#Nostalgia My Time at PLNC/PLNU kids

The oldest reproduction of a Greek amphitheater in the United States, this was the view from my office and is the venue for graduations.

I am a member of the Church of the Nazarene. In October of 1995, I was reading the denominational magazine, Herald of Holiness, when I saw a blurb for “Openings in Nazarene Higher Education.” One of those openings was listed at Point Loma in Education. Since I was working on my Ph.D. at the time, I remember thinking, “that’s quite a coincidence.”

In February of 1996, the Herald of Holiness had its annual education issue. In that issue, the blurb for the job at PLNC was described in more detail—specifically Teacher Education: Secondary Curriculum. At that point in my “PhD-dom”, I didn’t know much, but if I knew something it was secondary (middle/high school) curriculum. So I asked a lady at my church who worked at the college whom I should contact. She gave me a name and phone number.

When I called the number the next day, the phone was a male voice answered. 

“Patrick Allen,” was all he said.

Now, Patrick Allen was the name of the person given to me by my “contact.” But I expected to talk to someone higher than a person who answered his own phone. Nevertheless, I explained who I was and my interest. He said to send him a letter, which I did. Shortly after defending my dissertation, I was hired as an Associate Professor.

Patrick Allen turned out to be the Vice President of Academic Affairs (also known as Provost). At that point in time, he was the second in command of the whole campus. He just liked answering his own phone for about an hour every day. 

Patrick was very gracious in convincing the hiring panel to give me one year of university teaching credit for every two years of my high school experience, “since teaching is what he’s going to be teaching.” I was hired at the Associate Professor level, one from the top level.

When I accepted the position at Point Loma Nazarene College (PLNC) in 1996, I became part of the Teacher Education Department. 

While I did take a pay cut to go to PLNC, my youngest son got a tuition-free education there. $$$ saved!

I was promoted to full professor in 1999.

Inside the Teacher Education Department, I was, at first, the Secondary Education Coordinator. Later I become the Chair of the whole department. While that was not my dream job, I know I was privileged to chair one of the best Teacher Education Departments in California. 

In addition to my teacher education teaching, for all but one of the 16-semesters I spent at PLNU (the school upgraded itself to University in 1999), I did get the privilege to work in the Biology Department.

Most semesters I taught one section of the lab for Bio101: Human Biology and Bioethics, the General Education requirement. My lab section was specifically designated for Elementary Teacher majors, who, as a rule, don’t like science (or math) much at all. I considered it my goal to have them leave the class willing to at least tolerate the idea of teaching science in their classes. I think I met that goal.

Twice in my tenure at PLNU, I was asked/allowed to teach the lecture section that went along with three of the lab sections of Bio101. We met in a lecture hall. I had 72 students, only 24 of which were in my own lab section. I really enjoyed those times. After the second time I taught the lecture, I received a written commendation for excellence in teaching from the Dean for having “outstanding evaluations” from my students. I’m very proud that non-science students thought enough of me and my teaching to rank and positively comment on a science class.

Student comments on the course evaluation form for one of those Bio101 lecture classes, an optional item, bowled me over. Over half of the students took extra time to write a comment. Here are three examples

• "The best teacher ever. Big heart."
• "Dr. Downing is the best teacher I've had. I loved his teaching style!"
• "I thought about every answer here [common questions for all classes]. All the 5's I gave were well deserved. Dr. Downing made Biology one of my favorite classes. Overall, he is the best instructor I have ever had and this is the best course I have ever had (and I'm a junior). I really wish I needed another class that Dr. Downing teachers! I cannot say enough about how much I liked the creative projects, too. Other profs seriously need to study Dr. Downing and take some notes on how to give a good class like he does." [my italics]

A highlight of all my teaching for me and most students is my story-telling. I have a great time when I teach if the students will allow it. As long as they are willing to get back on task when asked, I am willing to go “outside the lines” for a time. I have several stories about injuries I have sustained over time. And, I like to paint word-pictures to help kids remember things. For example: 

When talking about human female anatomy, one of the caveats I provide is that women need to support their breast tissue during pregnancy. The support is necessary because the breasts are not supported by muscle, only skin. Failure to adequately support the breasts during pregnancy may result in what I call “The National Geographic Look”—you know, that’s where you take your breast measurement and your waist measurement at the same place (here I demonstrate in pantomime how one would have to lift certain assets out of the way while using the tape measure for the second measurement. A brief silence, then snorts and snickers, and finally genuine laughter usually follow this story. I suspect my former students visit the maternity bra tables soon after learning of a pregnancy.

