Hello, my name is Kent Hovind. I'm a creation science evangelist. I live in Pensacola, Florida. I was a high school science teacher for 15 years before God called me into full-time evangelism. And I travel and speak on the subject of dinosaurs and creation and evolution all over the country. And I want to be of help in that area. But I'm also concerned about education. Being a teacher and coming from a long line of teachers, it's just been a love of mine teaching and helping people become more efficient at teaching. And there are a number of problems that come up in school situations that sometimes we need help on. My PhD is in education, and I'm deeply concerned about, of course, the lies being told to our kids on evolution and dinosaurs, which is my primary thrust now. But this videotape will be just a miscellaneous collection of ideas that I've gotten through the years from other people that I felt were successful teachers. I would ask them questions about particular problems. What do you do in this situation? And I certainly need to thank my mom, especially, who was a kindergarten teacher for 20 years and retired from that occupation in Illinois, where I was raised. She was just a whiz-bang teacher and really had some great ideas, has file cabinets full of neat ideas, many ideas I obtained from her, and my brother, Ross, who also led me to the Lord. My brother, Ross, has been a teacher now in the public school system, fifth and sixth grade, I believe this is his 24th year now as we make this tape. And my dad was just a tremendous teacher to me. He was an electrical engineer at Caterpillar Tractor Company but really knew how to teach his boys how to do different things. So what I'm going to share with you are just miscellaneous ideas in no particular order to give some ideas to help improve the teaching-learning situation. Ideas for schools that they can use for getting equipment. So many things that frustrate teachers. Have you ever been frustrated because your kids aren't ready on time for school? And the parents are running around all nervous. Hurry, hurry, get in the car. We're going to be late. Well, there's a way to fix that. The students ought to be nervous about being late, not the mom or the teacher. Have you ever had trouble with a kid who every day he seems to need to go back to his locker because he forgot something or because he forgot his book or didn't have his homework ready on time? There's a way to fix that. The problem we have is generally the leadership is doing something wrong. Ninety five percent of discipline problems are the teacher's fault. Only about 5% really can be attributed to the student. If a person really has their class together and organized and ready to go, you can keep a wide variety of age groups occupied and interested for the entire hour. I speak 600 times a year to all sorts of age groups. Sometimes it's four-year-olds and sometimes it's college students and universities. Being fully prepared and over-prepared is really the secret. Most discipline problems are a lack of preparation on the part of the teacher. I think a lot of teachers get frustrated and it's their own fault. I've got some ideas here that may be of help to you that I want to share with you. Number one, if your school has a bell system or a buzzer system to start class, that is amazing tool that you can use to eliminate a lot of problems. I have listened to teachers often as I go to schools many times each week. I'm in school, public schools, private schools. I make a habit of just standing in the hallway listening what happens after the bell rings. The first five seconds is essential. Many teachers are yelling and screaming at their kids. All right, sit down and get quiet. Well, if you're yelling and screaming at your kids, you've already lost control and don't even know it. What I did, somebody gave me the idea and it just worked tremendously. I kept a little notepad on my desk or podium at all times. And since I taught in Christian school, we started class with prayer. When the bell rings, I would say, let's pray. I never said, sit down, get quiet. Come on, be quiet. We're going to pray. Don't do that. Just say, OK, let's pray. And I started praying. If a kid was talking or wasn't in their seat yet, I simply took out a pen and wrote their name down on a piece of paper. Instead of yelling and screaming, I guess I got that from my mom and dad, who just patiently, lovingly, taught us things without the yelling and screaming aspect of it. Just, boys, this is what you're going to do. And I would just sit down, and if Johnny walked in late, I would write Johnny's name down and go start right into the lesson. And within the first three days of the school year, the students learned, Mr. Hogan doesn't give us any warning. He doesn't yell and scream. Sit down and be quiet. He just writes your name down. Then at the end of class, I'll say, OK, students, we're going to be dismissed in a few minutes. You know what your homework is. Johnny, would you see me after class, please? I have a demerit slip for you or detention slip or whatever your punishment system is. But it's so frustrating to me to see the way teachers are unnecessarily not enjoying class. The students are running over them because they haven't learned to put the pressure on the right spot. That student needs to be nervous and worried about getting in class on time. And many students, the students quickly learn which teachers they can be late on and the teacher won't do anything about it. Being consistent with enforcing, hey, this is when class starts. I'm sorry, the bell has rung. This is the way it goes. You may want to have a system where you write the person's name down and then anything else they do that hour or if they're late two or three times, in a semester or in a six-week grading period, then you give them the dissension or demerit. But it needs to be a fair, consistent system where they know, hey, if I'm late twice, I'm going to get this punishment. There should never be yelling or screaming, sit down, get quiet, we're going to pray, or that type of thing. Totally unnecessary. And I think it gives kids a bad taste of what education is and certainly what Christianity is. That's not the way Jesus did it, I'm sure. Just, it's time to start, you start. I do the same when I taught junior church for 17 years with hundreds and hundreds of screaming little bus kids. You don't start off by hollering, oh, get quiet, you boys and girls, shut up, get quiet out there. I just start by singing a song. All right, boys and girls, let's all stand and sing. Here we are, chaos. Start singing a song. 99% of the time, you've got them. I would have two or three workers. I've had as many as 1,000 kids with only five workers helping me. With 1,000 kids out there, you get so many activities planned. that you just go from one to the next, one right after another, and you keep them mesmerized, keep them occupied. And especially in science, you know, you can turn the water into wine, or blow things up, or do all sorts of things, wow, and get their attention. Lots of times I would get a balloon, or a rope, and just play with it, and the kids, about half of the kids are staring at you, what are you going to do with that? I'm not going to do anything with it, it's just to make you stop and stare at me, to keep you quiet, to keep you out of trouble. Distraction, I used that technique I did today in the chapel, I kept playing with the rope. wrapping it around my fingers and pulling it off. It had nothing to do with what I was talking about. But there were eight or ten kids just kind of staring at me as I played with the rope. Something to keep some of them occupied. So just start on time. If a teacher does not start on time, if you are five seconds late, I guarantee it will gradually grow to five minutes by mid-semester. You've got to learn to use those bells. Keeping the pressure on the right spot is what's essential. If you get pulled over to get a ticket by a policeman, The policeman does not say, OK, get out of the car, bend over, grab your ankles, I'm going to give you five swaps. The policeman doesn't say that. He's not under pressure at all. He's calm, cool, collected. He doesn't walk up to the window and scream at you, give me your driver's license. No, he just says, may I see your driver's license, sir? You see, you are under pressure, not him. You are the one that did something wrong, not him. And learning to keep the pressure on the right spot is essential to maintain your sanity if you're going to teach and deal with children. for years and years. You have to know how to keep the pressure on the right spot. And there are some ideas for that. For instance, lost and found. We have a student who is always losing their stuff. What we did at our school, the lost and found box gets huge and stuff that's been lost in there. Any time during the six weeks they could come in and redeem their items for 25 cents. It cost them a quarter if they lost it and we found it. That money went into the special activities account and we used it for a variety of things around the school. Buying equipment, things like that. At the end of the six weeks though, you tend to have a pile of stuff left over. Well, that's the student's problem. He ought to be worried about leaving his coat or his books in lost and found. I've got other things to worry about. I don't want to worry about Johnny's coat in the lost and found. So, about a week before the six weeks was over, we would send out a notice to the parents, we're going to have