May 28, 2008
Leo Voted Class Historian (Student Council) for 2008-9 Year
Leo just continues his winning streak with a student council election win. He ran for Historian (a role I held my last year at FMJH) in a field of nine other kids, and today he told us that he won the election! He will be establishing the Ruth Dowell MS Student Council's first website (with a little help from you-know-who) and will be responsible for taking and collection photos and other media for the site.
Anne and I are just amazed at his growth this year, he's bursting out of his shell and taking on the World. He performs in front of auditoriums (Band, Jazz Band), has given at least two public speeches (he ran for Historian in the National Junior Honor Society as well as Student Council), and will be in the National Jr. Honor Society, Wind Ensemble, Jazz Band, and now the Student Council at Ruth Dowell MS.
We're so proud of him!
Posted by Steven at 10:56 AM | Comments (0)
March 24, 2006
Day Three ... Freedom!
Overnight it froze. We woke very, very cold this morning. The only thing that drove the dads forward was the knowledge that today we'd be home (eventually). I opted out to not shower, nor require Leo to do so. Breakfast was really lame (hash browns and a biscuit with gravy).
We had only one event in the morning ... the dreaded "water" event. Kids would don waders and go into the lake to run a dredge net across the swimming area. I dreaded Leo falling into the water, and told him he didn't have to do it. It turns out that two girls managed to slip and get soaked up to their knees. Leo did participate in the science aspect of the event; using the microscope and using litmus paper to measure the Ph of the lake water (fortunately, it was approximately 7). Some of the boys using the waders and net actually caught minnows. We returned all of them to the lake.
After that event, the kids and the parents were taken to different areas to reflect on the event. Parents were encouraged to fill out a review of the camp. Some of the dads told me they were far from polite about their criticism. I gave most events an "average" rating, and only really dinged the facilities that were clearly falling apart. Holding this even in the Spring should have been a no-brainer, but we caught a winter squall that made the three days just miserable.
Lunch was a simple piece of Italian bread with cheese which the staff called a "pizza".
The buses were loaded and we hit the road at 12:25pm. We took five hours to drive home, hitting a lot of traffic once we got north of downtown Dallas. The kids on my bus got rowdier and rowdier, and the teacher on board completely failed to enforce any discipline. In the end, I just had to endure the screaming and shouting as we crawled up Central Expressway. Getting off the bus was a huge relief. Anne pulled up minutes after getting our stuff out of the bus, and whisked us home.
That first shower in three days was really, really nice.
Posted by Steven at 06:00 PM | Comments (0)
March 23, 2006
Day Two Outdoors ...
The night was COLD. My $30 Target sleeping bag was surprisingly warm, but the cabin dropped to nearly freezing temperature over night. Also, we had rain. As bad as it was for my cabin, the cabin over the water was worse -- no thermal sink floor (open below) with the sound of water all night long, it was horrible.
Breakfast was hearty -- hash browns and eggs. I ate two helpings. The hat rule was gone thanks to the cold -- amen.
The first event of the morning for Leo's team (Team Seven) was telephone pole ope crossing. This was our first exposure to the some-what slimy wheeling-dealing with the kids. They were told to declare a "goal" (i.e. climb the pole and cross), and were all but forced to achieve that goal. If they were smart and set a low goal, they were encouraged (tricked, really) into raising that goal. This would have been fine if the weather were accommodating, but in addition to the fear of heights this event illicit, the cold and wind made the physical process painful if you didn't have gloves, which most kids didn't. Leo only climbed the ladder and then came down.
The second event was the huge wall climb. I figured Leo wouldn't do this one at all, but he surprised and delighted me by tackling it twice. He hated the climb, but he really enjoyed the rappelling down. He went two-thirds the way up both times, and was well assisted by his team members and the camp counsellor "Andy".
By the end of these two events, all of Team Seven's hands were chaffed and very, very cold. Runny noses abounded. Lunch was an escape from the cold and the wind, and well enjoyed.
Dinner ...
The Astronomy event was interesting. They didn't do a spectacular job from an amateur astronomer's perspective in terms of preparing the kids for night vision (we all had white light flashlights) and the cold and wind made it mildly miserable, but the simple constellation observations, coupled with the Greek mythology, was not too bad. I asked the counsellor to identify the constellation Leo and he did (to Leo's delight). We saw a couple of satellites and some shooting stars, and some of these kids saw the Milky Way for the first time. I brought my binoculars and took a look at the Messier objects I could locate.