I have a booklet, which I cherish, from two of my PLNU students who dutifully recorded many of my sayings and presented them to me on the last day of class. You can check it out  

https://app.box.com/s/6ut6jcfghpjywvhl0imx1hcndz8xj7zq)--and try to guess what might have been the context for each comment. I boldfaced one from the booklet in the example above. Two more examples follow.

• "They look like fire hydrants with legs." This is my description of pre-pubertal humans. Male and female bodies are similar in morphology. If you don't believe me, drive by an elementary school at recess and try to pick out boys and girls from those wearing shorts or trousers.
• "If you don't know someone who is sick, you have no friends." There was an influenza outbreak on campus. Some students went home to recover. I explained a bit about the immune system and added this line to emphasize the severity of the epidemic.

In my experience, monetary compensation doesn’t come close to what students give spontaneously from the heart.

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#Nostalgia A miscellaneous collection of thoughts from my childhood Part 1

Me and my dad. I'm the one with no hair.

Today’s blog is a miscellaneous collection of thoughts from my childhood. 

I was born when I was very young. As I got older I grew up.

I always liked school. However, I’ve never liked camping. I think if God would have wanted humans to camp, He would not have created hotels and motels. But that’s beside the point.

There is no overall theme. There is no attempt made to do much of anything chronologically. There was an effort made to “clump” certain types of stories into mini-collections within the whole, but that effort faded to dust.

If I ever publish all the Almanac posts about teaching as my memoirs, they will be titled: “A Room With Tables.” You may want to know why my memoirs would be titled thusly. I’m afraid you’ll have to keep reading. Somewhere in this labyrinth of blog posts, the meaning can be found. As I write this, I’m not even sure where you’ll find it.

I suspect that it’s because I’ve always liked school, that I can remember nearly all my teachers. Kindergarten was Miss Klostmeyer. She was, obviously, a single woman. If my memory holds, she got married sometime during that year. However, the real story of kindergarten is this: we moved to Bremerton, Washington, when my dad was stationed while his ship was being overhauled. 

The only real memory of kindergarten is one where the class was doing some type of interpretive dance. After I did some sort of maneuver, Miss Kilostmeyer said, “Charles, that was very nice, will you please show the whole class what you did?” Of course, I had no idea what I had done or how to do it a second time, and I was never again asked to demonstrate any terpsichorean innovation I might have developed.

Part of the reason for my lack of kindergarten memories is that move to Washington state. At the time, Washington did not have kindergarten, so I have only one “semester” of kindergarten. My mom has often reminded me that part of my problems in life is that I only had “half a year of kindergarten.”

I do have three recollections from living in Bremerton. I include them here to replace those memories lost by missing half of kindergarten.

My first memory is clam chowder. We lived in Quonset huts while in Washington—and I suppose those are probably my real first memory. A Quonset hut is a corrugated metal building shaped like half a giant pipe. I suspect the one we lived in served as barracks for sailors during WWII. 

My dad and I suppose several Navy buddies went clam digging and returned with at least one huge bucket of clams. My mom cooked them up and we had both clams on the half shell and chowder. The smell of the clams, both while in the bucket and while being steamed, was enough to keep me from even trying those on the half shell. However, my parents managed to sneak some clam chowder down my gullet, and I still like that to this day. That's memory #2.

My third recollection of Bremerton is the smell of the place in general. I think there were paper mills across the bay from our Quonset hut and the pungent odor of those mills wafted over the saltwater and attacked our olfactory cells.

Here's a Quonset Hut complete with what looks like a Navy wife hanging laundry outside it. While the boy in the sailor's hat isn't me, I might have been in a photograph just like this one in 1956.

Final memory. One day I was running down a hill, tripped, and fell, catching my hand in a drainpipe. My wrist bent backward. The radius split in what is known as a greenstick fracture. All other traumatic details of the fall and broken arm have been erased from my memory. But, I remember the cast. 

