Day 5 - Tourist day

Today was a tourist day. We hit the St Louis arch, Mississippi River cruise, stopped by the old Cathedral, old courthouse, central library, basilica, chess center, the local scout shop, Ted Drew's ice-cream place, and some retail shops that my son was desperate to go to.

Some traditional tourist destinations and some that are specific to this particular family. 

The arch is amazing, the second largest manmade monument in the world and we watched the video of its construction and the way that the cranes piggybacked their way up the legs to the middle was a engineering wonder. Health and safety were, far from anyone's mind but the expected 13 deaths from construction, but not one construction worker died in making it.

Unfortunately the cathedral and the courthouse weren't open but I explained the significance of the court house and the case of Dred Scott, and his testing the judge if he had rights as a slave. The judge ruled against him and condemned slaves to property and not people! #humanrights

The basilica was so beautiful with mosaics adorning the ceilings.

This was such a reverend place and was a perfect quick stop on our way across town.

The World chess center on the other side of time had the St Louis club, museum and a shop dedicated to the sport.

There were some guys outside playing games on tables outside the club and they were definitely players. Games were played at breakneck speeds and we watched one game where the guy was seriously running out of time but clinched it with 3 seconds left on the clock.

St Louis has a scout center for the local centers and I spent a reasonable amount of time chatting to Dan about the similarity and differences of our scouting practices, and girl scouts can't be in a scout troop but can be in cubs, and rovers so we will see how that changes in time.

The shop itself was like a sweetshop for scouters with badges, equipment, awards, neckers etc but what surprised me was the lack of a national necker! I asked Dan about Sunday, international scout necker day, he seemed to not know so I'd be interested to hear if he is wearing his!

Frozen custard another food item that I'll add to my food post when we are returning home, but Ted Drewes, is an ice-cream parlour, and frozen custard is essentially what we would call ice-cream. Similar to our Italian gelatino, and just as delicious. This place is a must for anyone driving through St Louis and is always busy. The car park was full and the last time I came through on 2018 schools busses were stopping with students from an athletics meet.

It is great being a tourist seeing the sites, grabbing some culture after a wash out the previous day. St Louis has plenty of history being the gateway to the west in the days of the gold rush. Despite the relative short history here in the US there is so much to see here with the different architecture, and civil war.

Day 4 - wash out

Planning for the weather is always interesting when working to a schedule. Today's plan was to hit the new water park in Ste Genevieve but the rain made the plan change. 

There are so many sights to see in st Louis so another drive into the city with lunch on the way.

2 large pizzas and a couple of house salads filled the troops ready for the day. 

The place we stayed at for lunch operates this scheme to support people get a free lunch. Unfortunately I couldn't download the app so couldn't support this but this reminds me of #payitforward but without the need to pay for it.

As we finished lunch the rain started. Heavy rain continued for the rest of the journey to st Louis but we were hopelessly unprepared for what we found there.

St Louis was flooded! Lakes in the street causing roads to be completely unpassable. Truck owners, pick up trucks, were navigating the roads with caution but cars were submerged in the street with roads completely blocked. This is the second time in 3 days that st Louis has been flooded with someone tragically loosing their life stuck in their submerged car. 

This is extreme weather for the area and totally unexpected. We were talking about the effects of climate change and how the heat and the rain is more extreme than it has been ever before. Climate is definitely changing but the debate about has man contributed to it or not is fairly irrelevant. We need to work on living with the changes and reducing our impact not worrying about the cause.

So after a road trip with biblical rain a nice relaxing evening back home before rescheduling the plans for the next day.

Day 3 - Shopping and the Muny

My children wanted to go to some specific shops to get some things which are cheaper in the US then they are back home. This took us into St Louis to the mall and other shops on the way.

A second hand bookstore was a nice little treasure trove of books whilst the goodwill shop was like a UK charity shop with a difference. The business model here was genius. They take donations from people and then price them and sell them for profit. Literally people are giving their unwanted items to a business that then sells them on, for a fair price, but not ridiculously cheap. As a retail outlet this is genius, no cash is tied up in your own stock. This is where lots of businesses fail by having no cash flow due to it being tied up in the things they are selling.

The mall is not so dissimilar to any indoor shopping center in the UK. Department stores, clothing shops etc and Rhett explains that in their prime these would be a busy bustling place where everyone would come to hang out. Sadly there wasn't much evidence of that today. We hit the St Louis dugout store and got some new cardinal tops and had a look around the others.

