Finally Out of School After 50 years or So

A psychologist walked around a room while teaching stress management to an audience. As she raised a glass of water, everyone expected they’d be asked the “half empty or half full” question. Instead, with a smile on her face, she inquired: “How heavy is this glass of water?”

Answers called out ranged from 8 oz. to 20 oz.

She replied, “The absolute weight doesn’t matter. It depends on how long I hold it. If I hold it for a minute, it’s not a problem. If I hold it for an hour, I’ll have an ache in my arm. If I hold it for a day, my arm will feel numb and paralyzed. In each case, the weight of the glass doesn’t change, but the longer I hold it, the heavier it becomes.” She continued, “The stresses and worries in life are like that glass of water. Think about them for a while and nothing happens. Think about them a bit longer and they begin to hurt. And if you think about them all day long, you will feel paralyzed, incapable of doing anything.”

Remember to put the glass down!

-copied

A cowboy named Bud was overseeing his herd in a remote mountainous pasture
in Montana when suddenly a brand-new 2016 7 Series BMW advanced
toward him out of a cloud of dust. The driver, a young man in a Brioni
suit, Gucci shoes, RayBan sunglasses and YSL tie, leaned out the window and
asked the cowboy, “If I tell you exactly how many cows and calves you have
in your herd, will you give me a calf?”
Bud looks at the man, who obviously is a yuppie, then looks at
his peacefully grazing herd and calmly answers, “Sure, why not?”

The yuppie parks his car, whips out his Dell notebook computer,
connects it to his Apple i phone, and surfs to a NASA page on the Internet,
where he calls up a GPS satellite to get an exact fix on his location which
he then feeds to another NASA satellite that scans the area in an
ultra-high-resolution photo.
The young man then opens the digital photo in Adobe Photoshop®
and exports it to an image processing facility in Hamburg, Germany …

Within seconds, he receives an email on his Apple iPad that the
image has been processed and the data stored. He then accesses an MS-SQL
database through an ODBC connected Excel spreadsheet with email on his
Galaxy S5 and, after a few minutes, receives a response.

Finally, he prints out a full-color, 150-page report on his
hi-tech, miniaturized HP LaserJet printer, turns to the cowboy and says,
“You have exactly 1,586 cows and calves.”
“That’s right. Well, I guess you can take one of my calves,” says
Bud.
He watches the young man select one of the animals and looks on
with amusement as the young man stuffs it into the trunk of his car.
Then Bud says to the young man, “Hey, if I can tell you exactly
what your business is, will you give me back my calf?”
The young man thinks about it for a second and then says, “Okay,
why not?”
“You’re a Congressman for the U.S Government”, says Bud.
“Wow! That’s correct,” says the yuppie, “but how did you guess
that?”
“No guessing required.” answered the cowboy. “You showed up here
even though nobody called you; you want to get paid for an answer I already
knew, to a question I never asked. You used millions of dollars worth of
equipment trying to show me how much smarter than me you are; and you don’t
know crap about how working people make a living – or about cows, for that
matter.
This is a herd of sheep”
“Now give me back my dog.”
AND THAT FOLKS IS WHAT THE PROBLEM IS.

shared by Jim

The following email from our retired teacher association director is good reminder for retirees and active employees to be diligent about being aware of what government wants to do to reduce what they spend on pensions.  Big reason is the state’s not meeting obligations to pensions whenever they had any type of budget shortfall. They made a commitment to employees and need to figure out how to honor it instead of reducing it.

As a retired superintendent I could go on and on about how they robbed Peter to pay Paul with school funding. Basically, they give you a raise in education funding then quit paying for items they historically paid for. Usually stuff you are required to fund and the option to drop it isn’t available.

One of the Louisville Courier-Journal’s front page articles on Monday, May 15, 2017, was about Kentucky’s public pension debt. Just click on the link below to read the article.

louisvillecourierjournal.ky.newsmemory.com/publink.php?shareid=1a53a2243

It appears to be a “heads up” on what’s to come.

Regards,

Bob Wagoner

KRTA

I was reminded recently of this seemingly eternal question. Sharon, longtime treasurer of Providence Schools and all around good person, recently passed away. She is one the folks who helped me survive more than a day as superintendent. One question that seemed to start everyday was lunch planning. One aspect of Sharon’s life was she didn’t cook and would let you know. Whenever the ladies discussed food she might add a favorite or a recipe but always added she didn’t cook. I realized how serious she was when I heard somebody ask her, “When did you turn your oven into a bookcase? “.

At Carlisle the first order of business was determining lunch. If you ever been out to the schools you realize leaving the campus for food does require a plan. Not like you can drive down the street and decide which place to stop and eat.

My wife just got out of the hospital. She is fine, I had her at work 15 minutes after her release. No matter how many screen savers were saying patients heal quicker with quiet you heard their conversations which usually involved food. Probably true at any workplace.

I arrived at my first and only great educational theory about why “what is for lunch” is the first order of business. The place could be burning down and the response would be we’ll put it out after we figure out lunch. From the time you enter school till you leave you are indoctrinated each day with the lunch count and somebody reading you the lunch menu. If you learned nothing else in school you learned it is essential to start work by answering the question, “What’s for lunch?”

Mom stunted my never promising athletic career by hiding the Wheaties.

Finally found what must be the birthplace of all educational reforms. Figured I would start the move to get it on the hysterical register.

Pretty sure it will be a collaborative effort