Agreed as per previous post. And it's not just one kid's life, either. I had a friend in HS who went on to be a carpenter based on his shop classes, and I've been a carpenter and metalworker for my entire adult life. If it wasn't for shop, he'd probably be stacking groceries, and I'd probably be in prison. Instead, we're both useful members of the community. Another one of the guys I knew went on to be a shop teacher in Tokyo. Hell, shop classes make a big difference in a lot of men's lives, especially when you don't have much to look up to at home.
My thing was windchimes. I tried to compete with $5 Chinese crap that looked like crap and sounded like crap. People wanted to pay for quality alright, and they wanted my stuff. They were willing to pay three times what the Chinese stuff cost, and give me $15. For something that had $20 worth of materials in it.
I gave my production away and learned my lesson about making sure a market really exists before tooling up to make something. Also known as making something just because it's really cool and you can do it does not make it a practical undertaking.
On the woodworking front, I see a lot of the same kind of thing. At the venues where my wife sells her stuff, I see people walking around with lots of $5 pukey ducks, and the people with good stuff, like the hand made drums, say, putting lots of good stuff back into the trailer at the end of the day. Shows aren't the only venue for such things, I'll grant you, but still, it's indicative of the market. Pukey ducks sell. If you don't find pukey ducks a rewarding direction, then it's really hard to find a market. Not impossible, but very difficult.
Like these chess boxes I'm working on now. I've only made one so far, but I can see this as a saleable item. I can see it selling at a good venue for maybe $150 on a good day. But I have $150 worth of wood, hardware, and commercially produced chess pieces in this thing, and I spent every bit of a hundred hours making it, so I need to retail it for about ten times that to make it worthwhile as a commercial undertaking.
Which is why I just don't worry about trying to make this a commercial undertaking. I'll find some other way to earn my daily bread.
Yes, and on Charlie's other thread that started such hostility, at least one of the n*****ts I went to school with (numbtits maybe? she was a wimminz) spoke Spanish about as elegantly as Peggy Hill, and she's teaching now. The only people in my department who were worth a damn at all were me and a handful of native speaking foreign exchange students from various places taking gravy credits. I was the only American-born student in either the Spanish or French department who could speak either language with any semblance of fluidity at all.
Notice I did not say "fluency." I'm still not fluent after eight years of formal Spanish and seven years of formal French. I get by. I make fun of myself for being a gringo a lot to cover up my flubs, and I ask people to speak slooooooooowly, so I can figure out what they're saying. I'm not fluent, and I was the best by a gigantic margin. I guess, yes, one reason I have never gone too far toward the idea of teaching this stuff is my realization of just how much further I need to go to truly own either of these languages. I'm pretty well convinced that only native speakers should teach foreign languages, and I would be best at teaching English to Spanish or French speakers.
Well, we'll see. I have a number of steps to take before this even becomes more than a flight of fancy, but there's real potential here. I think I might have the right stuff. When we were working at the old Middle School shop to put together our float for the Christmas parade, I made everybody find and put on safety glasses. Even the guy who is the connection I'm talking about exploiting toward this job. :)
It would be hard to replace the old shop teacher as a constant reminder to safety though. I never had any shop classes, but I still knew of the guy. We all did. He only had seven fingers.
I've always loved Yurpeans who twit Americans for not knowing another language, when 99% of the French and SPanish types I've met cannot be understood about
92% of the time. The only truly fluent non-native English speakers I've ever heard have been Dutch and Italian. Figure that one out.
As far as teaching English to native Spanish speakers, that's another broadening area: ESL, or English as a Second Languge. I think there may have, may still be, a Bedford opening in that field, though it's a tad far for a daily drive.
Charlie Self "He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire." Sir Winston Churchill
ESL is fine for some, but ridiculous for the young and otherwise illiterate. It has, however, the endorsement of the education profession, as does "bilingual education," which takes an illiterate and wastes his time teaching him "frog" in both English and the other language.
The best programs for learning a language are immersion-type, where the participant doesn't go to the crapper unless he learns how to say it in the proper language. Sort of like sending a kid to school where people speak only English....