lost and found auction on Friday after school for 20 minutes. If you feel your students may have lost anything, be sure to come this week and check to see and you can redeem it for 25 cents. If you don't, on Friday at 3 o'clock, everything becomes the property of the school and we are going to auction it off. And so every six weeks we had a lost and found auction and we sold everything in the lost and found box and started over just to prevent it from building up. And it kept the pressure on the students. They would say, oh, you can't sell my sweater. I said, look, it's been the policy for years here at the school. Anything left in lost and found for six weeks becomes the property of the school. I'm sorry, you know, we sent the note home, you should have done that. But the pressure's not on me, the pressure's on the right place. I've got other things to worry about, and the teachers do too. And that's just an example. If a student, always in class, says, oh, Mr. Hovind, can I go to the bathroom? Or can I go back to my locker? Or can I go get some paper? Things that they should have done during break time, but now they want to use class time, my time, to do those things, and it really was their responsibility. I saw in the first few years of my teaching that if I let a student go to the bathroom, there was a pressure on me. I was nervous about, oh, what's he doing out there? I hope he's not bothering other classes. I wish he'd hurry up. Come on, kid, get back here, man. The pressure shouldn't be on me to make that kid hurry. I shouldn't be the least bit nervous about it. He ought to be worried about getting down there, getting done and getting back fast. So somebody gave me the idea to keep a notepad on my desk. If George says, Mr. Holman, can I go to the bathroom? I say, George, you know the policy. Every second you're gone from class is two seconds you spend after class sitting there in your chair. If it takes you 30 seconds to run down to the locker and back, you owe me a minute. If it takes you more than two minutes, since there's only five minutes between class, if you're going to owe me more than two minutes, then you have to make up the time after school you have to commit. And I would write their name down. George says, can I go to the bathroom? I would say, sure. And I write down George and I start my stopwatch. And then I keep teaching my class. If George runs or makes any disturbance or makes a spectacle of himself, running down the hallway, looking in other classrooms, making faces at kids, or slamming the lockers, then it's triple or quadruple the time that he's gone. I tell him, and I let him know up front, this is the way it's going to be all semester, kids. If you have to leave my class for any reason, that's something you should have done during class time, then it's going to be double the time after class you owe me. You should have thought of that ahead of time. That's not my problem. That's your problem. That pressure ought to be on you to remember your books and things like that. Now, if you forget, yes, you may go to your locker, but it's going to cost you. That's what the utility companies do with adults. You pay your bill by such and such a time. If you don't, there's a fee added on or they'll shut it off and re hook you up for another hundred dollars. They're not going to yell and scream at you. They're just going to simply charge you the fee. This is this is the way it works. Here's the punishment. If it's known ahead of time, it's no problem. So, things like that. If a kid is moving the desks, I found some of the kids want to kind of scoot the desks back toward the back wall. So, I put chalk marks on the floor on the carpeting. It wipes up easily. And at the beginning of the week, I would arrange the desks the way I want them and then put a chalk mark on the floor at the front left corner of each desk. And I could quickly tell, Johnny, you've moved your desk. Put it back up to the line, please. And it was no problem. Or something on the ceiling. If you have suspended ceiling tile, you know that row one should start under this light or, you know, get oriented. And you can quickly tell if they're gradually moving the desks on you. And watch for things like that. But the pressure needs to be in the right spot. Very frequently in my classes, as I taught 15 years, I would rearrange the seating just whenever I felt like it. The kids would walk into class one day and I'd say, well, kids, we've got a new seating arrangement. It's on the board. Let's see, George is sitting here now, Kathy's here, and Jane's here. Oh, I like the seat I had last time. Oh, we'll change it again sometime. You may get another one. But I changed probably about every six weeks. Totally reshuffled the class. for several reasons. I was always trying to separate those that were talking or tended to group off together. I always tried to separate those. And psychologically, it let the kids know, Mr. Hovind runs this class. They had no say in it. I picked which seat they sat in. And it was just a subconscious psychological thing of letting them know who's the boss. And teacher ought to just keep reserved. I don't keep that as an idea. Just out of the clear blue, totally rearrange the seating. and put the kids up front, of course, that need to be. If a student forgets his pencil or paper, which is a common problem. Oh, teacher, I forgot a pencil. Can I borrow a pencil? I had a box of pencils that I got that I would sell them for 25 cents, which is a whole lot more than a pencil ought to cost. I didn't want to go into the pencil sales business, so I made it enough where it would, they'd remember it. If they didn't have one in class, you had to either buy one or I would loan them one and they had to spend 10 minutes after school coming in straightening up the room, erasing chalkboards. They had to work for me for 10 minutes. If they didn't have any money, they didn't have a quarter, I would hire them for 10 minutes for using a pencil for that hour or paper or whatever it is. So again, that's a little subtle way and a sweet and kind way to keep the pressure on the student, not on the teacher. Teachers should never worry about a kid having pencils or paper. The student ought to learn to be responsible and take care of those things. I tried to be fair on that, but consistent. If a student is talking in class, Any disturbance in class, again, the notepad, just such a simple idea that somebody gave me, I didn't, very seldom did I ever even have to say, quit talking. If a student was talking, I would just look at them, get out my pencil, I would get quiet, I would stop what I was teaching, and just start writing their name down. Sometimes I wasn't even writing their name down, I was thinking of something else writing it down, but they thought, oh no, his pencil's moving, he's probably writing my name down. And then at the end of class, after the bell rang, When they're headed out the door, I would say, oh, by the way, I need to see George and Pete and Sam. Would you stay after class for a minute? That way I took their time for the discipline instead of the whole class's time. And that served a double purpose, of course, keeping them after class. You know, they'd rather have you correct them during class. So you waste the whole class time and get less taught. But if a student was talking in class, I didn't stop the class unless it got really bad. I would just take out my pen and they soon learned. And I was trying to be very consistent at it. If a student is talking, I would just write down, George, and then go back to the lesson. They knew what was going on, I would look at them, write their name down. Sometimes I'd warn them, George, there's once. If they got to three, there was certain punishments, and I had a variety of punishments. Often I let them choose. I would have, you can either write out 100 sentences, I will not talk in class, and take them home and have your mom and dad sign them and bring them back. I always tried to have parents sign things when the kid got in trouble, had punished for something, and bring it back to school. And that was worse than death, having mom or dad sign it. That was usually plenty right there. So if a student was talking, just quietly write it down. And if the punishment takes place after class, it is much more effective on the rest of the class psychologically. If you yell at a kid in class, they say, oh, big deal. They're just going to yell at me. But if you say as the class is leaving, oh, by the way, George, will you stay here for a minute? I need to see you. The rest of the class is out in the hallway talking. Oh, George is in trouble. And it's just a whole lot more effective psychologically. And it is better for the class and better for the teacher for you to quietly one on one hand out any discipline. George, you were talking in class three times today. I'd like you to write out these sentences or Go to detention for, you know, one hour detention or whatever your punishment is at your school. But get something consistent and something appropriate for the age level. So that was an idea for kids that talk in class or disturb, make noises, anything like that, instead of always a detention. My idea was that they ought to have one or two choices and after they got to a certain number like three in a day or maybe three in a week, keep your pad for a week going, George, remember last Monday you got a mark and now you have two more? Sorry, George, you owe me 100 sentences or whatever your punishment is. So that was good. If the homework