Mt. Pleasant Classical Academy

We returned last night at 11pm from Hammond, IN and the SO Coaches Clinic — great time, we learned allot, had a few too many late nights but I’m really energized for this coming coaching year.
Everyone I spoke to noticed that we’re homeschoolers and the response was quite positive, particularly from the vendors. I did run into one lady, in one class who I thought was out-of-line. As the instructor explained the do’s and don’ts for one event he used past tournament run-ins with coaches for examples. He was quite entertaining and engaging with the class. To one story about a coach who flew into a rage when he learned that his students tower weighed greater then it weighed back at the school; and the rage was directed at the event judge, the lady sitting directly behind me loudly commented:

‘ Oh, he must be a republican’

The class broke into loud laughter. When the instructor spoke about how the tower must be light-weight he shared about the lack of drive some kids had to experiment with different designs and the need to do so—–the child must do this to learn how to build a lightweight but ultra-strong tower. He shared how one kid had the attitude of :

‘I only want to build this thing once, so I’ll make it big and heavy so it won’t fail and last all my years of SO competition’

The child doesn’t have a chance to win with this altitude, but to this story the lady commented

‘the kid must be a republican.

Now, I don’t agree with everything every republican does but I dislike sterotypes even more-so which is why I didn’t reply to her comment, but I so wanted to say:

“No, the kid must just be the result of the public school system’

but I didn’t dare —- the room was filled with PS teachers and I knew that would not be a good image to leave in their minds about HS’ers. But I so wanted to say it.

On the home-front the guys are finishing up installing the siding on the workshop! The garage doors are on, the locks are on, and of course Pat surprised me by having asphalt laid from the old driveway up to the new workshop’s garage doors.

This coming weekend dirt will be delivered on Saturday and the guys will spread it around the building. While they are doing all this I will be in Richmond, Virginia with a few other hs’ers from Delaware attending Susan Wise Bauer’s writing workshops. Next Sunday, provided the rain has not hampered operations on Saturday, we will be landscaping around the garage. Hopefully the weather will cooperate so this work can be completed and then the building will look finished from the outside.