Tuesday, September 2, 2008

School daze


Last week..... excitement at 6am
This week..... barely even awake at 6am.

Our new desks have arrived, so first chore this morning will be furniture assembly. Somehow... and this should be interesting... the manufacturer packed 24 six foot tables, with adjustable legs and book drawers..... onto two small pallets. Hmm...... Bet there are some small parts in there... (g).

Of course we'll have our angels put them together, and it will be a good opportunity to see how they handle tools, as well as working together. Who will poke their eye out with a screwdriver, who will attack their neighbor, and who can figure out which way to turn the screws. I have high hopes nobody will be seriously injured, but if they are we have signed releases by now.

Then... the all school assembly, where all the admin and staff introduce themselves to the students. Rah Rah and such. Since our class is so large, and resources so thin, we will bring our own chairs. That guarantees us a prime spot in the back of the room, so it's worth it to carry the chairs down. Then again, moving 50+ high school seniors through halls as a pack, each carrying something with legs that stick out..... Well this oughta be interesting!

After brunch (our lunch is at 10:50) we throw the safety tests at them again for the second time. First time around was for grade, but nobody aced all four as required. They get to view the videos and take one more shot at it.

That will make most of the day, along with collecting eight chapters of homework and another assignment for grade. They can use any extra time doing some of the task work we gave them (four so far).

Tomorrow.... we start in with actual hands on lessons. They learn to jack a vehicle properly, and support it, to our standards. For task they will each set five vehicles completely off the ground to our satisfaction. This usually requires about twenty attempts..... each. They have to explain what they jacked from, where they supported, in each case... why, and the hierarchy of choices in the matter.

The day after.. using lifts. Five thousand pounds of steel and plastic, up and down like yo-yo's, times thirteen lifts, times fifty students. First they get the theory, then the safety lectures, then the safety test (100% or do it over, and over, and over)

It's going to be a full and interesting week!

Just to make it even more special, I think I will give them another test on top of it all....... wouldn't want them to get bored, now would I? :-)


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Had a guy once, with a K car on a lift, lay under the front wheels and managed to lower the vehicle on his chest to kill himself (he obviously defeated the safety mechanisms by putting a heavy pipe on the lift controls. It was still a pretty nifty piece of engineering, and a scramble to put his chest just so and wait for the car to descend.

Only thing to use a K car for, though, as a weight.