is not done or is poorly done, again, I would have a notepad. George, you don't have the homework done? Okay, George. And I tried to constantly contact parents. First day of school, I would get a list of all my students and all of their phone numbers and all of the work phone numbers for mom or dad or both at work. And the kids knew Mr. Hovind has these phone numbers. And during lunch or during break time or after school or in the evenings, I would call the parents. You only have to do it once or twice per kid, and it stops the problem. Especially in a Christian school, the parents are paying the bill. Call them and let them know. My three kids are in Christian school, and when I get a call from the teacher, they know they have had it. It's big trouble at home. And you need to be consistent and support the teachers on that. The parents do, of course. But if a student If a dad gets a phone call, especially if dad is called at work, you leave a message, Mr. George, would you please call Mr. Hoven? And then say, Mr. George, look, I'm having a little trouble with your son here. He's been talking in class the last couple of days and I've warned him he's written sentences, but he's not getting the message. Would you talk to George at home, please? It's always, yes, sir. Mr. Hoven, I will take care of it. No problem. And the next day, George is a new boy. I'm not sure exactly what happens when he gets home. But I've never seen an example where there wasn't a tremendous attitude change when dad or mom found out directly from the teacher when you had to call. That's the best ally a teacher has is the parents. The students belong to the parents anyway, not to the teacher. So keep the parents constantly informed of progress or lack of progress or problems. Frequently with homework or with lost and found, I shouldn't say frequently, occasionally I would have what I call a grace and mercy situation. You see, grace and mercy are different sides of the same coin. It's something that God does for us. Mercy is where you don't get what you deserve. For instance, we deserve to go to hell. In God's mercy, God says, OK, I will not let you. You do not go to hell. You don't have to go to hell. Oh, praise the Lord. That's wonderful. That's God's mercy. But then God goes another step way beyond that. It's called the grace of God. Grace is where you do get what you don't deserve. God says, not only son, do you not go to hell? I'm going to take you to heaven. So why? My mercy, my grace, I mean, I'm sorry, my grace. See, mercy is where you don't get what you legally deserve. And grace is where you do get what you don't deserve. Sometimes I would have a kid who's causing trouble. Let's say we'll take George, for instance, here. George has gotten a number of demerits, a number of detentions from me. He's had his dad called. George has been in trouble. But I know George really Kind of his scatterbrain. He's not very tightly put together. Once in a while, out of the clear blue, I would say, George, look, you're talking again or your homework's not in, George. You know the punishment, George, when your homework's not in. But George, today I want to show you mercy. I am not going to give you the punishments. Forget about it. It's over with. Instead, George, here's 50 cents or a dollar. Go to the cafeteria, buy yourself a Coke and bring it back to class. You can drink it right here. Why? Grace. See, grace is when you get something totally undeserved. George doesn't deserve to be able to drink a Coke in class. Are you kidding? He deserves to be in trouble. And he knows it. And everybody else knows it. And it's a great way to illustrate not only the mercy of God, but the grace of God way beyond mercy. George, you've been talking. That's enough. George, I'll tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to give you a Snickers candy bar. Now, you don't do that very often, maybe once a year, but it will leave an impression on George's mind that he will never forget. So the grace and mercy was an idea that somebody gave me, and I've used it many times. I've got a few more thoughts here organized. As far as homework and testing, let me grab the board here and show you some ideas that we used for homework passing out, or for letting kids know what homework was due and when. I always, on my chalkboard, in the corner of the room, in one of my chalkboards, or sometimes on a separate small chalkboard, I would have blocked off with permanent lines, like a white magic marker, or a white crayon, or black magic marker even, if you have a small board that you can sacrifice just for this purpose. I would draw a grid on there like this, and it would have my classes that I taught. First hour biology, second hour life science, chemistry, physics, whatever you're teaching, math, doesn't matter. Each hour of the day, first hour, second hour, third hour, fourth hour, across the top were the days of the week. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and then a future column. At the beginning of the week, on Monday, when the kid walks into class, the biology students know, hey, on Monday, We're going to read page 205 to page 220, and we're supposed to do questions 1 through 10. That's what's due on Monday. So they would have known that, of course, on the Friday before, actually the whole week before, because as the days are gone, I erase them and put in, I try to stay a full week ahead of time on the homework. They also know as far as future, what's coming up. This eliminates many problems. The students can never say, well, you didn't tell us that was due. Wait a minute. It's been on the board all week. If your homework is always assigned a week ahead of time, now of course you have to make alterations. If something happens and you have to skip a day, you may have to say, okay kids, you know we were supposed to read this for tomorrow, but because of the special chapel or whatever, we're going to move that to Thursday and shift everything up a day. You couldn't possibly get six weeks ahead and keep accurate with it. What this is, basically, is an open book lesson plan. The kids know what's coming for a whole week. No surprises. You're not hiding anything from them. They can't say, I didn't know I was supposed to do that. It's been there all along. And they got so sick of hearing that they would say, oh, never mind. It's on the board, isn't it? I just know sometimes they call me at home. So what's the homework for tomorrow? I said, oh, I have no idea. It's on the board. And they soon learn, hey, don't call him at home. He doesn't know what to do tomorrow. He leaves it on the board. It's open lesson plan, everybody. And it stopped all the phone calls at home for me. I got two or three a year, and then they learn, hey, it's useless. Don't call him at home. He won't tell you what to do. Because I honestly didn't know. I mean, sometimes I may know, but I wouldn't tell him. I'd say, look, I'm sorry. It's been on the board all week. You'd have to look at the board. Come in early and look at my board and see what to do. But it stopped that problem of kids calling me at home. It was just always a sign on the board a week ahead of time. And I encouraged kids. Now, people argue about this. Teachers argue. But because I was teaching junior high and high school, maybe it's a little different. I encourage kids to use their time wisely or try to. If you're done with Monday's homework, start on Tuesdays. You can work as far ahead as you want. I've heard teachers say, oh, don't ever let the kids work ahead and they punish them for working ahead. I think you better think that one through one more time. You are discouraging productivity. If a student wants to work ahead in my biology class, so that he can use any extra spare minutes for the history test coming up. Hey, that's fine with me. I mean, every adult does the same thing. When you get behind in one area, you don't get the grass mowed and you don't get the car washed or waxed or the oil changed. I mean, you learn to use the seconds wisely if you have a busy life schedule. And the busier you get, the more you get done in a day's time and the more you have to use every second wisely. So the idea of working ahead to me is is obviously the way it ought to be done. If I see a student working on something in my class, if I say, OK, students, you have 10 minutes till the bell rings, you can use these last 10 minutes for study time. During that 10 minutes, I would walk up and down the aisles, check each kid, see what he's doing. If he's working on history instead of my science, I would say, let me see your science, please. I want to make sure your homework's done. If the homework was done, then I allowed him to use my class time for other subjects. That's the way I did it. I thought that's perfectly fine. Now, I wouldn't let him do it if my homework wasn't done. This is science class. You do my homework first. Now, if that teaches the kids to look ahead down the road a few days, which kids desperately need help looking down the road and learning to plan ahead, if they knew they've got a big project coming up on Friday, and here it is Tuesday, and the student is sitting there in my biology class, and we've gone through all of our stuff we're learning that hour, we've got five minutes left. He says, man, I better study for that English exam next Friday or Thursday. Well, if his homework is done, He can work ahead in my class so that he would have those five minutes that I give at the end of each class for study, he would have that for English or math or history or