Yeah, that's a story in of itself. I'll never forget one particular exchange, between myself and a Belgian foreign exchange student who was also working in the language lab. It was the language lab, after all. I was trying to speak French to her. She told me point blank "Shot zee ell op and stope booshereenk my langweedge you peeg."
My response started with an F and ended with a U, but come to think of it, I've never really tried to speak French since, because of this bitch. I've always been really shy about French, and very reluctant to try to use it for anything.
Ah yes. The "brown tide." It has passed us by for the most part here in Montgomery county, although I did get offered a job as a field supervisor for horticultural workers for a screaming $7 an hour. I had to pass on that, as tempting as the prospect of all that money was.
|> As far as teaching English to native Spanish speakers, that's another |> broadening area: ESL, or English as a Second Languge. I think there may |have, |> may still be, a Bedford opening in that field, though it's a tad far for a |> daily drive. | | |ESL is fine for some, but ridiculous for the young and otherwise illiterate. |It has, however, the endorsement of the education profession, as does |"bilingual education," which takes an illiterate and wastes his time |teaching him "frog" in both English and the other language. | |The best programs for learning a language are immersion-type, where the |participant doesn't go to the crapper unless he learns how to say it in the |proper language. Sort of like sending a kid to school where people speak |only English....
My former wife's late uncle (Robert Berrellez, DAGS) before his retirement from the CI---sorry---ITT, was living in Buenos Aires when he befriended an orphan who was caddying at a golf course.
Bob moved to Miami and brought the high-school-aged kid with him. When they arrived in the states, the kid knew zero English. Bob, of Mexican descent and raised in a Spanish speaking family in a border town, had gone from a newspaper delivery boy to AP Latin American reporter and detested bilingual education. He put the kid right into high school and a year later, the kid and I were having phone conversations about electronics projects.
[snip] | |Ah yes. The "brown tide." It has passed us by for the most part here in |Montgomery county, although I did get offered a job as a field supervisor |for horticultural workers for a screaming $7 an hour. I had to pass on |that, as tempting as the prospect of all that money was.
Yes, to hear our government tell it, those are the folks that are just taking jobs that citizens don't want to do: block layers, stucco men, electricians, plumbers, drug dealers, welfare moms, etc.
If I may correct you on a few points. Bilingual education was the way to go, or so thought the majority of educators, but it is no longer as popular among educators as it was. In fact, it is nolonger practiced (legally) in public schools in California. There are still, however some old timers who continue this model.
ESL is an old term, relpaced by ELD (English Language Development), in California at least. The purpose is to teach Englingh to those who do not speak English. There are two prongs to an ELD program. One is direct language instruction which is similar to what a Spanish class to non-Spanish speaking kids. The other is "shelterd instruction." In this area the same subject matter is taught, whether it be science, math, etc, as in the regular classroom, but the teachers have additional training in how to increase meaning into their lessons.
I could go into much more detail on this matter, but I am pretty far OT as it is.
I am not trying to attack you, George, I just wanted to give a bit more insight into what I do for a living (but hope to change as soon as I find out all the credentialling requirements).
Wowsy gosh. I guess California _is_ the entire world, eh? We folks back east still call the programs by the names I used, though whatever the name, it will not improve them. It also doesn't matter what you call yourself to get a new "certification" and sinecure. Motion is _not_ necessarily progress. Folks out in California are so successful with their language programs that they have to print the ballot in _how_ many languages, even though only citizens are supposed to vote? Of course, I have to wonder how many are actually able read it, even then.
I have been in immersion to learn a language and immersion to teach, as well as conventional classes, and you're barking up the wrong, expensive tree (OBWW). The way to learn it is to live it - period. Teaching someone functionally illiterate in both languages to read/write in either is a waste of time. The education establishment disregards both common sense and the experience of millions of immigrants - including my father, who knew not a word of English when the truant officer dragged him off to school - and tries to sell us new names for failed ideas so they can keep their jobs.
I'm not attacking you, I'm merely suggesting that study, rather than preaching, might be a better way toward understanding.
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