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Hello, my name's 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 is 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 Ph.D. 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, 5th and 6th
grade, for 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 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, and 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.
95% 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 4-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.
And I've got some ideas there 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 an 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 schools, 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.
I said, 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, okay, 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, uh-oh, Mr.
Hoban 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,
okay, 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
a 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 detention 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 a thousand kids
with only five workers helping me.
With a thousand 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, you get their attention.
Lots of times I would get a balloon
or a rope and just play with it.
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, keep you
out of trouble.
Distraction, I use 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's 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're 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.
Keep a notepad on my desk.
If George says, Mr. Hovind, 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 $100.
They're not going to yell and scream at
you.
They're just going to simply charge you the
fee.
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 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
for 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.
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, a psychological
thing of letting them know who's the boss.
And teacher ought to just keep reserve that
or keep that as an idea.
Just out of the clear blue, totally rearrange
the seating.
And put the kids up front, of course,
that needs 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
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, as 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 serves a double purpose, of course,
keeping them after class.
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 tried to be
very consistent at it.
If a student's 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
a hundred 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 kids 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.
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. Hovind?
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. Hovind.
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.
Say, 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, just kind of
is a scatterbrain.
He's not, he's 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'll 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 one through ten.
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 and 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?
They would say, Mr. Hogan, sometimes they'd call
me at home.
They'd say, Mr. Hogan, what's the homework for
tomorrow?
I'd say, oh man, I have no idea.
It's on the board.
And they soon learned, hey, don't call him
at home.
He doesn't know what to do tomorrow.
He leaves it on the board.
It's an open lesson plan.
And it stopped all the phone calls at
home for me.
I got two or three a year and
then they learned, 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 assigned 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 encouraged 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 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 until 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, oh, 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 a little of those five minutes
that I give at the end of each
class for study.
And he would have that for English or
math or history or some other subject.
I felt that was perfectly fine and actually
encouraged that.
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.
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 out, give them
time out of class if they had everything
done ahead of time and homework.
Another idea, a thing that I use, I
got from somebody, I forget where, but every
six weeks I would drop the lowest grade
in the grade book.
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.
Counted 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 grade book.
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, fill 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
two points.
I made everything based on a hundred 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.
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
a hundred and five on the test or
quiz.
And I would write down a hundred and
five 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.
Zero, I hope it'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 have 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
their other grades up.
Let's see, we talked about the grading system.
Another advantage of always the kids know what
their grade is and they 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 you're 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, my homework is 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 grade book.
It's not here.
I am not going to worry about it
again.
As far as I'm concerned, you've 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 ten
points off.
If you turn it in tomorrow, it's twenty
points off.
If you turn it in the next day,
it's thirty points off.
I take off ten 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.
I'm 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 sixth, I mean, 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, you know, in first grade, second grade,
third grade, fourth grade, you need to learn
how to multiply, divide, add, subtract, keep your
columns straight.
That's true.
Okay, 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.
Now, occasionally, you may want to have a
refresher course and have a test, you know,
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 dating ourselves and we're, the
Amish, you know, have gone from the buggies
to, okay, you can get a car but
it's got to be black and no chrome
and that's what we're doing with the calculators.
I mean, come on, you know, it doesn't
matter.
Get one and let the kid 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.
Okay, boys and girls, take out a piece
of paper, put your name at the top
and put today's date.
Oh, are we having a quiz?
Yep, we're having a quiz.
Oh, no, I didn't study.
Okay, no problem.
So, question number one.
Have you read the homework for today?
Yes or no?
Alright, pass your papers in please and go
on with the lesson.
One question quiz.
You get a hundred or you get a
zero.
Often times, 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, yeah, I've got to
know this.
Yeah, okay.
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 a
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 them, 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.
between showing off 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 student 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've 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 above on
this first quiz, you don't need to take
this 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 the 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.
Well, check the kids ten 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 say, oh
I remember that.
You could give them the same test five
years later and they'd 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. Hogan look at
number 17.
You've got a mistake on that one.
I say, oh 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 seemed to enjoy that.
It took some of the pressure off of
them because again they've got enough pressure.
Another idea different subject is to 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. Hogan
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 and 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 and geometry and trig.
You're never going to teach it to them.
So you have 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 is 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 them year after year after year.
Give them 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 or maybe
you want to keep same sex boys with
boys and girls with girls.
And you've got to watch that it will
get out of hand but many times that
is excellent training for the student who is
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 tool.
Many teachers I think are jealous of their
authority and they don't want anybody else teaching
those kids but me.
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 ten questions I have found most students
don't get started that's their problem.
Getting started is half the job.
I would say okay students we have five
minutes left.
Take out a piece of paper you have
these twenty questions to do tomorrow.
In class we are going to go ahead
and do questions 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 is a relief that kids
think hey I have already started it wasn't
that hard let's finish.
While we are very slowly doing those four
questions the brighter kids of course are reading
ahead and they have already answered all twenty
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 if you are going to
wax the car get started do one fender.
If you only have ten minutes you don't
have time to do the whole car well
do part of it and then you will
say well I have 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 have ten hours of
homework.
I have always 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 are doing.
If a student is working rapidly and they
are working on the questions and John is
already up to question number ten 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.
That encouraged them to use those last three
or four or five minutes of class wisely.
Students need to learn it is 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
without having to be nervous about it.
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 okay the bell rings in
30 seconds all those that have my initials
at the top of their page are dismissed.
It didn't cost me a thing it got
them out of there they are 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 have covered everything
here.
Equipment.