some other subject. I felt that was perfectly fine and actually encouraged them to work ahead if their homework was done. Something else I did, if the homework was done for that class and if they were on A or B honor roll, I had some special things I would let them do. Very seldom, but once in a while, I would say, okay kids, we have five minutes of study time. If your homework is completely done for tomorrow, come up and see me and you can be dismissed early. I didn't do that often and it was only for certain students and if they ever abused the privilege, I wouldn't give it to them again. If I let a student out Even two minutes, even ten seconds early. Letting a student out of class ten seconds early, psychologically, is a tremendous reward for them. They get their books and get to walk out of class early and everybody else is looking at them and they're cool stuff, man. They get out early. And the rest of the kids are, how did he get that? He did his work. Well, I better get doing all my work. So that was, again, something to encourage productivity. You see, under the communist system, productivity is discouraged. because you're not going to reap the rewards of your labors. And I'm afraid many teachers stifle productivity in their students by not rewarding ideas when they say, hey, I'm going to work ahead. I'm going to do my best. And I think scripturally it's a whole lot closer to the truth, this idea of letting them work ahead and be rewarded accordingly for their deeds. So I would give them time out of class if they had everything done ahead of time and homework. Another idea, a thing that I used, I got from somebody, I forget where, but every six weeks I would drop the lowest grade in the gradebook. No questions asked, the lowest grade is crossed out. This did a number of interesting things psychologically. The student knew he could have a bad day and it wouldn't affect him. Now my system of grading was a little different. Every homework and every quiz counted one time. Count it equally, that's just the way I did it. And I had a quiz almost every day. It would sometimes be just a real quick quiz, we'll get into that in a few minutes, but the lowest grade was always dropped. If I have a minor test, a weekly test, that would count two times or three times in the gradebook. If it was a major test, it may count five times. And I would tell the students, I fill out the lowest grade each six weeks, no questions asked. So if a student comes in, Mr. Hogan, I didn't get my homework done. Could I have an extra day? I would say, hey, don't worry about it. I fill out the lowest grade. But if they do that every week, of course, they're only going to get one thrown out and it quickly puts the pressure back on them. So the idea of filling out the lowest grade, no questions asked, I think was great. Everybody has a bad day. And I think if most teachers or adults had to live under the system they make the students live under, they would crack up and go nuts. Most adults or parents couldn't handle that kind of intolerance that many teachers show their students. Give them a break, man. Every six weeks, throw out the lowest grade. Now, only one. And if it's a test grade and counts five times, only one of them gets counted off. If they got a zero on a test, well, they still got four zeros instead of five or something like that. But dropping the lowest grade. Another idea that I did is I tried to very frequently give bonus points on quizzes and tests. so that the students could accumulate extra points. I didn't try to keep track of points as far as, you know, this test is worth 18 points and this quiz is worth 2 points. I made everything based on a 100 scale and averaged them when I was done. That's simpler for me to take care of. So I would give bonus questions. If we were supposed to read chapter 16 in biology, and we've been studying it that week, there are always some things in the text that are interesting to know but are not essential and you're not going to put them on the test. So, I would try to pick out some of those facts to be bonus questions. We would not review this when we went through what's going to be on the test. We wouldn't review those particular items, but it's something they would have picked up had they read the chapter carefully. And so, the bonus question would be worth five extra points. Therefore, the test is worth, they could get 105 on the test or quiz. And I would write down 105 in the grade book. That way, if a student did real well all six weeks, And he got all the bonus questions also. He may have enough bonus points that he could get two zeros and still get an A or a 100 in my class. He could simply say, hey, I don't want to do my homework tonight. I'm going to take the zero. I've got enough bonus points. He says, oh, but that's terrible. Well, you stop and think that through for a while before you say that's terrible. I think that's a great reward to encourage productivity and encourage students to go the extra mile. And you can ask kids that took classes of mine. They remember things 20 years later that they learned. The object is to teach them. That's the object. You want them to learn the material. So we tried to do different things to do that. Throwing out the lowest one allowed them to skip a homework assignment if they had enough bonus points or they were going to throw out the lowest grade and they consistently kept the other grades up. Let's see, we talked about the grading system. Another advantage of always the kids know what their grade is and you know how many times it counts. I say students, this test counts three times. I encourage them in the front of their book to write down every grade they got. And they could always average it up. They never had to ask me, what's my grade so far? How am I doing in this class? I'd say, you ought to know. You got them written down. You could average it up whenever you want. The kids always knew what grade to expect. They had it themselves. It eliminated all those questions of how am I doing this six weeks? I would say, well, you take a look at your list. Keep in mind I'm going to fill out the lowest grade and average it up yourself. And they soon learned I'm not going to answer that question, kid. If you don't keep track of it yourself, don't come ask me, because I wouldn't. I told them at the beginning, I won't answer questions, how are you doing this six weeks? I won't stop in the middle and average your grade for you. I've got plenty of other things to do. You keep track of it if you want to know. And most of them did, and it worked out really well. If they said, but my homework's in my locker. Can I go back to my locker and get it? Or it's not quite done yet, or can I turn it in later today? I always said, no problem, fine. But I'm going to write down in pencil, I'm going to write down a zero in the gradebook. It's not here. I am not going to worry about it again. As far as I'm concerned, you got a zero. If you don't like that zero, if you turn it in later today, or if you want to go back to your locker and get it, if it's turned in today, even if it's one minute late because you had to go back to your locker and get it, I will take it, but it's 10 points off. If you turn it in tomorrow, it's 20 points off. If you turn it in the next day, it's 30 points off. I take off 10 points each day until it's not worth turning it in eventually. You remember to turn it in. I have already forgotten about it. It's off my mind. It doesn't bother me at all. You have a zero on this homework assignment. The pressure is on you. The pressure is not on me. I enjoy life. We're going to have a wonderful time. I'm going to teach this class, and I'm never going to worry about that homework assignment. You have a zero for it, but you're welcome to turn it in late if you'd like. But you remember it, not me. Again, keeping the pressure where it belongs so the teacher doesn't get old before her time or his time. Calculators is another interesting one. Since I taught math and science, people argue about this one, too, and I just have thought about it and thought about it and seen the results, trying it both ways. I am convinced that calculators ought to be mandatory equipment from seventh grade on. You say, well, they won't learn to multiply and divide. Look, probably none of you know how to fix a wagon wheel. There are probably very few people that teach in school that know how to hitch a team of horses to a wagon. It's obsolete information. You don't need to know that. There probably aren't very many people that can extract the cube root of a number longhand. Calculators and computers do that for us. It's unnecessary. It's a waste of time. And I see many people with high school students and junior high, seventh, eighth grade, making their kids work out all of the problems longhand. I mean, multiplication, subtraction, division. I say, come on, give the kid a calculator. But in first grade, second grade, third grade, fourth grade, you need to learn how to multiply, divide, add, subtract, keep your column straight. That's true. OK, now you've learned it. Now go on to something new. Now it's time to learn algebra, geometry, trig. And just I have always felt that calculators should be required from a certain age on. You don't need to waste their time multiplying or dividing numbers out longhand. Occasionally you may want to have a refresher course and have a test and make sure they still remember like once a year, but for the bulk of the year, let the kid use the calculator. That's just been my philosophy. There's