Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire How does one graduate HS without knowing.

I thought about it while in the Junior College. I had a cool Anthro/Archaeology teacher. Work the school year, travel to AZ and NM for some digs and hit the Rez pawn shops for cool stuff. He had some wonderful rugs and pawn jewelry. Pots too. And I figured unlike Junior or HS age kids that were required to be there, I'd have students that mostly wanted to be there. And should I get one that didn't like my class, I could tell them "Hey, you realize YOU are paying for this. YOU don't have to stay".

10 years or so later, when I went to the real University as a returning student I realized I wasn't cut out for dealing with people on a regular basis. I'd rather deal with critters, they seem easier to get along with.

Glad you made it out alive!

Thanks, Geno. Often it takes a while and some serious reflection, and maybe most of a lifetime, until we are enabled to see what may have been the best choices. I do understand about the happiness and peace that can come in dealing mostly with critters. I know some fine folks who found their best niche there.

The very best parts of the education field, for me, were the planning, energies and hours devoted to working with students. Huge rewards for me and, based on some accumulated evidence, maybe for a lot of them as well. One major benefit was that I could further develop my skills and talents and get to apply the expertise and abilities in a wide variety of performance situations - big enjoyment - in the very field to which I was devoted for teaching. Maybe rare these days - I was fortunate. After many years of that I looked at the future, decided to complete a Ph.D to prepare for leadership work and went on to that. Different investments, different rewards, different risks. The effort to help and lead faculty types is a different universe than the sphere of eager and willing students.

Stay happy.

Valsdad:

The best teachers and programs are conducted by those that can convey the future value of their efforts. I.e. one will use this in the future. One of my most valuable high school courses was typing, and I was able to relay that to my instructor at a 20th reunion as she had tears forming.

As a high schooler, I did only enough to progress. Fortunately, it was a tough school in Va, and I absorbed a lot more than grades implied. Four years in the Navy during the Nam era gave me direction. College was easy, fun, and by cutting back to bare essentials with summer and school jobs, not a debt accumulator.

Career options were teach or research, and I went for the latter. I.e. publish or perish. Did enjoy doing guest lectures though for everything from 4th graders to graduate levels. After a career's exposure to kids, if teaching was mandated, it would be grade school or college with nothing in between. With rare exceptions, middle and high schoolers are just too cool to display interest. Quite rewarding with the little guys though to see the lights come on with a realization of "wow, that's how that works." If college, I think the career courses would be most rewarding, as one would be dealing solely with kids that wanted to be there. Core courses, needed to sort of round one out would be the pits. I can not imagine sitting down to grade 200 English compositions.

As to the other thread where the kid had a 0.13 GPA and ranked in the upper 50%, I wonder what the 3 courses were that he passed? Maybe PE.

One of the worst for me was Pre-Calculus Algebra. The audience was largely populated by students thinking "I know this stuff already" and "The SAT/ACT/Departmental Placement exam is bogus" and they were chafing at not being in calculus. This resulted in many rude awakenings when the first test exposed incompetence born of lax study and preparation.

1minute,

0.13GPA? Yikes, I didn't see that thread I guess. How does one even get to that point?

I agree about conveying the value for the future. I had the pleasure to "teach" or "mentor" some fellow workers, volunteers and the like in some of the jobs I had. And it really was pleasurable when the interest was there. Folks have told me when I retired I should hold small private classes in some "outdoorsy" type stuff for kids, as I have a varied knowledge of that world.

My issue, that took a long time to realize, is that I'm not a people person and I have to work hard to have some of those people skills that come easily to others. When I went to grade and high school they didn't have this " he's on the spectrum" diagnosis............I was just an unruly smart kid that did his own thing.

I've mentioned it before on some threads. In my thirties I took some "aptitude" tests that determined the best careers for me were things like Back Country Forest Ranger, Cowboy, Game Warden, Fisherman and such. In other words, jobs where I could work by myself or only with smaller groups and mostly without a lot of interference from bosses. Give me an assignment and get out of my way.

I kind of liked being the tutor for Beginning Statistics for the Biological Sciences while at University. It was always a joy to see someone "get it", or sometimes maybe they didn't understand ( I didn't when I started) but could do the tests and come out with the correct outcome. And because they had the objective of a career in the natural resources fields, they knew it was a valuable tool to have in their kit. And I was a lab assistant in a couple of courses pertinent to my career choice, which was fun in many ways. (Not to mention beneficial on the resume when getting started in my field)

My wife talks about us eventually needing to move closer to a metro area, for health care reasons and such. I dread the day. I like living on our 7 Acre RANCH!, 15 or so miles from town, surrounded on three sides by BLM land with a nice guy holding the grazing lease back there, my nearest neighbors on the other side of the street are a couple hundred yards away, there are three houses (the last a 300 acre ranch) past our place before the road ends in a school bus turn around. I have few people to deal with on a daily basis, and I can't imagine living in even a suburban neighborhood with people on all side of me.

That's why I'm grateful I didn't attempt the teacher thing when younger. Odds are it wouldn't have worked well for me or my students...........and certainly not for coworkers and administration types.

We got about 2" of really wet snow this morning down here. Did you folks up the road get very much? The moisture is certainly welcome, although a bit messy as it's melting and getting muddy already.

Enjoy your day there.

When my youngest grandson attended his first day of kindergarten he had a run in with his teacher. He started reading a math textbook and the teacher told him he couldn’t because he wouldn’t understand it. He said ....”No I already know multiplication and division and fractions.” Disbelieving him she quizzed him on his multiplication tables, which he aced. She asked him how much 1/3 plus 1/4 equals. He replied that 1/3 is 4/12 and 1/4 is 3/12 so they total 7/12. He then did three digit additions in his head. They promptly put him in a Gifted and Talented Program. He finished High School Algebra as a third grader. His great grandfather (my Dad) finished High School at 14 and entered Harvard Medical as a 19 year old.

Valsdad:

Had a small storm give us maybe 1/2 inch of snow from about 07:30 to 09:00. Sun is out now, and I hear water dripping from the roof. When it comes to water, we'll take all we can get.

Link - Family amazed at failure to graduate

My son was in High School in Kali in the 1980 era. One of his buddies, while a senior , had a 4.0 average for that year at graduation time. I found out what classes he'd had, it was "woodshop, woodshop, TA for woodshop, one semester of American Government, woodshop, TA for woodshop, TA for woodshop.

Thanks

... or alot for a lot

I’m not even reading all these pages. Dumb digk fugks!

I sometimes get confused. Is it bite me or byte me?