Back to the Grind...

Well, its official.  Started back to school last Wednesday.  Couple of meetings under the belt already, and 8 mind numbing hours of helping with registration spread over 2 days.  Didn't get anywhere near as much as I'd hoped done in my room but we are making progress.

Now that I'm back "on the job", that means project time has totally dried up.  I've got a few things I want to post about over the next week or two from summer, but in the meantime here's what I've been working on most recently.

The Monday before I was supposed to go back to school, my wife and kids were already in school.  That left me home all alone.  Boooorrrriiiinggg... Time to go for a ride! So I got all loaded up and headed out on this:



To do this:



I was under 700 miles to go for my goal this year, this would have put me within 400 . The last couple of miles was hoping to rack up riding the 7 miles to work and back.




Ride started out great. Roads were clear, found a fun little detour, clearish skys, nice weather. Had a little niggling feeling though that maybe I should head home, get some stuff done, and save this for another day.



Nah, it'll be fine.

15 miles later.



The hole is almost the size of a quarter, and you can see clear into the tire. I hear a *BANG* and felt the bike kind of lurch, but just thought that I ran over something. About a mile later, I decided something was wrong, and started slowing down from about 70. Once I got down to about 45 the back end started to wander ALL over the place. Kinda scary, but I got it stopped and managed to get a ride into Soda Springs and get things figured out.

3 hours later, thanks to some family that lived sorta nearby, we got the beast loaded in the back of his BRAND new pickup, which made it a pain because we had no ramp and he didn't want to scratch his new truck.



Made it home, but I think the bike'll be down for a while... Can't afford a new tire right now.



Only made it about 90 miles into the 300 mile trip.  Bummer. Guess I'll just have to ride 'ole paint.  I wanted to haul things though, so that means I had to camouflage my KTM as a KLR... Think anyone will notice?



That worked great for a couple of days, but really... I can't handle that.  SO... Dug out the set of panneirs and Happy Trails rack I have for the bike that got mangled when I got rear-ended at a stop sign a couple of years ago.

Started with this:



Applied some heat,



Welded up some cracks,



Added some hopefully rear-ender deterrent:



Slapped a coat of paint or 3 on the rack,




And ended up with this:




Turned out pretty nice!  Even got it relatively square.



 




Now I can lug my lunch to school in STYLE!  Hoping to get a new tire for the ST soon, as I still want to hit my goal of 60,000 miles (6,000 of them this year).

I'm getting excited for school- got all kinds of idears tumbling 'round in my head for things to try and change this year. Hoping for a good batch of kids who want to learn, but I have to remember its more MY attitude about that then it is theirs that makes it fun for me.

Could be a pretty rough year though.  I have 17 computers, 22 desks, and TWENTY FIVE students in most of my classes.

Twenty five students? You might say, "thats ALL!?" Yeah.  Try having that many in my classroom with the amount of different things going on and sharp objects / power tools all over the place.  The rest of my beard may actually go white this year.

Wish me luck!

Back to school sales for teachers are like-

Back to school sales for teachers are like crosses are to vampires.  

So summer is rapidly drawing to a close. Year 5, hear we come!

Spent some time in the shop today getting everything pulled back out. The janitors are *really* good at stuffing anything loose in every nook and cranny...







But after a few hours it's starting to look the part.



I'm not going to complain though, I get a nice new painted & waxed floor.



Summer has been awesome- the Cali trip was INCREDIBLE as you may have read here, got to put 5,000 miles on my bike, camped, ate food, slept in, worked on various project, you know. All the things your 'sposed to do on a long break.

Looking forward to this year- I'm due for re-certification but I'm pretty sure I have all my credits all ready. As mentioned, I will be looking more seriously at masters programs, with the ideal goal being to choose and start on something within the next 2 years (next summer would be awesome, but next summer might be busy. Just have to see what life gives me).

The break has given me a chance to reflect a lot on what I've been doing and what I want to do in the classroom. I've got some ideas to try out and I'm excited to see if they work, or not. Since we switched from semesters to trimesters, I've still been trying to cram everything we used to do into the shorter time frame, and it's not working. Going to cut a few things but that will give us more time to delve into the specifics of other things. It's a tradeoff, but it's one I think will be worth it.