no sense making them do things the hard way. It's obsolete. I think we're We're dating ourselves, and the Amish have gone from the buggies to, OK, you can get a car, but it's got to be black and no chrome. That's what we're doing with the calculators. I mean, come on. It doesn't matter. Get one and let the kids use it. Quizzes. I mentioned earlier that I try to give a quiz every day. There's a reason for that. I want to make sure the students are paying attention. Lots of times, my quizzes would be one question. OK, boys and girls, take out a piece of paper, put your name at the top, and put today's date. Oh, we're having a quiz? Yep, we're having a quiz. Oh, no, I didn't study. Okay, no problem. Question number one. Have you read the homework for today? Yes or no? All right. Pass your papers in, please. And go on with the lesson. One question quiz. You get a hundred or you get a zero. Oftentimes, at the end of the class period, I would tell the students, okay, kids, today we're going to discuss page 202 through 207, and we're going to have a quiz at the end of the hour today. And here's what we're going to be talking about. And that way, during the class time, they're paying close attention. And I would tell them what's on the quiz. I said, kids, look, I've got five questions. You should have read this for homework. We're going to review it. For instance, the characteristics of a mammal. List three of the characteristics of a mammal. That's going to be a quiz question I'm going to ask you in about 45 minutes. And now let's discuss that. What are the characteristics of a mammal? And the kids would discuss it. And they're all thinking, I got to know this. OK. And they concentrate better. And I despise trick questions. I tried to make all of my questions just as obvious, and you either know it or you don't know it. If I said, I'm going to ask you what are the characteristics of a mammal, list three of them, at the end of the class we would have a quiz, five questions maybe, and that would be the question. I told them it was going to be, and it was. But then I might say, now for bonus, list some of the other characteristics that are mentioned in the book, and you can get four-point bonus for each one you can name. And that made really those that studied harder got rewarded. They earned some bonus points. But by doing a quiz almost every day, you get an advantage of keeping their attention. You also have the advantage of many, many grades, and it dilutes down any bad grades they get. If you've got 30 grades in a grading period, a zero doesn't affect that very much. If you've only got five grades, a zero affects it dramatically. So the advantage of lots of little grades is really helping the student realize, hey, it's only one bad grade. I blew it this time. I didn't get my homework. I mean, kids are awful busy these days, and you need to be tolerant of that. So between throwing out the lowest grade and having lots of grades where they're kind of diluted down a little bit and allowing bonus points, the pressure was not on the students so much. They knew, hey, if you pay attention and listen to Mr. Hovind's class, you can get an A in there. All you got to do is just pay attention. It's not hard and no trick questions, but quizzes and lots of questions. I did that. Many times, I would give a quiz, and then I would say, OK. After we take five questions, we would exchange them and grade the quiz in class. A lot of times I would do that. So here we've gone over the material in class. They took a quiz on it. They heard the material again, the three characteristics of a mammal. And then we gave the answers as we graded it. I would say, OK, now pass these quizzes in, please. And they would pass them all in. And I would say, now, we have seven minutes left. Take out another piece of paper, please. And I would give them the exact same quiz again in the same hour. Same five questions, nothing changed. Number one, list the characteristics of a mammal. I would tell the students, if you got a 100 or a 90 or an above on this first quiz, you don't need to take the second quiz. If you got less than a 90 or less than an 80 or some number, you take this quiz again. One time I gave the same five question quiz to a class of seventh graders. four times in the same hour, exactly same quiz. I had two kids flunked it every time. They flunked it with about a 10 the first time, and then their grade came up to a 20 and to a 30, and by the fourth time, they were just shocked. They said, man, I should have been paying attention. I've heard this. And it just dramatically illustrated to them, pay attention. That's all there is to it, and you can get all this stuff. And then I would count the highest of their quiz grades for the score. for testing. These are some ideas that I've gleaned through the years that are often helpful to people. And this, again, may sound radical. These are just ideas. You can take them or leave them if you don't like them. Don't use them. But these are some that I would do occasionally on tests, especially if it was kind of a major test. I would often tell the students two days before the test, we're going to have a test on Friday. On Wednesday, I would say, OK, everybody clear your desk. No pencils, no paper, everything on the floor, nothing on your desk. And then I would walk around and pass out the test. And my tests were pretty thorough. There were lots of questions. I tried to have lots of questions. And I made it where it was quick to take the test. I don't like essay necessarily. They're harder to grade and a lot of variables in there. So I avoided those as much as possible. But I would actually pass out the test. I would say now students, you're not allowed to take any notes. Don't write anything down. You cannot even have a pencil or pen in your hand or on your desk. But let's go over the test. Notice question number one. What are the three characteristics of a mammal? Susan, what do you think they are? And we would discuss the test on Wednesday, and this is the very same test we're going to see again on Friday. So again, there's no surprises. There may be lots of material to study for, and it may be a hard test in that there's a lot to learn, but it's not a hard test in that you don't know what's coming, because you know what's coming, you've already seen it. And we would actually go through the entire test. You say, well, you're studying for the test. Check the kids 10 years later and see what they remember under my system and see what they remember under other systems. You'll find students retain the information the rest of their life frequently. You can see them years later and say, oh, I remember that. You could give them the same test five years later and they still pass it. Not because they studied for the test, but because they really honestly learned the material. It went into their brain, which was the idea to begin with. During that two-day before time when we're going over the questions, that's a good time to eliminate unfair questions or to find mistakes. The student says, hey, Mr. Hovind, look at number 17. You got a mistake on that one. I say, oh, hey, you're right. Everybody can correct number 17 right now. Or I would correct it on my copy, and then when we took the test, I would say, now, don't forget number 17 has a mistake. Be sure to change that. And it made it overly fair where the students had all seen, they knew what to expect, they knew it was coming, even final exams. I did that from time to time. Pass out the final two or three days before the test, go over it, let them look at it, discuss it, ask any questions they want about it. I would collect the test back and then we'd go on with our lesson. So now you've seen, you know what's coming, you know what to study for. I suggest you study for it. And the students really seem to enjoy that. It took some of the pressure off of them because again, they've got enough pressure. Another idea, a different subject, is they have a special grading system. for special students that have a particular problem. We had a girl in California in our school, first day, actually before school started, her parents came to me and said, Mr. Hovind, our daughter is 19 and she's still a senior. She's had a hard time in school. She just doesn't catch on as quickly as other students and she really, she panics, she tightens up because of the pressure and her brain goes to jelly when she's under pressure. We're worried she's not even going to graduate this year. She should have graduated last year or two years ago, and she's already behind. She's failed several times. What can we do? And she was there in the room, and I said, well, how about if we do this? I will promise you, if she will do her best, she'll pass my class. If she's only capable of getting a 60, then for her, a 60 is an A. I'm going to give a special grading scale just for her in my class. Now, don't tell anybody else about this. Since our school cannot really have a special ed department, we're going to have a special grading scale just for your daughter here. And all I've got to ask you is that if I feel she is working up to her potential, she's going to get an A. Her eyes lit up and said, Are you serious? I said, Yep. Don't worry about it. You do your best. If you can only get 50% of what we cover, then 50 is an A for you. It took all the pressure off of that girl. I never had to use that special grading scale one time all year. Because the pressure was gone, she was relaxed. Hey, I can handle this now. And that's really what she needed. She's