SAHDism

a collection of thoughts by a Stay At Home Dad

“The Year of Living Sequeiralously”

  • Home
  • About Me
  • What Is Sahdism

A Moment of Inspiration

July 28, 2017 by Stuart

It’s early morning and I’m organizing the kids’ school lessons for the day while the house is blissfully quiet. (Side note, quiet is only blissful in the context that the house will filled with ear-splitting noise in a couple of hours, otherwise, the quiet would be depressing).)
While preparing, I flash back to a memory from sixteen years ago. I had recently quit my job in manufacturing and was spending a year in the Pacific Northwest. Part of the reason I left was that I was burnt out working on the manufacturing floor; equipment breaks and I would get called in to fix it. Sometimes I’d end up being late on other assignments and get grief for that, and sometimes I’d be called at night or on weekends – whenever the plant was running was fair game.
I hadn’t planned to go back to being an engineer, especially in manufacturing, and thought maybe I’d do something like volunteer teaching or tutoring. I contacted the local high school and offered to help, saying that my strong point was math. I envisioned helping some kid by ‘turning the light on’ in a given topic, where they’d finally understand something that confused them and they’d be happier and more confident.
The school said they’d call when they needed me, and it didn’t take long. I got a call from the school with an odd request – their shop class had a small desktop robot. The robot had broken and no one knew how to fix it. Could I come in and see what I could do?
– sigh –
I visit the shop class and it’s a pretty cool shop. I had to admit that I did feel at home here. I get to work and fix the robot. Then, just for fun, I program it. I make a little material handling routine that picks up blocks from one area and organizes them on the other side. Students come by to check it out. I told the shop teacher I could come back tomorrow and he says yes. The next day I created an obstacle course and students got to learn how to program the robot to complete the course.
On the third and final day, I take a few freshmen to the chalkboard to explain how some of the mechanics work – how rotary motions can be made into linear motion and why that’s important. I start drawing lines and writing basic linear equations and explaining them. I explain that making the robot work is WHY we learn things like linear equations – it’s not just meaningless busy work. I was on a roll.
And then the bell rang. I stopped talking, a little sad that I was done here, and got ready to say bye to the students. They just stood there around me at the chalkboard. I asked them,
“Don’t you have to get to your next class?”
and one of them replied,
“We have five minutes until the next bell, you can finish explaining this.”
So I turned around and went back to finish the explanation. As I wrote that last “y = mx + b” on the board, I started to remember what I had loved about my job, what inspired me. There is some pretty cool stuff that can be done with math, with engineering, and with manufacturing; stuff so cool that a bunch of fourteen year olds would ask to stay after class to learn linear equations.
So here I am, sixteen years later, planning lessons for my kids. I don’t know what subjects will spark their inspiration, but I hope they find it. And it is nice that I can be here, helping them look.

Filed Under: Anecdotes Tagged With: work/life balance

Recent Posts

  • Overthinking Things September 17, 2017
  • Fun on the Farm August 22, 2017
  • The Bitter Aftertaste August 11, 2017
  • Coincidence? July 28, 2017
  • A Moment of Inspiration July 28, 2017

Archives

  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • September 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012

Tags

aging (3) alcohol (14) breakfast (5) cooking (8) daughters (6) exercise (5) first-time parents (1) food (3) housekeeping (12) house rules (5) illness (3) language (3) Life Before Kids (5) mommy (2) mornings (8) outings (11) safety (1) school (3) sex (4) siblings (2) sleep (10) style (5) tantrums (10) third child (2) toilet training (5) work/life balance (3)

Copyright © 2025 · Genesis Sample Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in