Afterwards we went back to the "Filling Station" for hot chocolate. Unfortunately, Leo dumped his hot chocolate on his blanket and as a result, had a meltdown. The staff couldn't help either, despite offering (at the start of camp) to launder any blankets that becamed soiled. Feh on that.
When we got back to our cabins, pandemonium broke out. Boys from some of the rowdy cabins started running around and banging on the flimsy window covers. This enraged the kids in my cabin, who wanted to go out and get into the fray. My chaperons kept our kids inside, and finally it died down. Getting everyone to bed was a long, slow process thanks to this. I was pretty pissed with the parents who let (and in one case, encouraged) their kids run wild.
Posted by Steven at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
March 22, 2006
Day One Outdoor
After only five hours of sleep, I and Anne were up around 4am. I crawled into the shower (completely unaware it was to be my last for a few days) and was ready to hit the trail at 4:45am. Anne had Leo up and ready by that time, too. So, we "loaded up the Jetta Wagon, and headed to Bennett Elementary!"
There was mild pandemonium at Bennett when we arrived. Many parents were already there, and already loading the bus. Being late really cost us little, and even ensured that our luggage was not crushed by the last bits being thrown "under the bus" (the cargo area).
Leo and his friends Grant and Chris went straight to the back of the bus and immediately fired up their Nintendo DS game units. Each of these units supports ad hoc networking. Before I knew it, a whole network game sprung up around me! They played Mario Crash Cart and other games, and then degenerated into chatting with each other, sending (to a 5th grader) rude messages to each other, and giggling out of control.
We stopped in north Waco and had breakfast around 8am. The parent chaperons went to the McDonalds and quickly scarfed down the breakfast meals we bought. We were back on the road around 8:45am. Two and one-half hours later we rolled into Camp Champions, home of The Outdoor School.
We were directed to unpack our stuff from the buses and put it under a large metal canopy that is called Olympus. We later discovered that the whole camp is themed after the Greek Gods (ironic, since it is a Christian summer camp). We then had a welcome lecture by the school director, and afterward fed the kids and adults their bag lunch. The kids were told about the policy of "Universal Respect" and were given their first necklass bead (for Respect). If they misbehaved, it could (and in many cases, was) be taken away from them.
Then we were directed to our cabins, where we picked bunks ("I call dibs on top!"). These cabins were not what you would call luxurious. I'd wager that many Stonebridge lawn mowers are stowed in nicer digs, actually. This is a summer camp so the cabins were designed around the idea of letting as much air flow through them as possible. When it was as cold as it was, this was a terrible feature.
Another "feature" of the cabins was a single, exposed light bulb. I anticipated this and brought a light socket wall plug and an extension cord. The light socket in our cabin was twelve feet off the ground, and nothing in the cabin could be moved under it, (the beds were bolted to the wall), so I took this to another cabin (#9) where I became an instant hero by bringing electricity to the dads (it turns out that many brought their cellphone charger). My Treo could not connect to the Internet, but still functioned as a cell phone.
The afternoon was spent doing our first two learning sessions. We had two in the morning, and two in the afternoon. In the evening, we had a big event each night. Because the weather was so bad, we switched Astronomy and Games. This turned out to be a good thing as the second night was clear enough to see the Milky Way.
Dinner was our introduction to more of the quirky rules of The Outdoor School. Parents and Teachers are encouraged to eat before the children, and everyone is required to remove their head wear (e.g. hats) as a "sign of respect in this nation". I thought that was a hold-over from the Christian camp, but I think it was an arbitrary rule of the Outdoor School director. On subsequent meals, they dropped the hat rule thanks to the cold.
The other quirky thing about meals is that each team had to dump their trash in separate buckets that were weighed. The teams with the least waste "won" a contest each night. Unfortunately, cheating was rampant and I think the buckets nearest the door got most of the trash. An unfortunate side-effect of this rule was it encouraged kids to over eat. The kids had to drink a glass of water before they could have punch. This was a well intentioned rule that forced kids to drink the soft, mineral rich water of the Hill Country, which tastes awful, frankly.
The first day was overcast all day, and quite cold. Worse yet, the wind was blowing at around ten to twelve miles-per-hour all the time. The boy's cabins were un-heated, and while there was a single electric heater in the bathroom, it was laughably inadequate against the cold for showering. Worse yet, only the first ten people taking showers got anything resembling a hot shower. The rest got warm or cold showers. I tried to take a shower the first morning, but ended up not bathing at all during the whole even. I never even tried to put Leo into the shower.
Posted by Steven at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)