Heard my first "I love your accent" to which my customary reply "well, I love your accent too" was met with a laugh as usual. The remaining conversations with the shop assistant revolved around the usual nuances of language and in this particular exchange a conversation about pants (trousers) in a bag.

The mall has obviously fallen victim to the change in consumer shopping habits especially since the covid pandemic, but the surprising thing for me was that almost all the shops we saw had now hiring signs. My eldest who is looking for a part time job would have jumped at the chance and he said why can't this be the same in Worthing.

The Muny is the second largest outdoor theatre in the US. It seats nearly 11,000 people in this large amphitheatre. We were here to watch legally blonde the musical which was a good show, well staged and we were informed at the start about the flooding the previous day that turned the backstage area into lake Muny. 

I have since discovered that the last 9 rows are free. Every show, every performance has these free seats and has been the same for the 100+ year history of the Muny.

Day 2 - a day relaxing.

At the start of every long journey time zones play havoc with body clocks and having a first day of just relaxing is a perfect start for our holiday. 

A day with the comforts of home and a pool in the garden is a perfect start to a family break. Home cooked food, I'll post about food later, the relaxed atmosphere and the space to spread out into.

The pool here is a perfect size and for us a great temperature. We are not used to the heat of this summer and the coolness of the pool is perfect for us whilst our hosts prefer the pool to be hotter. 

It is also nice to play some simple board games, well their American equivalent, like clue, cluedo, monopoly which is the New York version, and then introduced to corn hole, the bean bag throwing that is great and simple and I now have something else to make my own version of. 

These are all things that would have been missed if we had stayed in a resort or hotel.

One of my favourite things about travelling is about the people we meet and the experiences we share. Whenever, a school year finishes and I talk to my students about travelling I always speak of this need to meet the people and not just visit the places. 

Travelling again.

Day 1 of travelling since the world was hit by lockdown and this time instead of taking a group of students to some far flung place the Cooper's have landed in the United States. 

Hattie's first ever flight was a whopping 7 hours from London to Boston. As most flights go it was largely uneventful with in flight entertainment taking most of the strain of the flight. 

Landing was a bit heavy and that really shook her up a little. 

It felt that largely covid had been a thing of the past. Some people were wearing masks on the plane whilst most were just happy to be travelling. 

The mile long walk between terminals was quite something after a long flight and a delay before taking off made the day all that bit longer.

Flight number 2 was far from smooth. Turbulence was quite violent at times and made Hattie and Lu quite nervous understandably but we landed safe and sound at St Louis just an hour later than planned. 

I had forgotten how much I actually enjoy the adventure of flying. Travelling with people from all walks of life, heading of in countless other destinations. 

I have to admit to being a little nosey at times on the flight and caught a glimpse of a conversation between a passenger and her new partner and the innocence of a newish relationship kept me glimpsing over at the messages.

It is always great seeing familiar faces.on arrival and Shelley was there to pick us up in her little truck! Wow this great big red monster truck was super comfortable and a perfect ride through St Louis, down to Ste Genevieve.

It is great having all the comforts of home away from home. Staying with friends is amazingly liberating. The space and creature comforts outstrips staying in a hotel room.

Looking forward to taking it easy and adjusting to the new timezones and surroundings tomorrow!

What do students want to learn?

This question seems like a simple one but starts to make you think if schools and education settings actually prepare our children for life after school. The fundamental requirement for our schools is to prepare our community's children for life beyond school and be prepared for adult life.

I am a secondary maths teacher and on a regular basis I get asked why we need to learn these things that we are learning in my lessons and I use the simple answer that the future is uncertain and the skills that we learn in maths prepare us for unknown problems that we may face in later life that we need the skills we have learned elsewhere and apply them to these new situations. I obviously like this answer and have been honing it for some time now.

But what do our students want to learn? What are the things that I left school not knowing, or what do our students not be prepared for?

I have a tutor group, a small group of students that check in with me each morning and I check about their wellbeing and cover any academic issues, who are aged 16-18 and these students are at the point of completing secondary education. Some are destined for university, apprenticeships, or work and so I asked them this year, "What do you want to know before you leave school?" 

They started to give me this list:

• Personal Finance
• Insurance
• Tax
• Cooking
• Rent / Mortgages
• Car maintenance
• Stocks and shares
• Pensions

These are things that may be touched upon in some of our personal development lessons but are really not covered adequately and they don't feel prepared at all for things that they will end up having to use almost immediately once leaving school!

