First off, I am safely back on campus and I don't have any new additions to yesterday's list of animals I nearly or definitely hit while driving. With all the bad forecasts, I was surprised with how today turned out for us at the competition site. Up until lunch, it was a sunny day, although it turned to a cold gray afternoon. After the competition was over and I dropped off a few students with their parents for a long weekend, I got on the highway and was greeted by rain not too long after that. The precipitation was my driving buddy for the majority of the trip, although it turned to snow for a long stretch. (Seriously, Mother Earth. Are you feeling ill?) I was thinking about this on the drive, but all of my animal incidents have occurred during calm weather. Anyone know if there's correlation in that? Maybe I've just been lucky so far.
TC
So, since it's the new month and I was away from my apartment last night, I haven't gone through the list of holidays for May. The 1st was May Day as well as Batman Day and Mother Goose Day. This is the first thing I hear when I think of Mother Goose:
"Whether the weather is cool or whether the weather is hot, we'll weather the weather whatever the weather, whether we like it or not."It's a line from a play my middle school choir director wrote called "Mother Goose and Santa Claus Save Christmas". I don't know if it's something my director came up with herself, but it's been quite applicable the past month or so.
As for today's holiday... I honestly have no clue, so let me take a look at my list. The day is National Day of Prayer, National Day of Reason, and Roberts Rule of Order Day for you parliamentarian nuts out there. There's only one holiday week so far and it doesn't seem too applicable - "Choose Privacy Week". Okay, there is a month one that is quite simplistic - "National Smile Month". Strictly looking at today, it was quite enjoyable and I'm sure I was smiling a lot. :) (Hey, I'm getting this done now so I won't use it in the future.)
TC
So, the Envirothon state competition was today. I was able to take both teams to state, except for one student who has her leg in a cast. The competition is out at a conservation center, where the students walk around between stations on uneven terrain. Adding in the forecast of rain just made it a not fun situation to think about. On a happy note, even though it's Finals Week, I didn't have any students drop out because of a final that they couldn't reschedule.
Unfortunately, I can't say how we did exactly. We were not in the top 10 and didn't take first place in any of the specific categories, but I won't know our exact placement until I get a big Excel spreadsheet with oodles of numbers. The state competition brings together a lot of powerhouse schools (including the school that went on nationals and then *win* the national competition last summer), so I wasn't expecting to take a shiny plague home. Even still, I think it's a good experience for the students, particularly the students that learned about Envirothon this year.
Thinking about the competition clubs I oversee, each one has a different approach to what the mentors should do during a competition. Math Team is by far the most hands-on with its coaches. As I've said in blog posts in the past, I help facilitate Math Team competitions by grading tests and proctoring exams, and at the local level, it is simply the coaches who make the competitions happen. FIRST Robotics is a little more focused on the students. Unfortunately, I do hear of teams where the coaches/mentors are working on a robot more than the students, but for the most part, the students and mentors work together to overcome problems and compete on the field. Science Olympiad continues the trend a little more. The coaches can watch some of the building events, like the robotic arm and mousetrap car, but we can't step foot into the testing event areas. For the most part, the coaches stay in a team's homeroom, help keep the team on schedule, get lunch for the team, etc. Envirothon sits on the end of this spectrum for sure. The coaches can't communicate with the students during the day, but Envirothon will put all the coaches on a school bus and take them off-site for an adventure of sorts. Well, five times out of six, at least.
In the past, I went to the Truman Museum/Library, a forestry site, a major restoration project of a two-floor brick house, a smokehouse, and a seminar on a environmental awareness class. The trips are pretty enjoyable, although I don't want to be too enthusiastic around the students because while I'm being bussed around places, they are outside in the elements for 6 hours.
Today's Mentor Tour was a pretty fun experience. We were all taken to a little town called Hermann, which is laden with German heritage. We first went to the German School Museum, which is less focused on schools, and more focused on the town's history, and the German immigrants that came to the area. The tour guide was very knowledgeable and enthusiastic, so I enjoyed him telling stories about a town I only just stepped in a few minutes prior. The Hermann area is very well known as wine country, so we stopped by a winery for a very brief wine tasting and perusing. Some of my college friends took a class on wine on a lark and I feel like I should have had one of them with me to scope out the place.
After the winery, we went to a place called the Wurst Haus (see what I mean about German heritage?) where the owner has 50 varieties of sausages/wurst. We got to sample five of them and they were all delicious, although I'm not personally a fan of Reuben sandwiches. We had lunch there and my meal of choice was a sausage with caramelized pear and Gorgonzola cheese. It was an odd combination to think about, but it was delicious! (Then again, I do remember having sliced pears as part of a sandwich the day the world was supposed to end too.) We had some time after lunch to shop a little in the Wurst Haus (I picked up some blackberry jam) as well as the surrounding area. There was an antique store just a couple buildings over, so I spent most of the time in there. When another coach asked me if I had seen so much old stuff in one store before, I told her of my antiquing trips with my parents. She seemed a little surprised and impressed, but maybe that's just me. Then again, speaking of me being surprised, that antique store had a lot of vintage Playboy magazines... whole bunches of them in baskets right on the floor! I want to say it was the 60's so the covers were scandalous by today's standards, but "surprising" is the best word I can use. Anyway, there was also a nearby ice cream and custard parlor next door, so I grabbed a sweet treat before getting bussed back to sight.
(So yeah, today was an awesome day but I don't want to brag too much in front of the students. To be fair, the students did ask what I did during the competition, and I didn't want to lie.)
After we got back to the competition site, we got to walk by the different stations under volunteer escort as well as see a copy of the tests. Envirothon never gives out copies of the tests because there are several topics that get asked about every year, but it's good to see the specific questions the students got this time around. One thing I do like about Envirothon is that they change up the location for every regional and state competition. I should clarify that I'm enjoy this fact after I have successfully driven there. The competitions are in little conversation areas where the mailing address can be a PO box, but I've only had minor navigational issues in the past. Anyway, once I'm at the site and am walking around with the other coaches, it's nice to enjoy the scenery because there are woods to admire as well as a pond/lake typically and other areas more focused on wildlife and soils.
Well, it's been a long day and it's quite late yet again. DFTBA and I will hopefully celebrate a holiday in advance tomorrow.
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