It was a plaster and gauze monstrosity that kept my right elbow bent at what started as a 90-degree angle. I did not have what could be called “good cast care technique.” When it came time to remove the cast after six weeks, the doctor used scissors instead of a saw because the six-year-old boy wearing the cast had just beaten the tar out of it. By the day it was removed, the cast was so soft it could be squeezed and would remain depressed. Looking back, it was like collecting temporary copies of my fingerprints in the plaster.

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#Nostalgia #HighSchool Dress Up and Other Fun Days

This is the best dress up day photo I have. It's from the late 1970s. Thanks to Facebook and class reunions, I've managed to reconnect with the girl holding the paper bag in the front row (she's now an MD) and several others. The "girl scout" holding the skull is a family friend.

Back in the “old days, before standards and benchmarks and Professional Learning Communities, I began teaching. I am sure that some teachers did little or no planning or revision of their courses year after year (I suspect some of you remember teachers with yellow legal-sized lined pads with their curriculum hand-written on it that they used daily in class.) However, I can honestly say I never taught a class the same way two years in succession.

In the early years, the goal was to make the class “better,” but for whom or why what we planned was “better” was not a major issue. Owen Miller and I spent the last week of each school year going of that year’s calendar, adjusting lengths of units, ordering films, and talking about new ideas. Eventually, we got to the point where we began writing ideas on the calendars as we went through the year. This brainiac idea made our planning a lot more productive since we didn’t have to keep asking each other, “Do you remember what we said we were going to do here?”

For most of my time at Monte Vista, Biology was the class I taught. I first it was Applied Arts Biology, designed for students who were not college-bound. Then, when John Burak died, I began teaching mostly College Preparatory Biology, a more rigorous alternative for those of academic inclination—or with parents who leaned that way. 

ASIDE. Mr. Burak was my high school Biology teacher. I student taught for him as part of my credentialing program. I was hired at the high school I graduated from without interviewing at the school or school district. I suspect that was in LARGE PART, thanks to John. His death was too early.

This is what I got letting me know I needed to sign a contract. It's the third sheet in a three-sheet carbon paper form, so it's hard to read. Here's what Mr. Brady, the principal wrote. The three names on the route slip were the biology teachers at that time. The third name is hard to read. "Stan Davies" is the man who told the principal he would teach any subject if that's what it took to hire me. I'm endebted to Stan for his kindness and humble by his belief in me."Please proceed with necessary paperwork to recommend employment of Charles Downing for 1973-74 on a four-fifths contract to teach four sections of biology. At the present time, I do not have enrollment or personnel units for a fifth assignment in his field but he is too good to let get away and he is willing to accept a 4/5 contract for now."That would not happen in today's educational environment.
I'm sure I have this thanks to my mom's compulsion to save important stuff in our lives. Thanks, MOM!

Before major breaks, our classes enjoyed “Food Labs.” In these blatant attempts to circumvent “no food in the room” policies, I would put these kinds of suggestions for lab materials on the board: CO(OK)I_ES. These usually ended up with sugar overload for kids since they had them in almost every class those days.

Dress UP

My mom and dad had a closet full of old clothing in their outbuilding. The family used it for Halloween costumes. For a couple of years, the box was a resident of one of the small prep rooms at the back of 1007. Once or twice a year, the Anatomy and Physiology students would have dress-up days. No rationale, Just a time to bond a little.

I participated in the dress-up days. Here I am as a snake oil salesman. NOTE the 1970s sideburns! It's from the same day the opening photo was taken. I'm in the second row on the far right.

My AP Biology classes were usually too large to do the dress-up, but we would have 2-3 “Caloric Replenishments” each semester rewarding the hard work they were doing. These were never without a theme and were quite popular. However, AP Biology's BIG event was the Bio II, All-Kazoo Marching Christmas Choir. That's a blog for the middle of December!

Coincidental Meeting at the Murph

Another AP Biology event was the “Coincidental Meeting at the Murph.” Prior to selling the naming rights to San Diego Stadium to Qualcomm, the place was known as Jack Murphy Field. The San Diego Padres played in that stadium and four or five times a year offered 2-for-1 deals on pretty good seats. I would collect money in advance and buy the tickets. The kids planned what they wanted to eat. I told them, “I will be at Jack Murphy Stadium in parking lot section 3B on Monday at 5:30 PM. I will have enough Padre tickets for ___ students. If you happen to show up at the same place at the same time, I think that would be quite a coincidence.”