I've got lists a mile long for supplies needed, things to do, changes to make, and people I need to talk to. Got three more weeks before I am "required" to be there. Hopefully I can get some things checked of the lists and play a bit more first!

Do I get a gold star?!

TWO. MORE. DAYS.

I will have made it through 4 years of teaching.

This year has been pretty interesting. I started off with a few goals for the first trimester- fairly large for me and requiring a lot of organization / preparation / lesson planning. I for the most part achieved my goals to the benefit of my curriculum and students. 2nd tri was a brand new experience, with the purchase, assembly, testing, and finally implementation of a brand new piece of technology- a 3D printer. STILL having fun with that one. Third tri was a blur of projects and activities but we made it through.

For me, it's kind of a crossroads. Mrs. Punch, my wonderful wife, graduated in January. A few weeks ago she officially was offered a job as a teacher starting this fall. While we will love the much needed extra income (remember, Idaho is still the second lowest paid state, and now we are BOTH teachers...) I'm hoping and planning that its MY turn to get some more education.

Here's the problem. What does someone like me, who has no desire to get a masters in administration, do!? I love working with my hands. I love showing others how to work with their hands and MAKE. I would love to make myself a better teacher but overall, I want to know more about the how, why and why-nots of making. There are so many things I want to try- blacksmithing, jewelry making, industrial design and all that goes with that, metallurgy seems fun, and anything that sucks fuel in, blows it up, and makes wheels spin is always at the top of my charts- the older the better.

Figure I've got a year to figure out the WHAT, then comes the how- how do I do that while hanging on to a job I love, how to do it from here in the place we love, how to make it work.

Just what I need, ANOTHER project.

In the meantime, a pic from today. Final shop cleanup. Spent all day doing this- felt like hearding 120 ducks from point A to point B, all the while trying to get them to leave a SMALLER mess behind...

Mendelmax 2.0- First batch of Student Projects!

Finally got around to finishing up the wheels for the student cars.  Think they turned out pretty nice!

Started out just running 4 at a time but got to where I did 8 in one fell swoop.







4 down, 33 to go.

Printed wheels of in batches of 100.  Looks like I finally got my bed pretty darn level.



Pile of wheels and my sample with 'em glued on.



And the finished products!













Some of them followed the instructions great, a few didn't and their wheels didn't fit in the wheel wells... Mostly they turned out pretty good! 

My Tech 2 class (Grade 8) has been playing with the printer this week, here are a couple of their "practice" prints.





They drew them up, exported the .stl, repaired it in Netfabb, and a few of them played a bit with Repetier. Couldn't get it to install on all of the computers though so we loaded them all in one file to generate the code.


We started on their big projects- have a couple students attempt ipod / iphone cases, one pair of glasses, an airplane, a couple of "lego" people, a trailer jack (?!?!?), a boat anchor and winch...  The things kids come up with.  Should be fun!

Whatever floats 'yer boat.

A few teachers are working on the Follet Challenge in hopes of winning our school some serious cash to update the library.  The librarian has been working with our ELL teacher and they came up with a "Treasure Island" theme.  As I understand it, Follet is a book / publishing company or something, so they chose a book and are trying to get the entire school involved somehow.  I volunteered to build Raingutter Regatta boats with my Tech class, and we just finished up the unit.

I think it went pretty well, I really wish we would have had more time to tear the boats apart and let them make their own design and go crazy with ideas now that they have a race under their belts and saw what worked and what didn't.  Unfortunately, we only have about 15 good work days left in the school year and have 2 units to try and smash into that time.

Anyways, here are their boats!

Roughing out the hulls.









Primer.



Smoothing out the primer, prepping for paint.



Paint!



Oooooo, shinnnnnyyyyy....



Getting closer.



Two that I made as demo's.



RACE DAY!









Think they had fun and learned a fair bit about boating and some of the design challenges associated with them.  Had a few boats capsize, a few with sail issues, and a few with hulls that just didn't want to float right.  The ELL class came and judged the races for us and also gave out a few awards for different categories. 

Many thanks to Greg of All Seasons Continuous Rain Gutters and Siding for building and donating the "race track"!  If you are in SE Idaho and need gutters or siding, be sure to give him a call-  208-785-2259!

FIFTEEN MORE DAYS.  Am I going to survive this!?