Ready For The Weekend

 

It’s been quite a while since I posted my blog and you may be wondering why and thinking it’s not like me.   Well, you’re right.  Being here kind of puts me in a funk and not one I can explain.  I like working with the kids in the high schools, the money is attractive and I don’t have to do it every day.   There lies the problem.  The off days are boring here.  There is literally no one here in the rv park, no one on the street and they don’t have a town plaza to hang out in.  

Now I’ve got myself into a pickle being the nice guy that I am.  I have signed acontract to work until December 6^th.  I couldn’t turn my back on my coworker, who as I told you, has her two year old in the hospital receiving chemo for a brain tumor after an operation to remove it.   I know I said I wouldn’t do it but I am an easy guy.  Got any land for sale in the middle of the Pacific Ocean?

Good news is that it is only two days a week and I can go home and be where I feel the best, good ole Mexico.   The job is pretty easy, with people I can relate to more or less and also provide work for other presenters who at this time have nothing to do because of my coworker’s situation.   We go home Wednesday morning and I can change cars.  I’m not a salesman but they think I can do it.  If so, it will be a profitable venture, trust me!

I had an interesting experience yesterday.  I visited a high school with 1800 students and taught a course to 125 of them.  This little border town on the U.S. is plagued with the bad guys who work both sides of the border and move their goods up through Texas and into Oklahoma.   I was warned not to bring up the subject as some of the students are involved with those bad guys.   Yep, this is the United States.  Interesting, isn’t it?  

I always do my research before visiting a school and a town so I can incorporate things such as the school football team, famous facts or people from that town, and also demographics which give me insight into the students and staff I am working with.  This town of 9,000 has a per capita income of only $15,000 which isn’t much different from its sister city across the border.  Not being the optimist, most of the kids in my class will never leave their town, never go to college, and probably work for the bad guys and have a very short life. 

 

It was a rude awakening but one I have experienced many time over the last year and a half doing this job.   I hope I can reach just one of them.  During the course yesterday I coaxed the students into participating by negotiating the things we did.  I received opposition from one student but majority rules.  As always, I have an evaluation that they fill out about the course, the materials and the instructor.  Quote from the student in opposition, “Mr. Bauer was very energetic, I did not appreciate the dominantly male preference of Mr. Bauer nor did I appreciate his leaving the science portion of the course LAST.  Mr. Bauer is easily distracted and tells many stories and asks too many questions”.   Whatever it takes to keep their attention.

She is one of the students who will do something with her life.  The science test was eliminated as a negotiation tool (we do four practice tests, math, English, reading and science), although we work with it at the end.  In the evaluation, the students grade me from an “F” to an “A+”.  This was the only student who gave me a “B”, the rest were As and A+s.  I take it personally, but I had to do what the majority wanted.  Had I not done this, I would have lost the group. 

As an ending point, the school has little interest as well.  They scheduled this course on the day of Homecoming and the Homecoming parade.  They couldn’t wait to get out of there and the staff even told me so.  This course has a cost of $250 and the students were requested to pay $10.  Government grants absorb the rest.  Why did they schedule something so important on a day they knew the students would have the least interest?