Of the trips I have taken, this was the hardest day. We went to the Struthof Concentration camp. Prisoners here worked at a quarry about a kilometer away. The post was short but the pictures were more powerful. I have added a link to the website for further information.…
I love to walk and enjoy nature and sites. I was to learn that a walk in Germany means something completely different. Here is a post I did in 2009:
June 22, 2009, By: Randy Mills I was informed this morning of what is considered a short German walk.…
This is a post from the 2009 trip. It was a day in Strasbourg France. It hit all the right spots: food, international politics, and my fear of heights!
June 17, 2009 By: Randy Mills
Monday, June 15th found us in Strasbourg, France.…
This is a beautiful love song but because he is the professor, it is wildly inappropriate.
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Another blog post from the 2009 Exchange. This was a visit to Prague in the Czech Republic.
July 06, 2009, By: Randy Mills
Prague is an ancient and historic city. We roamed buildings that had their origin in the 880s. A couple of hundred years before the Vikings traveled toward North America.…
Another post from the 2009 German Exchange about our trip to the Bodensee:
June 16, 2009 By: Randy Mills: Thursday morning we left for the Bodensee with all of our students and our hosts. It was an experience in public transportation. We first caught a train to Friedrichshofen to stay at a Jungendherberge.…
We are getting to the end of the quarter and like the students, I am going to recycle some stuff. This is a post from our first German exchange talking about the school.
Our next big adventure was to attend school with the students.…
There is nothing that compares to a school lunch. I remember back to the pizza day or even better the cinnamon roll day. Those were our favorites. I still long for corn with my pizza because that was how it was paired in school.…
As an American teacher, I am used to having an office for my job. I loved my desk in the business office and it was a place to relax and not be stressed for a short time. It was very important until it was taken from us a couple of years ago.…
The way we did the exchange when we started was that the German group from Heimschule Lender visits us in April/May for three weeks and then we go there starting in June. It was a very busy few weeks but it was a great adventure.…
This is one of my favorites. Charlie Brown by the Coasters. This was my life in school.
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The relationships you develop over the course of an exchange are lasting. Dawn and I have developed a relationship with our German counterparts over fifteen years. It is a bond that goes beyond just partners for academic activity. We have spent a great deal of time with many teachers over the years but we have a family that we are especially close to and have contact with until this day.…
The Greman Exchange program has been a highlight of my teaching career. Your first question might be if I know the language. The simple answer is no. It is much more complicated than a simple answer. I could survive but not for too long.…
I am going to start doing some stories from our part of exchanges at Rangeview. Bud Blauer & Patrice Dovas-Hudson had very strong programs. Bud had a school in Kazakhstan to support the Russian language program. I loved having the students in my classroom every year and as a result, I received one of the most prized souvenirs of my teaching career.…
I was listening to the Barry McGuire song, The Eve of Destruction, and thinking about anger as a part of teaching. I have over the years had moments of frustration but I only think I was angry at a student a couple of times in my career.…
Teaching tools make our lives easier. If it is the EZ-Grader that gives percentages based on the number of questions to interactive whiteboards These tools can be very handy and I started with the Apple Network Administrator Toolkit (ANAT.) It allowed me to monitor students and when students started the machine, it cleared everything from before and gave them a clean image.…
1984 saw the release date of the movie Teachers. If you haven’t seen it, I relate well to the character played by Richard Mulligan.
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When I talk to some of my CybperPatriot competitors about the National Finals, they only think of one school. I think one of the hardest things to do as a teacher is to instill a sense of values and the importance of fair play and have it proven that sometimes cheaters get ahead.…
I have the had the pleasure of being on the forefront of technology in schools. I did several posts early about the technology I was using in elementary school. In high school we had the chance to explore and create. I started when the multimedia class was PowerPoint and all of the things you could do with it.…
St. Valentines Day. A day of love, fun, and romance. The single most important romantic advice I give to students is: “Your future spouse is not currently attending Rangeview!” The hope was that students understand that the vast majority of high school romances end and that there is more out in the world other than Rangeview.…
This song doesn’t talk about school specifically but does talk about the joy of September when school started. It also speaks to aging and I know that in the December of my career I am enjoying the return to earlier times.…
The title for today is a slight throwback to my elementary days but it is worth the story. In 1999 long before 9/11 changed how the government and secure sites handled things, I got to attend a 4-day workshop. The workshop was sponsored by NASA and held at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs.…
CyberPatriot changed my career in many ways. That first group was an amazing year. None of us knew what we were doing. The students, mentor, and I were not sure how to train. We did it every Wednesday afternoon for a couple of hours.…
I tell my students that high school is a time to try a lot of different things. In my own high school days I was involved with sports, theatre, vocal music, and the speech team. As I look at my friends from over the years they encompass all of those groups and more.…
During the Presidential Inaugural in 2009, there were millions of people on the National Mall and the surrounding areas. At this same time, our DECA chapter was starting some new businesses as a part of the class. They had all kinds of clothing, scarves, and jackets.…
With the crowds at the 2009 Presidential Inaugural, It was important to plan, scout, and choose wisely. I don’t want to hear any argument about crowd sizes but I know I was in a big crowd. Me and 2 million of my closest friends.…
A little advice from James Brown in 1967.