They would nod sagely, and someone would explain to the clueless what I was doing. “Coincidental Meetings at the Murph” were, for all intents and purposes, a completely unauthorized field trip. If I was still teaching, there is no way I would try that today, and do not take this as authorization to do them—or even a suggestion to think about. The 21^st-century world we live in is a totally different time with a totally different set of teacher boundaries.

APBio Students enjoying the food at a "Coincidental Meeting at the Murph" in 1982.

While the main reason for these trips to the ball game was to have a good time with one another, I will not forget one time when a very special thing happened. At one game, a young lady sat by me. She was uncharacteristically quiet for her. After the first inning, I asked her if something was wrong. She looked at me with shining eyes.

“Everything is so colorful,” she gushed. “It doesn’t look anything like it does on television. This is sooo pretty.” I had not given any thought to the idea that any of these events would have been the first time a student had been to a baseball game. And I never would have thought that the beauty of the field would have made such a dramatic impact on a student.

Next: Voices and Stories - Any day in one of my classrooms 

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#Nostalgia Nuclear Bombs and Bomb Shelters

I offer you five dates in the past as inspiration for this blog—there are others I could have included. Each of the dates listed records the occurrence of a nuclear event.

8/5/1945  –  The Allied bombing of Hiroshima, Japan. My Veteran's Day blog relates to this event.

3/28/1979 – The Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania.

4/26/1984 – The Chernobyl accident in Ukraine.

3/11/2011 – The Fukushima, Japan, cooling system flood with a subsequent reactor shutdown and leak.
9/17/2017 - North Korea's most recent nuclear test, so powerful it moved Mt. Mantap and created a 6.3 earthquake.

I grew up as a child of the cold war between the USA and the USSR. In school, we had disaster drills. Our community had an air raid siren that was tested monthly. There were Civil Defense shelters around the county.

But, the truth was: there was very little accurate information on nuclear radiation and its effects.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki provided horrific evidence of what a blast could do. And, over time, there was data collected on the effects of nuclear radiation. However, in the Nevada desert, above-ground nuclear tests were conducted years after the end of WWII. The naiveté on the dangers of radiation is clear. KTLA Channel 5, a Los Angeles television station, actually broadcast at least one of these blasts live on television—with crews at a safe distance from the blast.

However, conclusive evidence for DNA as the genetic material was not presented until 1954. And it wasn’t until years later that any depth of understanding of the function of DNA and the damage caused by radiation was achieved.

So, for two decades, workers in any location where radiation was known wore dosimeters to measure the amount of radiation they accumulated. It was believed that ionizing radiation was safe as long as the exposure was limited to accumulation of acceptable levels—now known to be a fallacy.

Vintage Radiation Dosimeter

Dosimeters are still used today. Now used only for determining the level of leakage of nuclear material—not safe levels.

Kids growing up in this time took the threat of nuclear war very seriously. We ducked and covered during drills. We learned where the closest fallout shelter was. And, given the chance we really planned!

In 6^th grade, selected members of my class—I found out later it was the Gifted group—were assembled as a team. I was included—even though I never quite made the cut on any of the tests used to measure giftedness.

The team’s task was to design a bomb/fallout shelter for the entire school. In retrospect, I cannot imagine the school’s teachers ever agreeing to spend an indefinite time, underground, with the students in their classes. However, we attacked the task with vigor.

Using a map of the school, we designed quite an underground structure. We had the expected eating and sleeping areas—with bathrooms for each sex! There were a large kitchen and dining area. Supply rooms abounded. We also included sports areas and a library. While not quite Blast from the Past quality, we were proud of our effort.

And it wasn’t just elementary school students that planned.

Poster and/or Billboard Promoting the Use of Fallout/Bomb Shelters

For those of you too young to have experienced this cold war/bomb threat phenomenon, I’ll end with one other example.

In my senior year of college, as part of my undergraduate major—Biology for Secondary Teaching—I had to take a health course on human reproduction. One of our sessions was the viewing of a Civil Defense film. I insist it was titled How to Have a Baby in a Bomb Shelter, but I’m really not certain of the actual title.

