2006 Holidays

I haven't blogged for a long time. A lot of stuff has happened. I'm thankful for God and His faithfulness. He is the source of meaning and life. That's it.

Sharktooth Hill Expedition

Today, I joined my father-in-law, Don Ricketts, and 35 other people to dig for fossils at Sharktooth Hill. We went with the Buena Vista Natural History Museum. The site is in North East Bakersfield on 400 acres of proporty owned by a private land owner.

It was such a wonderful time! We found a lot of cool Shark teeth and developed a serious sun burn! We found angel shark, tiger shark, and mako shark teeth. In addition, we also found some whale vertebra, ear bones, and a seal lion jaw bone. Together we found over 100 teeth!

Charlie's Got a Brand New Blog

Check out our dog Charlie's DogBlog:

CHARLIEPANTS

California Education in Danger?

When listening to "Focus on the Family" on the way to work today, I was disturbed to hear of a bill pending in California:

Senate Bill 1437 has passed from the California Senate
Judiciary Committee and can at any moment be voted on by the full Senate. If signed into law, it would force all public school teachers to present to students a one-sided message about homosexuality, bisexuality and transgender issues.

The bill would ban lessons, discussions and activities
that reflect adversely upon one's sexual orientation, which would end any
open discussion about the issue of homosexuality in public classrooms and
effectively silence the Christian voice on the issue.To compound this bias,
the bill calls for all facets of education to be stripped of any non-endorsing messages about homosexuality. Amendments made to the bill in late March also require social science lesson plans to include the contributions homosexuals, bisexuals and transgenders have made to society.

--CitizenLink

It would be awful to be mandated as a teacher to incorperate this sexual agenda in the public classroom. It would not happen in my class. Being required to explain sexual orientation to 2nd graders is absurd. It crosses lines in so many areas of thought, it's mind-boggling that the bill has gotten this far! Besides my faith in God, this bill goes against biological, social, logical, scientific, emotional, and ethical reasoning too detailed to go into. I'm not political-- but when I hear about things like this, someone needs to speak up.

If you would like to voice your opinion, go to CitizenLink's website(http://family.org/cforum/) or just click on the icon above: "California: Call to Action". I will now step down off my soapbox.

Teaching

I'm currently teaching 2nd grade at Sequoia Elementary School. This is my 2nd year teaching and I love it! I have 20 great students and a wonderful working environment. Not to mention the awesome technology! Every four classrooms (connected by a pod) share 20 laptops with wireless internet. Each classroom has an LCD projector, presenter camera, and a desktop with internet access.

First Blog

This is the first blog I have ever written. It took me about two days just to think of the title! I first learned about Blogs from my cousin-in-law Sonny Portacio. I hope to find a way to use Blogging for education, sharing ideas, and another creative outlet. Here it goes!