now at Bible College studying to serve the Lord. And I saw her a couple of weeks ago when I spoke at that college and it was great. She's doing wonderful. But some special students need special help. Now, some schools have a vocational diploma, a separate diploma, where if a student can't meet, they just can't make it. They can't get algebra, geometry, and trig. You're never going to teach it to them. So you have a certain number of courses they take, and you have a vocational diploma, and it protects the school's reputation. On their transcript it says, Joe Blow, completed high school, but is not recommended for college. If a college chooses to take him, that's fine, but it's all spelled out. Hey, this is not the normal product we turn out. This kid's not recommended for college. He didn't really meet our high school standards. But there's no sense keeping a kid until he's 25 to make him graduate. Failing him year after year after year. Given a load they can handle, to whom much is required, a given of him shall much be required. And some people God hasn't given as much to. So a special grading system really helps. You may want to have a FTA, Future Teachers of America. where some of your brighter students can be used during class time to help some of these students that aren't catching on as quickly. Say, look, John, you caught on to this pretty quickly. Would you go over and help Mary for the next few minutes and help her? Or maybe you want to keep same sex, boys with boys and girls with girls. And you've got to watch that. It'll get out of hand. But many times that is excellent training for the student who's helping the other student. And they may end up being a teacher someday when they realize how fun it is to help somebody learn something. So using other students to help slower students is a great, great tool. Many teachers, I think, are jealous of their authority, and they don't want anybody else teaching those kids but me. Well, it's time to grow up. Other people can teach them things also. I tried for years in my teaching to minimize homework. I had lots of work, and my kids worked hard in my classes, but my homework was always on the board a week ahead of time. And I tried desperately to see to it that they could get nearly all of my work done in class. I talk fast and we would study hard and work hard for the hour and give them the last five minutes. And if there are 10 questions, I have found most students don't get started. That's their problem. Getting started is half the job. I would say, OK, students, we have five minutes left. Take out a piece of paper. You've got these 20 questions to do tomorrow. In class, we're going to go ahead and do question one, two, three and four. And we would get one, two, three and four done in class before they walk out the door. Now, psychologically, there's a relief that kids think, hey, I've already started. It wasn't that hard. Let's finish. While we're very slowly doing those four questions, the brighter kids, of course, are reading ahead and they've already answered all 20 of them and have no homework that night. But getting them started was over half the job in many cases. That's the way it is with me. You know, if you're going to wax the car, get started. Do one fender. If you only got 10 minutes, you don't have time to do the whole car, well, do part of it. And then you'll say, oh, well, I've already started. Now it's time I can finish it. So doing homework in class, minimizing homework was to me a great way to maximize family time. I would think the students ought to go home and spend time with mom and dad, have family time, not to have 10 hours of homework. I've always hated, hated that. If you do your work in class, you can cover the material quickly enough. During class time, If I gave them five minutes at the end of class to study, I would walk around the room and see what they're doing. If a student is working rapidly and they're working on the questions and John's already up to question number 10, I would say, wow, John, here, and I put my initials at the top of his paper, KH. The next day when we graded the questions or passed them in and collected them or however you did it, if I saw a KH on there that I signed, he got five points bonus because he was using his time wisely. And that encouraged them to use those last three or four or five minutes of class wisely. Students need to learn it's the minutes that they waste that end up being homework assignments not done and major things not done. If you learn to use every second wisely, you can get everything done in this life and without having to be nervous about it. So a lot of times I would just walk around nonchalantly and put my initials at the top and that was worth five points or that might be worth early dismissal. I would say, OK, the bell rings in 30 seconds. All those that have my initials at the top of their page are dismissed. Didn't cost me a thing. It got them out of there. They're the smart students anyway. And it left me the extra time with the students that really need the help. So putting that at the top. Let's see, make sure I've covered everything here. Equipment. School equipment. I want to cover this kind of rapidly here for sake of time. I have this chart that I just made yesterday here at the school, an idea you may or may not want to use at your school. For PE, many smaller schools have a hard time with PE equipment, and they just don't have everything they should have. And they feel, especially small Christian schools, feel inferior. They've only got 30 or 40 or 50 kids. And how do you compete with other schools? You get slaughtered in basketball, slaughtered in everything. So they feel, hey, there's no hope. And then they get this attitude of, well, I'm going to this rinky-dink school and it's no big deal. By making a big chart, this is just four pieces of poster board. And the laminator caught a piece for me, I'm sorry for that. I've done it a number of times at schools where you make a big board and I put the school record. And you can put the name of the school on there, whatever the name of your school is. This is the school record. And this was just for athletics. It could be done for a number of subjects, academics also, I'm sure. Down the side are three different categories. Events dealing with speed, strength, and coordination. I have 14 different events here. 50-yard dash, 100-yard dash, 220, 440, shuttle run, where you run 40 feet four times. You go pick up your racer, come back, run, pick up the other racer, come back, the shuttle run. This was done for time. These different events, push-ups, pull-ups, etc., and I will get a small version of this and fold it up and stick it in with this videotape so that everyone who gets this tape will have these events in the order that we've done it at many schools. Across the top are two categories, girls and boys. Each of those is divided up into four groups, 5 to 8 year old, 9 to 11 year old, let me get on the other side here a little bit, 12 to 14 year old, and 15 and up is the way we did it. the student can set the school record in any of those events that they choose. For instance, during recess or PE or kindergarten time or whatever, you can say, okay, boys and girls, today we're going to set the 50 yard dash record. And they would, the five year olds, if you have five year olds, you set up a 50 yard dash marked off on your parking lot someplace and you get a stopwatch and you can time the kids and learn to do it rapidly where you can run a herd of kids through in a hurry by getting four people timing and four people running. Say, okay, now, George, you're going to time this kid, and you're going to time this one, and you time this one. And you can get the whole class to do much more rapidly that way. But the student with, of course, the best score in that age group gets his name on the school record chart. This is laminated, this poor piece of the poster board. You write it on there with the erasable marker, and then if a student breaks the record, you erase it off and put it on again. Or if you have a white poster board, you can get the white label material, stick it over, and use a regular magic marker right on there and then keep peeling off the label and sticking on a new one when they break the record. What this does for the students, it gives them a sense of pride and accomplishment. Hey, I've got the school record. Which is not necessarily wicked or bad or evil, I don't think. Nothing wrong with saying, hey, I've got the record. And by giving the kids more exercise, it encourages competition, which is, of course, a dirty word today in the communist slanted society that we have. Oh, every kid should be no competition. Make them all succeed. I disagree. I think those that work should eat and those that don't work should not eat. That's the spiritual method, so competition is good. But giving them a chance for recognition. Also, if a student exercises and competes and works in sports or anything, he also tends to work harder in other areas of life. You tend to overcome the laziness. A student that's getting lots of exercise is more alert in class. And they're less hyperactive If during recess, they've been out there doing the jump rope or one of these categories, trying to break the record. We kept a smaller version of this, which I'll include in with the tape, which only has four columns. The four columns are first quarter, second quarter, third quarter, fourth quarter, and maybe a fifth column for the personal best ever of that student. And then we