Career

Teacher appreciation was a few weeks ago. Being a teacher once, I remember some of the things I have received from my students. It meant a lot to get notes and gifts from them. I actually have a file still out in my garage of notes that I have received from my students that really had an impact on me. This year offered a reverse of this activity–my son has two incredible preschool teachers, and we wanted to say thank you to them! We made these wonderful flower pots as a thank you.

Flowers for teacher. Gerber daisies in a flower pot for teacher appreciation.
Flower pot with words, “Thank you for helping me grow!”

I went to Pinterest to look for some ideas. I found several places that had flower pots with the writing, “Thank you for helping me grow!” One of my favorites was this one from Kelly Leigh. I didn’t have time to put the tape measure design around the top, but I think the teachers name at the top looks nice.

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Some Sunshine for a Teacher’s Day

Know of a teacher in your life? Do they look a little tired or blue? Maybe they need a hug? Ok not a hug, but better yet brighten up their day with a care package full of sunshine and rainbows!

Why do teachers need any extra encouragement? They are well paid, right? Haha!  Friends, teaching is one of the most difficult jobs I know. On top of all the regular teacher work, the standards they have put on teachers to perform in the last few years have made this difficult job at times downright impossible. The saddest part of all is many of the good teachers I know, like some of my mentor teachers, are leaving the teaching field. They are leaving the field of education because they have said “it simply isn’t worth it anymore.” As I am sitting here writing this, I honestly don’t know

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The conversations have begun. Yes, you know the ones. “Where is your child going to school?” “Have you enrolled your child into preschool?” “Does anyone know of a good preschool for kids in our area?” Then once a parent begins talking, they definitely have an opinion of which is the best. Honestly, I feel the pressure. I really do, I want what is best for my son and now sons. I want them to be ready for school (Kindergarten) and the rest of school and college (if that is the right path for them). I told myself, I would not worry about this. But honestly, I am. If I don’t enroll them in the next greatest best school, am I letting them down? If I don’t get my pre-enrollment form in, shell out a load of cash, and an arm and a leg, am I hurting their future? Will they not get a good education, will they not be ready for life?!?

Stop! This is ridiculous! I honestly don’t see my sons on a conveyer belt to an Ivy League school. I do see them going to school and doing well. I then see them choosing a career path they desire and following it (hopefully that will entail a good college). I honestly do not believe all of that is determined by what school/preschool they are in now. Please parents, take the pressure off. Yes, you will have to put forth some effort to get them ready for school, but you do not have to have your child attend the best and greatest preschool out there. I had to tell myself this and later remind myself of this when I hear parents talking. It got me to thinking however, what does a child need to know before they go to school?

What do I need to know before Kindergarten?

(This is not for every Kindergarten out there, but it is a list I received from a group of Kindergarten teachers I worked with. When I first saw it I was a little amazed at all the things they were wanting them to know when they first began.  I have seen students come to school only knowing a few letters and hardly any of these other things.  Kindergarten teachers you are so so so amazing! If your child was able to do these things though, they would definitely be in a great place to start school and not worry about them being behind).

Before Kindergarten:

  • identify upper and lower case letters A-Z
  • can say the alphabet without skipping letters
  • counts 1-20
  • gets dressed: buttons, zippers, and shoe laces
  • catches a ball, throws a ball, and jumps
  • uses scissors
  • names shapes
  • understands patterns AB, ABB, ABC
  • writes first name
  • understands rhyming and can come up with rhyming words
  • identify numbers (1-10)
  • holds a pencil correctly

Knows:

  • their birthday
  • phone number
  • address
  • to dial 911 in emergency
  • months of the year
  • days of the week

My plan: I am going to teach our children these skills through play based learning. We are going to have fun and do some learning too. My goal is to share with you what we do and give you some insight into what you can do with your child. Preschools are great for children because children do learn, and they have a chance to interact with other children in a social setting (very important). I will talk more about that later. Yet, I don’t believe they have to be the only way for children to learn. You parent, really are your child’s greatest teacher. I want to empower you. You can really have fun with your child, and do some great things! Here is to learning!

What skills do you believe are important for Kindergarten? Please comment below.

** Our oldest child does attend a daycare/school two days a week because I was substitute teaching. It has been good for him to learn how to interact with peers, follow teacher directions, raise his hand, line up, and a myriad of other skills.  This post was created to empower parents, and to let them take a step back and breathe. I also wanted to give everyone a goal to shoot for.  When I make lesson plans I like to plan with the end goal in mind.

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NOTE:  I realize this is a second posting on engineering, but I wanted to just get these out of the way for my first posts.  They’re part of who I am, and will hopefully provide some perspective on how I perceive things as I write about them in future posts.

Requirements and Design:  For an engineer, depending on where you work and the past experiences you’ve had, those words can cause an entire range of reactions from, “Yup, gotta do them” to simply groans followed by mutterings of “Here we go again”.  But for this post, I really want to talk about something different:  What are the Requirements and Design for being an engineer?

Realistically, engineers have a broad range of attributes, so I can only talk about the general Requirements that I’ve seen that made the several great engineers I’ve gotten to work with.  I’ve met lots of good engineers, unfortunately quite a few bad ones, but I’ve only found a few I and the people I work with consider great.  Off we go:

REQUIREMENT #1:  EDUCATION

This may seem ridiculous to some:  Every engineer probably has a college education, you might say.  But that’s not true, and that’s not what I mean.  I’m talking either a formal college education, or education through years of experience, or both.  One of the most effective engineers I’ve worked with in the past several years didn’t have a college education, but he’d been in the automation field for decades.  His knowledge of the variety of automation systems, problems that could arise when implementing any system, and how to interact with other groups to get work done was incredible.  Similarly, I’ve worked with college-educated individuals who were simply amazing at picking up challenges in the workplace and being able to crank through them.  Wherever it may come from, education is imperative.