I asked this same question to teachers/ educators from a Transatlantic Educators Discussion group and they added to the list the following:

• College Applications & Finance
• Media literacy - fake and real news
• Cursive writing
• Mental health
• Meditation
• CV
• How to write an email/ letter
• Covering letters for applications
• USA health system
• Local Government - What is it and what does it do
• Personal Hygiene
• Simple Sewing
• Building and using a network for personal support
• Social etiquette and how this differs in other countries
• Jury Duty
• Voting

This is quite a list and looking at it there are some similar ideas mainly about finance, employment, and health but a reasonable part about local society and these are really not taught in our school in the UK and some of this seems to be missed in other parts of the school.

So how important is this? How much time should school devote to preparing our children for adult life as well as pushing academic subjects and preparing for final exams?

This is an impossible question. Schools are measured by students' outcomes and in some countries that comes down to the individual teachers too. The pressure that is applied to academic performance is going to prevent schools from giving more time to cover this list. Our students have enrichment opportunities each year which are used for various activities, and school trips but is this enough time to give them the proper preparation for later life? What else do we need to teach our children so that they are truly ready for later life?

1 hour a week - Week 1

For anyone involved in Scouting or Guiding or another sort of youth volunteering program the idea of an hour a week is often said tongue in cheek and people are often spending far more than the simple hour a week.

I decided before Christmas that I would give my children 1 hour a week of 1-1 time with them. As any parent knows trying to get any sensible time that doesn't involve trying to prise a child away from a screen during the week or getting them to stay at the dinner table long enough for a proper conversation is hard enough to do. I remember at my childrens' christenings that as parents we are the first teachers of our children and I believe that my wife and I are doing a good job of that so far. It isn't as if we get a second chance at parenting! My eldest son Isaac, 16, is about to finish secondary school and he has a plan for college and beyond although it isn't completely concrete yet and I wanted to give him some individual attention to discuss the world at large, give him some chance to ask anything, and also devote some time to give him some life lessons. I had discovered that there are a number of simple things that he is unsure about so I want to ensure he is prepared. Cameron and Hattie, 13 and 9 respectively were also keen on their individual hours a week too. I didn't really have a specific plan as to how these hours were going to go, but I decided that I want to share with them about how the world changes. So my plan was hatched.

Week 1

Cameron and I went and enjoyed a hot chocolate in our local Starbucks which I used to work at when it was a bank. One of the old strong rooms is still there but apart from that, the remains of the old bank are long gone. We talked about how things change. When it was a bank with a cash machine the weekly turnover of cash and the fraudsters that used to come in, but also the regular customers that you would get to know over the weeks that they would come in. Are these relationships with the local community being lost with the changing landscape of our towns? Another topic for another time. We also talked about why do people buy expensive coffee in a coffee shop and looked around at the people in there and hypothesized about what they had come in for and what they were talking about!

We continued talking for well over an hour and then walked back. It was a lovely first opportunity to stop and just talk and see where the conversation took us.

Isaac and I also went through our local community shops and looked at how our local landscape had changed. We didn't go back to Starbucks, I wasn't impressed with my hot chocolate, but instead, we tried Costa, I struggled to remember what the shop was before it was Costa it may have been a bank or building society but for the life of me I can't remember. Isaac made a poor decision and got a drink without sugar, but he doesn't drink any hot drinks at all. From there we walked and talked our way towards the town center. We wanted to pop into a Lidl before making it bowling with some friends. The weather had other plans and before we got into town we got drenched completely and ended up getting rescued so that we could get changed. The bowling was great incidentally as I rocked the first game and he smashed through the second.

I had planned to just go for a walk with Hattie and get some ice cream. She also isn't that interested in hot drinks at all and so we walked towards our local ice cream parlor. I can say parlor as we are blessed in our town to have a number of really good places for ice cream. Hattie was brilliant and just talked along the way and she asked if I had any money on the way as she knew there was an ice parlor on our walk! She is so amazingly sweet and wasn't disheartened when it wasn't open. So instead we walked a lot further than I had planned and we went to another one in town. Our hour turned into an hour and a half and 5km walk. We were both clearly tired when we got back.

So 1 week in and managed to just about manage the first sessions. I feel that Isaac got short-changed this week with the weather cutting our time short and actually his choice of drink from Costa. I'll try and address this in the future.