made just a sheet of paper where the same events in the same order were in a notebook, one for each student. And the PE teacher would say, OK, today we're going to run are going to do push-ups. And on each student, you keep track during the first quarter, how many push-ups can George do? And if there is no chance of George ever getting the school record, you can say, next quarter, you can say, hey George, look, last quarter you did six push-ups, come on, go for seven this time. Now George is competing against himself, trying to improve what God has given him, and that's the Farris Competition. Luke 2.52 says, Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and in favor with man. Constantly growing. All of us need to set goals and improve and stay in shape physically and stay in shape mentally. Read. Stay alert. Stay in shape spiritually. Win souls. Read your Bible. Stay in shape socially. Meet new people. Make new friends. Growing and gaining. So having this system is very simple. It doesn't have to be your whole PE class. It's just a supplement to that. During recess, Rainy days, you can have indoor events, for instance, sit-ups. Some of these events have a little asterisk by it, which means they're only allowed one minute. The time shoot, how many baskets can you make in one minute with a basketball? We let the younger kids, five to eight, use a small ball for all the basketball events, and the older kids had to use a regular-sized basketball. But these different events, like flexed arm hangs, sit-ups... Jump rope is the one that went crazy at several schools I've done. We just bought eight or ten jump ropes. And you get one minute, see how many times you can skip rope. Well, if you get the class divided up in two groups where one group jumps and the other group, everybody gets a partner and they count. You can have half of the class jump and the other half count and then swap. And you can do your whole class in two or three minutes. Have a class secretary write down the scores. Say, OK, come by and tell John your score. And they walk by and say, John, I'm Sam. I got 85 this time. And you can go on to something else. But the students, once they get their name up here, Everybody competes to try to get their name off the board. We said if they age out, they grow out of a category, that record stays until somebody else comes along and beats it. Just because he goes from 8 to 9 years old doesn't mean you erase his record. No, it stays there permanently unless somebody comes along and beats it. Let's see, a couple more things to cover here. Other equipment, besides the record chart, which really helps with fitness and helping kids get interested in improving themselves. It's spilled over into academic areas and into spiritual areas. A student says, hey, I read the Bible once last year, I'm going to try to read it one and a half times this year. And it's just that idea of constantly trying to improve what God has given you. That's the Bible way. He gave some five talents, some ten talents, some only one talent. But whatever he gives you, use it and build on it and grow with it. A few more ideas here and we'll quit. Playground equipment. When I went to Fairfield, California to be the principal out there, the playground, they had 100 students in the school, 120, I guess, 115 or 120 students. They had one swing set with four swings on it and kids waiting in line to swing. I prayed and I said, Lord, we need some playground equipment. Also, we needed a bike rack. One of the teachers said, man, the bikes are on the sidewalk, you know, we got to get some bike rack to put the bikes in. So in teacher's meeting one day, we prayed and said, Lord, would you please supply us some equipment? It's so expensive. Within a week, I was driving along and I spotted a huge pile of playground equipment at the corporation yard where they take care of the parks and recreation. I went in and I snuck on the door and I found out who was in charge and I said, Hey, what's this big pile of old equipment you've got out here in the back? He said, Oh, it's either something's broken on it. So we took it out of the park. Or some kid got hurt on it someplace in some other city and so all the parks have taken that piece out. Or we just don't have room for it. There were two whole parks in there. They had put a new road across town and eliminated the whole park and just piled the equipment up. I said, sir, is there any way I could buy that stuff off you? He said, no, I'm sorry, son. I'm sorry, sir. We can't sell it. It's playground equipment and we're liable. If somebody gets hurt on it, we'll be sued. I said, well, if that's the problem, could I buy it for scrap metal? That way you're not selling me playground equipment. He said, hey, that's a good idea. Let me talk to the boss about that. That guy called me about a week later. He said, Mr. Hogan, do you still want this playground equipment? I said, yes, sir. He said, we've decided we'll sell it to you on a couple conditions. Number one, you got to understand it is scrap metal. I said, OK. You're not selling me playground equipment. You're selling me scrap metal. Is that right? He said, that's right. He said, number two, you have to take all of it, whether you want it or not. We want that area cleaned out. Take the whole mountain. I said, it's a deal. How much do you want for it? He said, how's $175 sound? I said, sold. And so we got the money from the activities account, the pop machine money and stuff like that and got $175, went and got that equipment, hauled it over truckload after truckload after truckload and began putting it together. In that pile of equipment was a great big circular fiberglass slide. $2,500 fiberglass slide was in there. There were three or four swing sets in there. There were five bike racks. We'd been praying for a bike rack. We ended up with five bike racks. There were two other slides, one with humps in it, one regular slide. We're going to put a videotape of the playground that I built in California at the end of this tape, and you can just see some of the equipment that we got. We put up all the equipment we wanted. We had five times more than we possibly needed for our school. I mean, it was an unbelievable playground. Then we got a book on playground equipment and found the value of each piece. I hired a welder to come fix the things that needed welded. And I hired a body man who went to our church, his kids went to our school. He came in fiberglass, the circular slide, the places that were bad, fixed it and painted it. We went to automotive shops where they paint cars, and I said, hey, do you have any paint cans left over? Just a little bit of paint left that's kind of sitting around. They all said, oh yeah, we got all kinds. Here's an inch of paint in the bottom of this can, and here's two inches in this one. Not enough to do a car, so it's really useless to us. We got all sorts of paint given to us for free. But it was every color you can imagine. So I hired some people. We had an account at our church where if somebody came and said, Hey, I'm going across town. I got my grandma's dying. I got to, you know, give me 20 bucks. You know, the beggars come around always looking for money at churches. We had an account where anybody who came, we wouldn't ever give them money, but we'd give them a job for five bucks an hour. And I had those people paint the playground equipment for me. And when they ran out of a color, we'd stop, make a straight line, and start with a new color. So the swing set might have an orange leg, and a blue leg, and a green leg, and you just never knew. It was wild colors. Little mini merry-go-round in there. After we had everything we wanted set up, we fixed the other equipment also, and set it up. And I called other schools, other Christian schools, gave them first choice at it, and we looked up the value of the equipment in the book, and if a bike rack cost $120, which is about what they cost back then, I would sell it to the other Christian school for $25 or $30. Then, after the Christian school had taken what they wanted, I called a lot of the public schools and said, look, we've got some refurbished equipment. If you'd like to come look at it, come take a look and give us two-thirds of book value. From half to two-thirds. We made over $4,000 on that playground equipment. I bought the file for $175. That $4,000 we took to pay the welder and to pay the expenses, we put six inches of pea gravel in the playground, huge area playground, so if the kids fall off they don't get hurt landing in pea gravel. And it's not big enough like big rocks to throw at somebody and it's not sawdust or sand to get stuck in your shoes. Pea gravel's about right. And we had just an unbelievable playground. Then we built a $1,000 gazebo in the middle so the teachers can sit there and gossip, I mean talk, and still watch their kid during recess. And people came from miles around to see that fabulous playground that we got paid $4,000 for making. Got all the equipment for free, basically. It was tremendous that the Lord blessed there. So you may want to look around. A lot of corporation yards have playground equipment sitting around they'd love to get rid of, but they don't know what to do with it. Something's broken on it and nobody will fix it. The little spring-loaded animals with the springs on them. You can go to a junkyard and get a car spring, get the right size, and fix those things for free. Or get a spring for $2 or $3. Just use your imagination. So the playground was a real blessing. Carpeting for