School Counselor Resources

About two weeks ago I was asked to present at our annual Election Day District wide staff development. This is not a group I've worked with before but I had a list of topics to find sites on so I off I went to see what I could find. While I didn't have the time to delve too deeply into any of the topics what I found was well received. Everything I found (along with one of the elementary ITRTs that handled that group) has been posted here to a Portaportal page we created for it:

http://guest.portaportal.com/guidancecounselors

In addition, the presentation I used (complete with the corny cartoons I like to use break up the sections) can be downloaded from my Wiki here.

Wings of Freedom

When I was around my son's age I saw the movie Memphis Belle and it sparked my interest in World War II aviation. I started reading up everything I could on it and eventually came across the book Memphis Belle Home at Last by Menno Duerksen. A few years later I convinced my parents to take a trip to Memphis to see the real thing. (Back when it was still there. In 2005 it was moved to the Museum of the Air Force in Dayton, Ohio.) While we took in Graceland and several other local sites, seeing the Belle up close was the highlight of the trip.

I never pass up a chance to check out World War II aircraft up close, especially the chance to climb inside. The Collings Foundation Wings of Freedom tour was in town this weekend at the Chesterfield County Airport. Yesterday afternoon after the rain had finally stopped I took my older son down there to check it out. It was fun for me but he also seemed to enjoy the chance to see history up close. Here are some photos I took of the aircraft on display.

B-17G Nine-O-Nine

Close up of the nose art on the B-17.

More photos behind here.

Scottish Independence Humor

Whenever I do staff development presentations I like to break it up with a little humor, usually with historically themed pictures. Here are a few I've found the past few days since the vote in Scotland over independence from the United Kingdom.

Sunday Morning Observations

My younger son was up at 5am this morning with a 102 degree temperature and lacking any children's pain reliever in the house I was soon on my way to the nearest 24 Hour CVS. Two observations from this morning:

1. The coupon machine in the front of CVS seems to have an uncanny ability to know what I've come in to buy and inevitably gives me a coupon for it. Sure enough this morning I scan my card and first thing out (followed by about 8 other useless ones) was a dollar off coupon for over the counter pain reliever. This seems to happen about 90% of the time.

2. Apparently just like with TV at that time of the day most of the radio stations were airing infomercials and other non-music, non-entertaining stuff. I guess I've never noticed it before as I can't remember the last time I was in my car that early in the morning on a weekend.