This film was part of the supplies in every fallout/bomb shelter. To say it was explicit is almost euphemistic. I spent most of the film with my head between my knees, no mean feat in theater seats, trying not to either pass out or vomit.

Aside. When my wife was pregnant with our organic son—more on that moniker in another blog—I dutifully attended childbirth classes. However, I informed my wife that I would not be present in the delivery room for the actual delivery of my child. I explained as I’ve written above about that Civil Defense movie. I continued with my explanation that I wanted the doctor to be concentrating on her and the baby and not stepping over my limp body sprawled on the floor.

My wife listened politely. She then informed me that I would be present in the delivery room.

I was.

Now we know that neither dosimeters nor bomb shelters offer protection for nuclear radiation of the type and intensity of an atomic bomb. Humanity is fortunate that only two nuclear bombs have been dropped as aggressive acts against another nation. In 2015, when we look back at the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we are tempted to point fingers of blame on those responsible for the development, production and, ultimately, the use of nuclear bombs.

I know that the pilots who dropped those bombs on Japan were convinced, and still are to this day...

...if they are still alive, that the acts saved hundreds of thousands of lives on both sides. I’ll not debate if that makes the action right or wrong. To do so 70 years after the fact is arrogance personified.

Today, our goal as humans and citizens of the world should be two-fold.

1. That no such weapon ever be deployed again.
2. That knowledge and understanding of those opposing us be a priority so non-lethal solutions to problems can be found.

I'm praying the cooler heads in North Korea become vocal on the idiocy of testing nuclear anything, any time, anywhere.

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#Nostalgia #Relationships On Pecking Orders and Life

Notice: This blog is not about bullying, although many consider what you'll read as part of that umbrella. I'm defining bullying as overt physical or verbal attacks on an individual or group. Pecking orders most often ignore those low in the order, maybe even on notch below, rather than attack those.

Penguins keeping the pecking order intact.

I’m retired. I try to eat breakfast on my patio as often as I can. Since I live in San Diego, CA, it’s almost a given that I can do that—oh… about 300 days/year.

The other morning, my wife and I refilled the bird feeder. I sat, praying and watching the feeder, with our “water feature” trickling and bubbling with an occasional splish/splash in the background.

Since birds had been checking on the food availability before we refilled the feeder, I wasn’t surprised when several sparrows and finches arrived at the restocked buffet. If you are watching such happenings with an inexperienced or unconcerned eye, what you observe appears to be random comings and goings of birds to and from the feeder.

However, as I watched I noticed that some birds always got a perch on the feeder—even if it meant chasing another bird off the perch. Following the actions of a bird who’s been chased away, I observed that they sat at a distance until the more aggressive bird left the feeder. Only then did they return to their meal.

Many/Most bird societies are like that. There exists a pecking order where each bird is placed in a sequence of decreasing dominance from #1--> however many birds are in the flock. Whenever a bird higher in the order decides to do something, those birds below that spot in the order will acquiesce to the higher-ranking bird.

Normally, this occurs with little or no resistance from the bird(s) lower in the pecking order. Sometimes a lower-ranked bird decides not to acquiesce. I don’t know why. Most commonly, that leads to some form of display behavior. Should the lower-ranked bird "out display" the higher-ranked bird, the winner moves up in the order.

When I taught this behavioral pattern in my high school and college biology classes, I told my students to think back to their days in middle school or junior high. Hormone ravaged pre-adolescents act a lot like a pecking order—but with considerably less restraint in their displays. 

This is a classic example of pecking order as I define it. The two high in the order girls on the right are ignoring the lower ranking girl in the background. 

Most schools now offer anti-bullying counseling and support. This is a good thing. But, it's still rough being the 51st chicken in a 51 bird flock.

I wonder how often we (me) as adults are guilty of perpetuating a pecking order in our job, social group, or even family. I know that some hierarchy is necessary for the functioning of nearly all groups. 

I know I’ve been guilty at times of doing things myself because I can and not allowing others to get the experience and be fulfilled. I’m better at releasing control now than I used to be, but it’s still something I need to work on. 

Bottom Line: 

It’s how we maintain our pecking orders deserves your (my) consideration.

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