Showing posts with label Chet Baker. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Chet Baker. Show all posts

Friday, May 12, 2017

The Joy of the Classroom: Et ut mercedem hoc faciunt

Image result for chet baker and bill evans

I am monitoring a computer-based class that puts geometry and trades-skills into the hands of America's future workforce. Today, this class of sophomores create house-blue prints including steps overview, draw for depth viewing, sketch and mechanical drawings.

One young gent created a cylindrical design for a two story home buttressed by concave supports.

Most designs apply Euclidian geometry with 90 degree line of sight, transfer with dividers and more triangular aspects to design.

All are really cool.

The skilled trades are screaming for capable young people to fill in the ranks of people from my generation, who decided to forgo Loyola, or Depaul for the Washburn and union trades apprentice programs.

This 'hands on' attention to academic details, that will impact on their lives in more dramatic ways than, Moby Dick, the )Peace of Westphalia, the Treaty of Utrecht, or the Henry Wallace attempt to turn America into a Soviet-agency in 1948, has the men engaged. The Class is known as AUTOCAD and it takes the place of the old mechanical drawing and drafting classes of old.

It is a great deal of fun watching the guys at each station measure twice and cut once.

We listen to the magnificent genius of Chet Baker and Bill Evans from their signature recording sessions from 1958-1959.  Perfect for the meticulous and exact work being performed on the thirty Dell desktop stations loaded with the Auto ACad soft- ware How High The Moon, Time on My Hands and You and the Night and Music. 

I get paid to do this. 

Saturday, October 05, 2013

I Am in a Wonderful Frame of Mind . . . For What It's Worth!



God is a good guy, to me anyway.

My son is taking his trade exam after a two year apprenticeship. My older daughter and her fiance closed on a house nearby. My youngest daughter is studying and working at Western Michigan.  Leo High School is gearing up at the school for today's Soul Bowl with Hales Franciscan and a continuation of a perfect season at both varsity and JV levels.



 I have Chet Baker playing and singing in the background.  My only worry concerns my lovely lady friend who is visiting family in New Orleans as a tropical storm is twisting near Big Easy.  God's a good guy.

This week at Leo High School I watched two young women really make an impact upon the tough but eminently fragile young men they teach.  Both women, a science and a math teacher, are at ease with their disciplines and the young bundle of hormones in front of them.  Our science teacher, a veteran of Maria High School, gives a vocabulary word of the day unrelated to biology, or chemistry.  You should hear 15, 16 and 17 year old African American,Mexican and Irish tough guys employ the new found words and their proper meanings in the hallowed halls long ago patrolled by quick belting Irish Christian Brothers - ' Mr. Hickey's evanescent hair reminds me of Fall!'  Friday's word flibbertigibbet dominated both lunch hours.

The young teacher, who bears my last name, teaches geometry like she has been in the trade for years and she is Mike Joyce's assistant boxing coach armed with ND Bengal Bouts seasoning the young lady handles her mitts well after school. In the classroom, the boys are learning because their teacher treats them like men.

Our guys come to school early and stay late.  We are making a difference and that makes me very proud.

Yep, God is a good guy who helps us work incrementally.  I can not wait to get over to Hales Franciscan for the Soul Bowl.  I know my great frame of mind is only going to improve. God gave us Chet Baker, after all.