For Thursday, August 21, 1997 Drummer Column, Gibbs, 710 words

Fences and gateways

Summer is wrapping itself up, mostly without my help. No bachelor parties or romantic adventures or rafting trips for me this week. I'm putting lesson plans together and fixing fences. Grunt work.

I was just over at the high school. Ooo-whee, what a mess. Construction is in full swing. Rooms are gutted, hallways are piled high with pallets of paneling and air conditioners, dust is flying, paint is spattering. If we start on time, I'll be amazed. My old room in the cafeteria is now a hollow shell.

However, I'm in a new room, which is all clean and ready to go. I went in and hung 210 vocabulary words on the wall. I put up a few folding tables, and brought in the seven computers I built in my garage this summer.

Every week or so some nice Benician would call me and donate a few old computers. I got some great donations from Jim Noack, Marnix and Jean Van Ammers, and Amy Stifter's dad. They'd drop them off at my house, and I'd refurbish them in my garage.

Last year, on a lark, I requested a new class dealing with computer repair. The request was granted, and the "Language of Computers" program was born.

It was a refreshing change from teaching English all day. I had one afternoon section with two dozen kids. We plowed through our warehouse of accumulated donations. We built and distributed to classrooms 41 computers. We had six more ready by the end of school.

Now, like a well-watered vine, the program has grown. This year I have 66 students enrolled in two sections. I teach ancient philosophy and journalism in the morning, then fdisk in the afternoon. Lunch will be a period of transition.

We're having a minor logistics problem just now with the sudden growth. We have no lab. The class is being taught in my literature room. Our lab is several brown tables along the back wall. That worked fine for 24 students once a day. Now I'll have 33 students twice a day. Mostly we will read about computers.

Susan Hutchinson, our resourceful vice principal, helped me this year to buy a class set of technical manuals, 1,400 pages each. That will keep us busy for a while. She's also helping us acquire a novel or two, so our program can grow to encompass some cyber culture. She's a long-time techie herself. Builds her own computers.

I must say, I have altered my whole paradigm by taking on this class. When I only taught English, life was simple, except for grading essays. The English language doesn't change that much. A few words come and go. I've been able to use what I learned in college for the last decade. Classic literature themes don't change either. You learn them once, and you've got them for life. I use the same Julius Caesar lesson plans I designed in 1986.

Computers, on the other hand, change constantly. Now, I have to read up on all the innovations, subscribe to magazines, scour the Internet, go to the workshops, without end. My lessons must change along with the central processors and operating systems. And the mountain of history is piling up fast behind me. What have I done?

I fixed my good-neighbor fence. I met our new neighbors. They're from the Ukraine. The boys, Albert and Pasha, helped me dig post holes and nail boards. Their mother fixed me some delicious Russian chicken burgers. Dad came up and took pictures of the boys hard at work. He was glad to see them earning a few blisters.

We were seven boards from finished Tuesday evening when the freak rain started and the sun went down. I threw a tarp over my electric tools and kept hammering. I finished wet in the dark, then came in to write this story. Right now my fingers are muddy, my hair is wet, my socks are sloshing in my shoes, I smell bad, I'm hungry, and I have a deadline.

Right now, waiting for me down in the refrigerator, is the last Russian chicken burger. Just as soon as I finish writing, I'm going down to eat it and watch the evening news. Let me check my word count.