A Day at the Zoo

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Alfred Hoyle WWII Service Record

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Last summer (‘18) I had the National Archives send me my Grandfather’s service record (55 pages, lots of insurance forms).  There’s a link to that set of documents below. From Alfred Hoyle’s pay record , I’m starting to piece together what I think Grandpa did during WWII.  Looks like basic training at Parris Island SC, Mechanic’s training at Camp Lejune NC and then deployed to 2nd Marines 2nd Separate Engineer Battalion in the Pacific.  Likely saw / experienced some / all of the Battle of Okinawa .  The 2nd Marines did their occupation time in Nagasaki (atomic bomb #2), which matches what I've heard about Grandpa's service I have very few stories from his time in the Marines (one I do have, I’ve added as a likely event with the historical context below).  I don’t think he spoke much of his time. I will bug John this summer (and now).  If you've got stories you know / remember, I'd like to capture them. Marine PFCs made $54 / month dur...
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Teaching day 1

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My kids are off at University and all my high school booster responsibilities are done.  I've downsized and I have some extra free time.  For years I've said that I would like to teach and a little opportunity to do just that came up.  I grabbed it. I've found a company run by a tech guy in his spare time that offers various after school STEM programs.  He's got loads of things he offers to schools / PTAs.  This group selected  an after school enrichment class in software coding.  The curriculum is self paced and drag & drop.  The essentially make programs out of virtual Lego blocks.  Today was the first day of class.  We're got kids from 1st grade to 6th grade.  There's 13 of them.   Some observations.  Second graders are different than 5th graders.  The little kids' fine motor skills are not as developed as the big kids.  Mouse pad movements was often done with their ...
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Teaching Day 2 - post arctic blast

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A teacher's institute day and a cold weather day with no classes and three weeks have passed.  It's probably a bit too much to expect kids to remember anything. So we started again. Boys are still squirrels and girls are quiet rule followers.  This is an after school activity; kids are a little wound up.  They still have to take turns, mind their business and be good classroom citizens.  Clearly, that's difficult.  Our class is 2nd graders to 6th graders.  We split into two groups.  I've got the little ones - 2nd and 3rd graders. They have trouble clicking in small spaces and finding letters on the keyboard. Today, the curriculum tried to introduce a looping construct (repeat a set of instructions over and over) and more debugging (here's a program; there's something wrong with it - fix it).  Tall order.  I can see some deficiencies with the program for little hands.  If they move some of the blocks too far out of the way, it behave...
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