Mr. Butler: The Earthy Engineer

I've always told him that his perspective is nothing like anyone I've ever met.  In the coming year, the WRITE Balance is going to include writing from Mr. Butler.  He's super smart, loves woodworking and the outdoors, but also has an interesting take on life as a single-income, engineer, homeschool dad.  I hope you come to appreciate him the way I do!
-Amy

I'm an engineer but don't engineer much anymore.  I manage an engineering team and help where I can at home.  I've changed jobs or been promoted 5 times in 4 years, and though it's a complicated story only the first job-change was one I sought out. The others were more like "we need you to come do this thing".  In four years I went  from managing only myself to managing 18 other people so to say my bandwidth has become saturated lately is an understatement.  Problem with me happens to be that I don't seem to be particularly self aware.  This means that I don't recognize my bandwidth saturation until it's almost, or too, late.

This saturation and the realization of it has been tough to accept.  Growing up, task-saturation or time management wasn't talked about so I went all the way through college into adulthood not realizing or having the capability to deal with it, though I can't say I ever felt task saturated before maybe 2-3 years ago, after having a 3rd kid, and moving to more difficult jobs.

Engineers are generally solitary people and have to usually be given a structured environment, and forced into, social situations.  So cube life seemed to suit me well.  I could do my own thing and generally stay out of the way, and have enough time for myself.  It wasn't till I was forced out of that life that I began to realize I wasn't normal, at least for an engineer.

I'd taken a Meyer's-Briggs test before we got married, and came out squarely introverted.  After going through changes that forced me out of my shell I retook that test at work and came out moderately extroverted, which I now accept as the  reality.  This apparently isn't the norm, unless you have past things that may have driven you one way or the other, which I have.  When I met my wife she would have told you she was extroverted, but now she'd say introverted all the way and that the extroversion was driven by childhood stuff.

I'm interested now that I have kids in how the things we do as parents that don't seem like much have such a large impact on our kids, and how in the future that kid, as an adult, may not be able to quantify why they do the things they do or feel the way they feel.  Simply because it wasn't ever ONE direct thing that shaped that behavior but the presence or absence of something on a multitude of small occasions.  So as an adult you hear a voice telling you to do something but can't ever think of a direct time your parents ever said that.

This isn't to say you as a parent are going to completely fail, but that you DO have to be cognizant of what your actions and words say even if they don't feel like that much to you.  To say, "that shouldn't matter" is to disregard the reality of what your actions actually mean to someone small whose entire worldview is shaped by those small moments.

Suffice it to say I've made mistakes as a parent in this arena, things I regret deeply and hope fervently that I can do enough to overcome both for myself and for my kids.  At the same time I realize that messing up in the moment as a parent is an opportunity to model repentance and ask for forgiveness where appropriate.  Nobody is perfect, but also, no one is a complete failure.

-Randy

STEM Activities: A Tied 2 Teaching Review

As a busy mom who can easily get stressed out, doing projects of any kind is something I have to work myself up for.  I know how fun they usually are for the kids and I also know how beneficial hands-on learning is, but interrupting the normal flow of things with something different is hard for me.  When we were given STEM Activities, Full Year of Challenges with Close Reading from Tied 2 Teaching, I was both reluctant and convicted to try them out.  My kids love and need to dig their hands into things for optimum learning and to work on their problem-solving skills so I knew how valuable these activities could be despite my resistance.

What We Received:

The STEM activities come in the form of digital downloads that include monthly/seasonal activities designed for 3rd-6th grade level students that would last you at least a year doing 4 activities a month.  Within each PDF project file is a QR code and link for the close reading passage, various pages for close reading questions, project analysis, and some examples of other kids' completed projects for ideas.  Most projects required normal craft or household supplies that you likely have or could easily get at the store.

How It Works:

For every project or challenge, there is a themed passage for the student to read and then a close-reading worksheet to fill out that asks them questions about the passage that often requires a closer look at the passage.   Then the student is to focus on the project through a series of worksheets that facilitate planning, problem solving and evaluating how it went once they are finished.

Activities We Completed:

What We Thought:

The intended grade level is 3rd-6th grade so my 1st grader is a bit under the age range, but she was actually a great side-kick for my 'tends to give up when the answer isn't readily apparent' 3rd grader.  Due to the large amount of reading and writing involved, I wouldn't recommend this for a younger student without older ones to guide or heavy parental involvement.  

Overall, the kids really enjoyed these projects.  Like I alluded to before, my son had a tendency to give up after his first idea would fail, but luckily his sister is built to keep going no matter what some days so they were a great team.  The reading and writing aspect was sometimes resisted by my son, but once he got going it was clear that the work helped him dig in better to the problem-solving at hand. They were always very proud of their final product which was fun for me to watch.

Since this is a digital product, we would be able to do any of the projects again at a later date.  Considering the open-ended nature of many of these, I think it would interesting and potentially really beneficial to have students do them again weeks or months later to find alternative solutions they hadn't thought of the last time.  This is a great way to work on problem-solving skills.

I really appreciated how the design of these projects mimic real life and real job situations.  Since my husband works as an engineer, he could identify to the kids all the elements of his own work in what they were doing.  It seemed to be one of the first times they seemed to conceptualize what 'real work' could look like beyond a mailman or garbage trucker driver. 

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There are a ton of activities so we certainly haven't gotten to them all yet!  Follow the link below to see what different projects some of the other families' tried!