussion.  This section uses a little anecdote to talk about the importance of expressing feelings and the difference between expressing them using you versus I statements.
Next, Active Listening is introduced the 3 elements being making eye contact, using body language, and paraphrasing.  Students are paired off and do two little activities to practice this.
Finally, it the Role Playing section.  The pairs of students role play 3 situations with questions to process the excercise after each situation.  Situations are - Partner A to tell Partner B younger sibling (whom they love and don't want to hurt) that they mustn't get into their belongings and to give more privacy and personal space.
Situation two is Partner B is son or daughter of Partner A and needs to ask for personal supplies like deodorant, razor, tampons. 
Finally, Partner A really likes Partner B  and would like to let B know that you really want to know them better.  Both are a little emabarrassed.

I think all three are fairly plausible situations for adolescents and role playing them might help them out alot when the run into the situations in real life.

This session starts off with us going through some vocabulary.  List of seven words, if they did the readings they will already know them.  Next will be a fact or fiction game.  The curriculum has them divided into two competing groups, but E and I usually do "vote with your feet".  The fact or fiction questions are actually statements like: "Sexual abuse happens most often between strangers".

After the fact of fiction we have the Situation stations activity.  We pair the students off and they go pull a card from one of 5 choices, read the situation described on the card, then discuss it and the questions that follow the narrative.  For example, there is one about a girl who is increasingly nervous about going to her friends house because her friend's big brother is there and is dieing of AIDS.  After they have had a chance to go through a couple of these, we will pull the class back together and go over the activity by asking a series of questions.  We conclude by pointing out that "sometimes discussing (these things) feels scary or uncomfortable, but that being able to talk...can help us tke better care of ourselves..."  I'm paraphrasing.

The class is finished by Who Would I Tell - where we have participants write down the names of two people they could talk to if something bad happened to them.

I left my curriculum book in the cloakroom, so will have to go in early tomorrow and figure out what I am supposed to be teaching.

73, his detractors say he has lost a syllable on the competition...

After going through last weeks questions we start with an Everybody's Different Discussion.  We ask what the advantages are of being smallest, tallest and average sizes.  Summarize by poiniting out that over the course of puberty it is possible for someone to be all three.

Next is the Changes of Puberty Activity.  Start by defining puberty - I think we've done that before so this is reinforcement - and put up some sheets labled "Girls", "Boys", and "Both Girls and Boys".  The students will then take turns picking a piece of paper out of a hat, reading it aloud, then the group decides which sheet it gets taped to.  There are 26 common physical changes provided for us to go through, everythign from "your body will sweat more" to "Erections are more common".  I think we did this as vote with your feet last time. 

Next is the "What Will I be Like?" discussion.  We divide the class by gender and brainstorm things the kids are looking forward to about puberty and things they ar not looking forward to.  We then get back together as a class and talk about what we came up with.

This week we start with a discussion about family.  The kids were supposed to do a graphic piece of their family doing some activity.  Last time we only had four pieces to work off of, and I left myself a note that maybe the facilitators should do some too.   I have poker tonight so I'm not following my advice.  I've been pounding the parents and students this time that they have to do the homework, so maybe it will pay off and we will have some images to talk about.  We display these as the kids come in...
Next, we distribute a handout with 5 sentences to complete: Most of the families had in common; My family is different from most of the other families because; I really liked it that; Something different from my family that was really neat was; It would be hard for me if my family;
That completed, we ask a series of questions designed to get the conversation rolling about families.  We brainstorm what roles are in each family (eg. take out trash, first aid provider, rule maker etc) writing roles on a sheet.  When there is a nice list, we divide into groups of three and share how the roles are assigned in our own families.   We then come out of the groups and get specific about how family roles are divided: ability, gender, chance, no particular method.  Final question: if you were a parent, would you choose to divide roles in a different wy in your own family?
All this has 20 minutes alloted to the activity.
Activity 2 is 15 minutes.
Neither time is very realistic if you ask me.
Activity 2 starts by listing roles that friends  play and comparing them to the list of roles family plays.  We then do "handout 7" a list of 20 activities for the kids to categorize as being done with friends, family, or no one.  There are columns and check boxes and room for comments.  Activities include things like laugh together, kiss, hug, cry in front of, tell secrets, etc.  E. and I did this as a walking caucus last year, and with this group I think that would work well again.

We close with having everyone share one thing they really appreciate about their own family, followed by the question box.

Next week there are twice as many pages to read in "It's Perfectly Normal" but just a discussion with the parents about today's class, no activity.