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I have been lucky in my career to travel to Washington DC several times with students. I started the stories last week of the 2009 Inauguration trip. Today I tell the story of what can go wrong on a trip. From the title you can probably guess where this is headed, We are still not sure if it was the fish but I am a believer.…
BRING TOILET PAPER AND HAND WARMERS. It is not often that you see a headline like this. In 2009 we had a group of students attending the Presidential Inauguration in Washington DC. The trip had been planned for many months without regard to who the winner would be.…
Rangeview has been good to me for over 20 years and I live by the motto “Once a Raider, Always a Raider.” We are a Raider family. Dawn, my wife, works in the Special Ed. department and my daughter graduated from here in 2010.…
It is fitting that the students sometimes are our best leaders. One of my memorable experiences is student activism. I was happy to be a part of the Black Lives Matter Protest a few years ago. It is also fitting that the date was 2 days before the Juneteenth celebration.…
Yesterday I spoke about thermofax machine. Today I will recycle a blog I did several years ago about the opaque projector. The connection to my current teaching is that we had a Social Studies teacher who was notorious for putting a text on the opaque projector and having students take notes on it.…
Sexy 17 by the Stray Cats.
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If you have been teaching for a long time you will remember the thermofax machine. This made things for the modern invention, the overhead projector. There were three modern machines when I started teaching: the overhead projector, the opaque projector, and the thermofax machine.…
John Glover. Anyone who went to Lakewood Junior in the 70’s will remember that name. He was the person who found ways to get to me. Currently, there is a panic to get rid of the reading instruction I used when teaching elementary.…
Kids are much more observant than we sometimes give them credit for. I have a short story but the picture tells the whole story. This was not one of my students. I happened to be walking by this young man during finals week on his way to class.…
This story happened to Ingrid from my department but it is too good not to include. When I first started at Rangeview we taught computer applications which was the Office Suite. We also taught keyboarding. At this time we also had a graduation requirement of Practical Arts and our department counted for that.…
Today is my birthday post. With that in mind, let’s talk trash. One of the joys of teaching is seeing the artistic skills of some students. I casually was speaking of how the big new trash cans we got were bland.…
Reverse engineering is an integral skill for my students in engineering class. We spend a few weeks on this task. We learn about the elements & principles of design. We do a visual analysis of a product and then do a functional analysis.…
My last “bad” song. This is always a fear in schools. Many people really don’t know what the song is about until they see the video. Sting (Who was an English teacher) and the Police.
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My daughter was a captain of the girl’s swim team in her junior and senior years. She was the one to greet the opposing team and captains before the meet. Her favorite story was to tell the other team that they were swimming in thirty-year-old water.…
The sights and sounds of a high school are sometimes the most amazing sounds you can hear. I live in the community where Rangeview is located. From my bathroom window, I can see the school. One of my most vivid memories during the summers was the Marching Band.…
342 is an important number to Rangeview and almost everyone who passes by the sign has no idea what it means. The number changed how the building and external amenities were placed on our site. Rangeview has one of the smallest land footprints in the state for a 5A high school.…
Yesterday was Martin Luther King Jr. holiday so I have a short week. One of the great mysteries at Rangeview is
the white dots on the walls on the first floor. Most people go through their entire 4 years as a student and don’t know they are even there.…
Another fun school song and many of us had this experience in school. Van Halen at it’s best.
“I don’t feel tardy!”
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I did a story about TSA on day 87 so I might as well keep it rolling. We went to the Presidential Inauguration in 2009 and took a group of students. It was a fun time and a chance to witness history.…
Airports became a serious matter after 9/11. Before that time you could have fun at the airport security lines without anyone going crazy. 9/11 changed that and made simple airport security much more of a serious gauntlet. Now we must know a bunch of rules and be on the right side of the law or things will be confiscated and destroyed if they do not meet the standards.…
I mentioned in my last post about being a class sponsor. There are several more stories about that role but I want to share a quick one. I did not realize that we were a little better off than the elementary school I started with.…
Being a class sponsor for the freshmen and seniors over the years was a blessing and a curse. I loved working with the kids and doing big projects and making the school better for everyone. One experience was to be at all of the dances over the years.…
I am now going to do some songs that are not the most wholesome. These are some fun songs but not the best influences but most of us have heard these and enjoy them. The first is a J. Geils Band song.…