School equipment I want to cover this rapidly
here for the 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 P.E. many smaller schools have a
hard time with P.E. 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
and so there's 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 but 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 but 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 the eraser come back run
pick up the other eraser 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 video tape so that everyone who
gets this tape will have an idea these
events in the order that we have done
it at many schools.
Across the top are two categories girls and
boys each of those is divided up into
four groups 5-8 year old 9-11
year old 12-14 year old and 15
and up is the way we did it.
Then the student can set the school record
in any of those events that they choose.
For instance during resets or P.E. or
kindergarten time or whatever you can say today
we are going to set the 50 yard
dash record and they would the 5 year
old set up a 50 yard dash marked
up on your parking lot some place and
you get a stop watch and you can
time the kids and learn to do it
rapidly like get four people timing and four
people running.
You can get the whole class to do
much more rapidly that way.
The student with the best score in that
age group gets his name on the school
record chart.
This is laminated and you write it on
there and if a student breaks the record
you erase it off or if you have
a white poster board you can get it
on there and keep peeling off the label
and sticking on a new one when they
break the record.
It gives them a sense of pride and
accomplishment which is not necessarily wicked or bad
or evil.
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.
Make them all succeed.
I disagree.
I think those that work should eat and
those that don't should not eat.
Competition is good.
Giving them a chance for recognition.
Also, if a student competes in sports or
anything he also tends to work harder in
other areas of life.
You tend to overcome the laziness.
A student that is getting lots of exercise
is more alert in class.
And they are less hyperactive if during recess
they have been out there doing the jump
rope or one of these categories trying to
break the record.
that only has four columns.
The four columns are first quarter, second quarter,
third quarter, fourth quarter.
And then we made a sheet of paper
with the same events in the same order.
And the PE teacher would say today we
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
hey George, last quarter you did six push
ups.
Now George is competing against himself.
Trying to improve what God has given him.
that is the fairest competition.
Luke 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
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 is 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 are only allowed
one minute.
The time shoot, how many baskets can you
make in one minute with a basketball?
We let the younger kids, 5-8, use
a small ball for all the basketball events
and the older kids had to use a
regular sized basketball.
Jump rope is the one that went crazy
at several schools I have done.
We just bought eight or ten jump ropes.
You get one minute.
How many times can you skip rope?
If you have a class secretary write down
the scores and say come by and tell
John your score.
You can go on to something else.
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 and record stays until
somebody else comes along and beats it.
It stays there permanently unless somebody comes along
and beats it.
Other equipment besides the record chart that helps
kids get interested in improving themselves.
It is filled over into academic areas and
spiritual areas.
is that idea of constantly trying to improve
what God has given you.
That is the Bible way.
He gave some five talents but whatever he
gives you use it and build on it
and grow with it.
Playground equipment.
When I went to Fairfield California to be
the principal out there they had 120 students.
They had one swing set with four swings
on it and kids waiting in line to
swing.
I prayed and said Lord we need some
playground equipment.
One of the teachers said the bikes are
on the sidewalk.
We have to get some bike rack to
put the bikes in.
I was driving along and I spotted
a huge pile of playground equipment at the
corporation yard.
I went in and knocked on the door
and found out who was in charge.
He said something is broken on it so
we took it out of the park or
some kid got hurt on it so all
the parks have taken that piece out or
we 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.
I said sir is there any way I
can buy that stuff off you?
He said no I'm sorry sir we can't
sell it.
If somebody gets hurt on it we can't
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 decided we'll sell it to
you on a couple of conditions.
Number one you have to understand it is
scrap metal.
I said okay.
You're not selling me playground equipment you're
not sold.
We got the money from the activities account
and got $175 and hauled it over truckload
after truckload and began putting it together.
here.
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've 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 video tape 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 and fiberglassed 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've 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.
My grandma is dying.
Give me twenty bucks.
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.
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 this wing set might have an orange
leg and a blue leg and a green
leg, and you just never knew.
It was wild colors.
A 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 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 Christian schools 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 pile 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 of 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 is about right.
We had just an unbelievable playground.
Then we built a $1,000 gazebo in
the middle so the teachers can sit there
and talk and still watch their kid during
recess.
People came from miles around to see that
fabulous playground that we got paid $4,000
for making.
We got all the equipment for free, basically.
It was tremendous that the Lord blessed there.
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 of 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?
I got enough carpet.
I believe we had 200 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.
The 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.
A wonderful way to carpet your school just
for the cost of the glue.
We put down 200 yards of carpet for
about 50 bucks 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.
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.
Thank you so much and don't forget to
get a hold of me.
You can put my name and address on
the screen or I can put that on
later.
My name is Kent 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 three, 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.
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.
Kids, especially younger kids, just love to get
inside.
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 about 13, 14, 15, soon to
have birthdays in 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.
So we prayed about it and asked the
Lord to give us wisdom.
We came up with a simple little chart
that we used.
Each of the kids has a chart like
this.
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 nine
o'clock.
And we've altered this a time or two
and see if that's altered any way you'd
like.
This is the way the chart was laid
out.
By nine o'clock that evening, they must
have done these projects.
Practice 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 nine o'clock.
We 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.
We wanted to see it the night before.
So everything by nine o'clock.
They had to have worked at least ten
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 ten minutes in on their
long-term projects and they had to work
ten 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.
Ten 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 1030 unless it was okayed that night
by mom or dad.
So if they got on their charts, 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 Ns or Ls added
up to a penalty.
If they got two Ls 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 930, 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 it.
You can alter it any way you'd like
and just an idea that may help save
a little frustration with raising children.