The real session one:  We didn't do a class covenant week before last so will have to jam that into a busy schedule this week.  Shouldn't be too bad, we put down the ground work for it and its not like the kids haven't done one of those before.
We have a self-esteem/self-concept activity that is only supposed to last 5 minutes - that might be a little optimistic.  The kids fill in the blanks: the part of my personality I like the best is... A special talent I have is... Something that makes me unique and special is....  then we ask them to share one sentence - reminding them its ok to take a pass in this class.

Next is a Which Side Are You On.  We state a proposition and the kids go to one side of the room if they agree, the other if they disagree.  This really works out well, I remember from last year E. and I enjoyed doing these kinds of excercises so much we even converted some activities to this format.  The one thing is that with 5th and 6th graders there can be a tendency to follow the crowd, so we will have to encourage their contrarian side.  Hows that for a church sponsored goal?  Some questions for tomorrow are: It is just fine for a boy to cry when he feels sad.  I would rather be very, very rich than very, very good looking.  Only people who are married should have sex.  It is important for my best friend to have the same views as I have on most things.  People our age are too youg to date.  10 minutes alloted for this, and thats about right.

Next is the Debra and Tim story, we read it aloud first:  Basically, Tim and Debra are best friends, Then Debra tells Tim a lie so she can hang out with another girl (who thinks Tim is a dork).  Debra asks her 16 year old cousin, who isn't much help.  Then she finally tells Laura (the other friend) she is going to keep being friends with Tim, but too late Tim has figured out the lie, will not talk to her, and starts a nasty rumor about her.
So we have our charges write down who they like in this tale of woe in the order they like them, then go down the line of the charachters asking where they were positioned and why.  We ask questions like What are the characteristics of a good friend; Is it always better to tell the truth; is revenge ever justified?

Finally there is a Prejudice and Stereotypes discussion.  From my notes, when we did this two years ago I don't think we got to it.  Its a nice little speech we give, and is finished by some questions for the group. 

There is alot in this module, I just don't know if we'll get all the way through it this time either.  Time can really sneak up on you once you get going on any one of these modules; and I really HATE cutting the kids off once they get going in an in-depth conversation.  Really, its like you bring up all these related topics and then put it out there and stand back and see if they are inspired to "take the ball and run with it", and if they do why stop them.

The kids have Social Action Weekend instead.  My son is in town and brought two friends from college with him.   Robin made a big breakfast for all of us, then they went back to South Dakota via the Mega Mall.   I had promised my wife I would go rock climbing with her, my sons and her sister at Vertical Endeavours, so no church.   

There are eight sessions in the curriculum and we have 9 classes to fill, so tomorrow we are taking the material from the Parent/Child Orientation program - which our church doesn't run - and doing the child portion of the program.  We'll start off with a big orientation, last time I ran this the question I used as an ice breaker was "name the food that you least like but will still eat".  As I recall broccoli was a popular choice.  I may change it to a food you like that your family has but that nobody else knows about.  That way, maybe I get some interesting recipes out of this.

There are three activities for us: Me and my Family.  Growing up: What's Next?  And Three Wishes. 
Me and my Family has a teacher resource about where the child is vis a vis their siblings.  So we go through, for example, the advantages and disadvantages of being a first, youngest, middle, only child and a twin.  I think this is about getting the kids to talk freely in the group setting, and to emphasize that the curriculum really will discuss their situation in life.

The growing up session defines puberty (period of growth between childhood and adulthood) and asks participants to look ahead to the next few years and asks them what they are looking forward to about becoming teenagers.  If time permits, we ask what they will be anxious about.

Finally, I think we might cut the three wishes and do a class covenant, or at least set up an expectations list.  The parents will come in for the last 10 minutes and affirm that.  E., my partner, and I struggled a little with discipline last time we ran this class, so we want to get on top of that "early and often" and reinforce it with parent participation.

We had about 19 parents at the OWL meeting last night. Easy agenda:
Introduce the teachers, have parents introduce themselves and say who their kids are (which I promplty forgot). Watch a movie about teaching kids about sex for half an hour. Split the parents into groups to discuss what they learned, then reconvene and have a volunteer from each group say what they learned. Use a handout to talk about OWL goals and philosophies. AnyQuestions? It took about 2 hours.

I handled the movie and the discussion afterwards. I meant to break them into 6 groups of 3, but counted out 3 groups of six instead.   They were looking at me, half of them didn't even catch what I was doing; the other half was giving me a WTF look and I couldn't figure out why until I got done counting them...
So I just told them "you're adults, break into groups of three, couples in different groups..." and that worked fine.