REQUIREMENT #2:  INTENSITY

What is intensity for an engineer?  It’s rising with a big old grin to meet a challenge that others haven’t been able to solve; it’s focusing on something either alone or in a team to the point that everything else falls away; it’s a drive to succeed not because of a financial or career incentive, but just to prove you can.  Most engineers I’ve worked with have some intensity, but the ones who are great tend to have a higher level of it than others.  But take note:  VOLUME DOES NOT EQUAL INTENSITY.  One of the greatest quality engineers I worked with was a very quiet person, but wow, he really knew what he was doing and was fantastic at it.

REQUIREMENT #3:  SENSE OF HUMOR / SARCASM

Being an engineer (automation, quality, or whatever) requires a good sense of humor, and typically a strong sense of sarcasm.  The best engineers I’ve worked with have had at least a good sense of humor, and only a couple have not had a strong sarcastic streak too.  The Wife (mine, not theirs) doesn’t always appreciate the sarcasm, but in my experience it’s the best way to deal with some of the ridiculous things that can happen when you’re trying to cope with different attitudes, sometimes overinflated egos (and I’m not just talking engineers), and troubleshooting systems in an active plant.  In the automation engineering world, sarcasm is often a result of, “You won’t believe what the last moron did who worked on this system”–and then, in the worst instances, you realize the last moron who worked on the system was you.  So let’s include being able to laugh at yourself in this engineering Requirement.  I’ve only seen one person come into engineering who tried to make things all butterflies and rainbows, and she left for a different career only a few years later.  The engineers with the daily sarcastic remarks, the occasional self-deprecating jokes because they realize they’re just as capable of doing wrong as anyone else?  In my experience, those are the great engineers.

REQUIREMENT #4:  FINDING JOY IN FAMILY AND FRIENDS

Surprised by this one?  It surprised me, too, when I was looking at the several people I was thinking of when writing this post.  But when I really looked at those men and women, I realized that they had done things like:

  1. Made sure that they regularly took vacations where they spent time with their spouse and family
  2. Almost every weekend, spent time with family and friends, because that was more important than catching up on a few more emails and tasks
  3. Quit their engineering job because, though they were great at it, it was preventing them from taking care of their family the way they desired
  4. Changed jobs so that they could move to a place where they could see their family more often
  5. Played sports or worked out with their friends, even with many of those friends being people they regularly work with

Even though there were a lot of different ways these people spent time with their family and friends, they all made sure to do it.  It was important to them, and it didn’t stop them at all from being great engineers–instead, it let them view their job as something that was a fun challenge and that they could be passionate about, but not the sole thing that defined them.  Here’s my word of advice on this to others out there, and it’s always your option to take it or leave it:  Don’t let your work define you, because sometimes bad days just happen regardless of what you do, and it doesn’t mean that you or your life are bad.  Sometimes, @!$# happens.

CONCLUSION

These are just the most obvious Requirements that were part of the great engineers I’ve worked with.  There are a few more Requirements that I’ve got in mind, but some of them are more pertinent just to those engineers responsible for programming controllers, apps, and tools in an industrial environment, so I might include them in a later post.

But I said Requirements and Design for this post, right?  I didn’t forget, but I’ve got an out:  No matter what the Requirements are, there are a million different Designs to get there, so the reality is there is no single Design for an engineer, great or otherwise.  After all, even simple Requirements like erasing a chalkboard can be designed in fantastically strange ways.

ONE FINAL POINT:  Marrying a teacher is not a Requirement for being a great engineer, although it’s worked out well for me.

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One thing about being sick:  Writing can take a back seat.  As such, this post is going to be short, but it’s also an important one to lay a foundation for other topics I’d like to write about.  Enjoy!

Depending on where you’re coming from, “engineer” either sounds quite impressive or like a title with “Nerd Alert” flashing above it (or, if you’re a spouse, possibly a test of your patience).  I’m actually OK with the nerd title in addition to the impressive title–after all, nerds are often smart people and, from what I’ve seen, a lot of the gears that keep the world turning are driven by engineers.  Plus, when you’ve got The Knack, you use it.

So how did I drive down the path of being an engineer?  More specifically, how did I choose to be an automation engineer?  The truth is, I didn’t choose it; I kind of fell into it.  I had planned on being a software engineer (which is what my schooling was for), but my co-op (read:  intern) experiences were for Human Machine Interface (HMI) development and code development for industrial systems.  Once you start dealing with HMIs for glass manufacturers and Programmable Logic Controller code for pharmaceutical companies, the label of “automation engineer” just gets slapped on you.

I have to admit that, while this is not the career path I had initially expected, it’s a lot of fun.  I get to not just do graphics and software development, I also get to see the tanks and motors and valves and belts that I’ve developed code for jump into action and make amazing things like cancer drugs or glass.  It’s very rewarding and, most of all, feeds the inner part of me that likes to imagine how things could work, build plans for it that can be both complex and elegant, and then watch those dreams turn into a smooth, well-orchestrated reality that benefits others.

This is why I’m an engineer–because I get to be very detail-oriented in planning to make things happen, and then use those plans to play with really big (and often expensive) toys.  It’s fun, it’s challenging, and this nerd totally loves it.

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