***What Are You Smoking, September 2024?***
- Thread starter JimInks
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I started out as an elementary teacher in Pattonville in Maryland Hgts, MO. I was in essence the Welcome Back Kotter of the area - Local boy returns to the district he graduated from. After 11 years, I became a Principal of a middle school in Riverview Gardens in North St. Louis County. It was an all black middle school in a struggling neighborhood that had seen tremendous white flight. My background is one of Liberation Theology and the bosses supported my progressive educational views - A solid education based on hardwork and personal responsibility based on high standards supported by resources targeted to increase community involvement and democratic decision making (today - that would not be considered progressive, but back then it was). The emphasis was empowering the black community to actualize ownership in the school and embracing the belief systems necessary to marginalize the impacts of past discrepancies and abuses. It wasn't easy but we achieved a marked level of success. I then became a director of a suburban school system in Wentzville where the powers that be (who understood my background when they hired me) reacted poorly to my efforts to democratize the school system - they preferred a top down approach and wanted me to fire the union presidents of the two teacher unions -either by forcing them out or making their lives miserable. This wasn't for me and so I left Missouri for California where I resumed teaching in the classroom while beginning a career as a professor working with adult students getting their teaching degrees. I did this for many years and rejected offers to work as a school administrator ( I was very clear on my views and made it clear that Palm Springs Unified was not a school system open to democratic decision making from a ground up approach, much to their disappointment.) I did leave the classroom to become a full-time teaching coach for the district where I supported both new teachers as well as teachers target for dismissal. I found that more than quite a few principals would become upset with me because the teachers I worked with improved to the point where they couldn't be fired - you would think they would be happy, but human managers being what they are - are limited by their own emotions and once they turn on someone it is difficult for them to welcome those they despise back into the fold. Regardless I was successful and my mindset of hardworking and personal responsibility paid off for those teachers. In my career, many of my students have obtained the highest levels of success and I am happy to state that they still credit me with much of that - although their success is all theirs. I have one student who is now a US Senator who will eventually run for president. You have heard of him and he is on the news programs now biding his time.
I retired from teaching - I could have done more, but my family and wife came first and their needs meant I needed to curtail my goals of moving up the ladder into the State Department - I don't regret it. The public education system is broken by its own institutional malaise and focus - a focus that is institutional and self sustaining for its own membership. As a college professor, I did more for the system than I could have done from the top. IF I had another lifetime to live and wasn't concerned for my children and wife, yes, I would have done more, but honestly, it is time for the public schools to relinquish their hold on the educational system and a more competitive system to take its place, one where competition for success and achievement is valued and honored and supported. The poor and the disenfranchised are not serviced best by providing them excuses and safety nets that are neither safe or helpful. instilling a commitment to self responsibility, ownership of success, and the means to truly thirst for a solid education that means something because it is rooted in a real knowledge of learning is powerful and in the end something that can not be taken away. Being competent in how language works, how mathematics works, and the true basics and building blocks of knowledge is not just necessary, it is absolute. Being able to communicate successfully ones ideas as well as understanding the ideas of what has come before us and are being communicated by others now is the true definition of literacy. You have no idea how opposed the educational system is to this concept. Not just opposed, but aggressively opposed. Why? Because these ideas remove the power of the system to believe that it and it alone has the answers and puts the responsibility back on the learner - who might just question the very school system they are in.
This is a longer answer to your question than you might have wanted, but it was the basis of my career as a teacher and an educator. Now, my days are spent traveling the world and fishing and hunting. In between all that, I smoke my pipes. Thank you for the question.
Rubbed out Silver Quarter going into a Mastro Geppetto
Thank you for the long answer. Thank you for your time spent educating the youth and adults of this country!
Penny Farthing in a Morgason Billiard.
Smoking almost the very last of my supply of HU Makhawu in a pre-1980 Comoy’s Pot…
Chilly day, had to get the fire going out here in the shop. Warmed up now, finishing off the morning coffee with a bowl of 2010 Rolando's Own in an Ascorti Business KS in the smoking lounge, then off to chop some more wood and keep stocking my mom's shed for a few years. This cold chill makes me ready to go back to Florida. Next month...toes tapping. 
A third of the way through this bowl of pre-2014 Edward G. Robinson's Pipe Blend in a 2014 Basil Meadows smooth slight bend squashed tomato with an aluminum band and a black pearl acrylic stem in the military mount style. Fed my cats, and will feed the ferals soon. Watching Mad Dog Russo. Ice water and bergs is my drink.
OJK in a 1922 Yerbury & Son Bishopsgate Army mount.
Got the day off so I’m smoking some Watch City #558 in a Peterson.
3 Sails and Kendal Mixed 50/50.
Just finished eating dinner, deer sirloin, potatoes and lots of mushrooms. Smoking Peterson Nightcap in my Sixten Ivarsson inspired Abe Herbaugh commissioned pipe with red wine from the dinner on the side.
Gawith Hoggarth & Co. Black Twist in a Savinelli Trevi #311 KS Poker with a cup of black coffee.
Bob’s Chocolate 
Flake in a 91Gram IMP Reverse Calabash Meerschaum and Diet Coke 
on the side.
Flake in a 91Gram IMP Reverse Calabash Meerschaum and Diet Coke on the side.- Status