a school was always a problem. It's just so expensive in a small Christian school. You have that problem. How do we afford carpet? When I built a school in Pekin, Illinois, my hometown, I started the school there and developed the whole thing. I went to different businesses that sold carpet. And I said, do you have any discontinued carpet samples that you can donate to our school or sell? And I got enough carpet, I believe we had 200 yards, square yards, of carpet samples all together donated. Different places would give us a stack or so many carpet samples. We did the whole floor of the school with carpet samples. Kid would say, I don't like the color of this. Well, move over six inches and stand on a different one because it was wild colors. We'd take a big blue square and a big red square and cut a heart out of each one and transplant them. We glued them straight to the floor. And if a piece got ruined, that room was used for all sorts of activities. If a piece got ruined, you'd peel it up and put a new one down. It was simple and it was free. Wonderful way to carpet your school, just for the cost of the glue. We put down 200 yards of carpet for about $50 worth of glue. I'll be videotaping on the end of this tape a bubble that I have at my house in Pensacola, Florida. I'm in Pennsylvania now as I make this tape, but an idea that you may want to use for smaller children. a big bubble that you can make absolutely free. That is my list so far of ideas and we'll add to this all the time. I've got a number of magic trick ideas that I'll be adding to this later. But I hope this has been a blessing to you. If you have some more ideas for schools, problems that arise, how to fix it, please contact me because I have quite a collection of these things and I want to be a help and a blessing. And thank you so much and don't forget to get a hold of me if you can put my name and address on the screen or I can put that on later. My name is Ken Hovind in Pensacola, Florida. And I normally speak on dinosaurs and creation. I'd be glad to help you on that. But we want to encourage students to be better students and teachers to be better teachers. Some teachers have 20 years experience. Other teachers have one year of experience 20 times. They never have learned to do it right. Just because they've been teaching 20 years does not mean they're a good teacher, as I'm sure you know. They may have done it 20 times in a row wrong. So pray and ask God. The Bible says in James chapter 3, Be not many masters, knowing that we shall receive the greater condemnation. Teachers will be judged strongly, because if you offend one of these little ones, it's better than a millstone be hanged about your neck and you'd be cast into the sea, Jesus said. Be sure that you're fair, patient, loving, kind, godly. And let's teach the next generation to love the Lord. Thank you so much. Hello, this is Ken Hovind again. We're now in Pensacola, Florida at my house down here. We've thawed out from being up in Pennsylvania where it was freezing making that last tape. Another idea, we'll constantly add to this videotape different ideas. My son Eric is going to come blow up a bubble that I'm standing on. We took two pieces of plastic, just got a roll of visqueen, and put duct tape around the edge to make a big sandwich out of the duct tape. Then we left one stretch untaped where we taped a garbage bag onto it to make the igloo effect like the entrance to an igloo. Go ahead and put the fan on there, Eric. These kids, especially younger kids, just love to get inside of objects. And so we're going to blow up the bubble. It's a little windy here, but we'll get in and see how this thing works for the kids to play in. You can tape the plastic together in a number of different shapes, if you were artistic, you could cut out the shape of a dinosaur, for instance. Once you get it inflated, you can put it on low. Swing around here and give me five seconds. Put it on, is it on low? Yeah. Get on the other corner there to hold it. On this end, we just cut a slot and reinforced it with tape so it doesn't rip any further. And now the kids can actually get inside it and play. Go ahead and hop in there. We've had probably 18 kids in here at a time. We built the whole thing for I think $6 worth of duct tape and a piece of plastic. People crank it up on high and inflate it a little higher. You've got to watch that the kids don't get too rough with it, of course, because they'll tear it. In the bubble, I use this for junior church a lot, or younger kids, we tell stories like Jonah in the whale, or King David in the cave when Saul came in and David cut his robe off. Stories are endless. You can get a good piece of clear plastic like this. and you want to tell stories about being in a submarine, on the outside of the bubble you can have an overhead projector and cut out the shape of a shark or a whale and just wiggle it across the overhead projector and connect it onto the side of the bubble and from inside it looks like the shark is right there coming after you. That's just another idea. We'll add more ideas to this tape from time to time. It's something you may want to use for a class as a reward for kids that are doing their work or something. Ken Hovind again, sitting in my living room. I had another idea I wanted to share with you, something we've done around the house. We have three teenagers. They are at the time of making of this tape 13, 14, 15, soon to have birthdays and turn 14, 15, 16. And with teenagers or with any kids, there's always the frustration that parents have of getting them to do their daily chores. For instance, make your bed, clean up your room, get your homework done on time. And so we prayed about it and asked the Lord to give us wisdom. And we came up with a simple little chart that we used. Each of the kids has a chart like this, and we'll give you a close-up of it in a minute. Each of my children has a chart that goes for an entire month. It's blocked off in 31 squares this way. Down the side are different activities that have to be done by a certain time. For instance, if you have to be ready to leave for school at a certain time in the morning, then if your kids are not ready by that certain time, there needs to be a certain punishment. There has to be a You do this or else, and then the first thing they're going to say is, or else what? So here's what we come up with. I'll just read it to you, and then we'll focus in on it in just a few minutes. By 7.45 in the morning on school days, the following jobs had to be done, or they would receive a penalty that evening. The jobs were, bed had to be made, room had to be cleaned, hair had to be done, all dressed, take your vitamins, and have had personal devotions for five minutes. If those projects were not done, That evening they got penalty, they were on penalty and I'll explain what penalty is in just a minute. Then in the evening we had a list of projects that we wanted done so the kids weren't up real late doing homework. So the projects were they had to practice their musical instrument for a half hour each. and these were to be done by 9 o'clock. And we've altered this a time or two and see if it's altered any way you'd like. This is the way the chart was laid out. By 9 o'clock that evening, they must have done these projects. Practiced their musical instrument for a half hour. Homework completely done in their backpack. Everything signed. If parents had to sign a note, it had to be done before 9 o'clock. They wanted to see it that night, not the next morning as they're running out the door. Oh, by the way, Mom, I got a detention. Sign this for me, please. They wanted to see it the night before. So everything by 9 o'clock. They had to have worked at least 10 minutes on any long-term school projects they had going, which may be a history project or science fair or something like that. If they've got something that's due three, four, five, six months from now, they have to put at least 10 minutes in on their long-term projects. And they had to work 10 minutes on the optional list. And we've got a list of things here that are optional, anything around the house to help. Vacuum the floors, do the dishes, clean the table, anything. 10 minutes worth of work on the optional list to teach them to begin to realize it takes a lot of work to run a house and keep things organized and straight. And then they had to be in bed at 10.30 unless it was okayed that night by mom or dad. So, if they got on their chart, if they got an N for no it wasn't done, or yes they did it but they did it late. For instance, they got off to school but not quite on time, they got an L, or they did these things, then each of those N's or L's added up to a penalty. If they got two L's or one N, the penalty was that evening, they could have no TV, no phone calls, in or out, no friends could come over, and since we have old motorcycles, we ride around in the dirt here in the yard, the penalty was no motorcycles, and they had to go to bed by 9.30, had to go to bed early that night. So that was the penalty. That's the or else clause that we gave. And it seems to have helped them quite a bit. They are now responsible for making sure they have it done. We don't have to scream and yell and holler, get your homework done. It's got to be done by this time or else this is going to be the penalty. So we'll give you a close up of the chart now and let you take a look at that. You can alter it any way you'd like and just an idea that may help save a little frustration with raising children.