Tough Blocks

I have been saving small cut-off pieces of wood of all shapes and sizes for unique and fun building blocks. The time has finally arrived and I have hundreds of pieces just waiting to be sanded and made into sets. These are not standard blocks Each set is completely unique. There are no standard shapes and each set is a hand selected variety of cut-off shapes from other projects in my shop. all wood is salvages and most of it is very nice old growth Douglas Fir, Redwood, Pine, Oak, and others. Some of it is average cultivated lumber. Each block is mechanically sanded by hand to assure no major splinters occur, but they retain a small amount of rough qualities that will peak a child's(and yours) curiosity again and again. They are Tough These blocks retain a small amount of rough spots, nail holes, hammer dings, etc, that will peak your child's(and yours) curiosity and demand their careful attention. A few small splinters may occur, but nothing your tough kid can't handle. Funding my mission Your money goes directly into developing a public school shop model I am developing in my personal shop. Sets of 24 for $30 Sets of 50 for $50

initial ideas

Study for contractors license at the same time study for indust. arts cred.
lobby for merging the two qualifications into one test. Open new path ways from education to working in the market through aprenticeship economy.
Lobby for passive solar and ecological infrastructure projects and building codes.
create ope source business model to propagate ditributed npo administration.

single family homes as ROCP sites durring the day/working hours, set by controler of house.
builds a community that will support the owner of the house in later life.

Initial research for developing an Industrial Arts teacher prep program that is built into a salvage shop, design build model.

http://www.ctc.ca.gov/educator-prep/program-accred.html
http://www.ctc.ca.gov/educator-prep/new-program-submission.html
http://www.ctc.ca.gov/educator-prep/STDS-preconditions.html

This is late, but better formed. It has been 4 months since I have written to this site and I have gained perspective on the web and beyond. I am starting a teaching credential program at National University near by in San Jose at Night and have been taking care of our, now 11 month old, son Taylor during the day. When Taylor naps I have been busy building a salvage woodshop in our garage. It has been very fulfilling building on the roots of my Grandfather's woodshop/garage, while inside raising the next generation of our family with Amy!
I stayed particularly close to home and close to my thoughts this holiday season. It was a strange pull on my emotions to witness our floundering economy, and to have "buy EVERYTHING" blasted into every sensory input for the entire month(1.5 mo.?) of December. But It is easier for me since the 00's were my first TV free decade! This New Years started a new era for us. We are learning how to manage a family together, start businesses and generally be more efficient and effective both individually and as parents(who are going to have a walking talking toddler in a few months!). Strange as change often is, there is a theme of simplicity that seems to ring through all of it, almost on its own. So I maintain that if I keep my mind on simplicity, the puzzles of change will work out.

I see a huge opportunity to advance the sub system through performance based and participation based pay scaling. The sub system offers a very attractive position for several different types of people; those who are right out of college and searching for the next opportunity, or people trying out teaching, supplementing income from another part-time or personal endevuer, retired teachers or other retired folks. All these people have very different needs and aspirations in the sub system. Most are very temporary(ask sylvia about these stats), some are full time "career" subs, some are part time regular subs(with a definite schedule), and some are as needed, special assignment type subs(Lynn). Some do long term, some do short term.
First year subs are by nature less valuable than a veteran sub who is familiar with the schools and the teachers and kids at the schools. This is the most obvious implication of performance/experience based pay scale; an experienced sub can simply get more accomplished and be more effective in the classroom.
This example of different classes of substitutes is only one metric of the pay scale idea. With a web system, it is possible to collect teacher/student, substitute, and administration generated social metric inputs that can be applied to a flexible pay scale.

I want to state my position on the state of our schools and technology. having been from the era when computers were first introduced in this district, we have not come very far in integrating these tools into the education process. They still remain in the periphery mainly, with a few exceptions of classes that allow more freedom to create new media on these machines. I think that largely the younger generation is learning computers mainly in their own time from their parents or on their own connected to the rest of the internet world.