Sometime around September-October, a charity The Education Fund came by the insurance company I was…read moreworking for at the time. The Education Fund as per its website: "The Education Fund's first program awarded small grants to support teachers' innovative, hands-on classroom projects. Three decades and more than 4,550 "best practice" projects later, our collective programs continue to make a difference in the lives of 350,000+ students/families and 20,000 educators throughout Miami-Dade County Public Schools. Our initiatives have contributed $10.1 million in free classroom supplies. We've engaged hundreds of business professionals to become advocates for teaching quality. We are growing schoolyard eco labs at 51 elementary schools -- 25 are in progress to become Food Forests. More than 32,854 students' eating habits have improved as a result of this multi-dimensional outdoor lab initiative. The objective of each Education Fund program is to work side-by-side with the private sector to support and promote quality public education for every child in Miami-Dade County Public Schools by providing teachers and students with resources they need to be successful." As part of the program, volunteers can be paired with a local Miami Dade County teacher and help teach a class. That way people get to step into the shows of a teacher at least for a short while. I wanted to do this for a number of reasons: 1) I always think that when I approach or end up retiring I would like to teach at the university level. I thought well let me see how I handle this 2) I admire teachers, they are hard working, self-less individuals who work hard for little pay to pass on knowledge to the next generation I asked, of course, for a high school social studies or English class... I got a grade school class with 7 year old... special needs Science. Yeah I was nervous... I was wondering if I could get transferred to another but then I thought of a reason #3 3) I was thinking... you know I want kids in the future... maybe... this could be like training? Making it harder was that I was going thru a lot of issues at work and personally as the time went on and eventually had to move out of Florida and to Ohio. One of the last things I did while in Florida was teach this class. I gave my word to help teach the class, and I am true to my word. I reviewed the lesson plans And then I went to Avocado Elementary School in Homestead, Florida to help teach the class. The teacher Ms. Jackson and I spoke and we had the kids make water rockets. It was a really fun experience. It's funny, I have debated in school, argued in front of full auditoriums in the university and given classes in front of hundreds of people including in conference and I have never been as nervous as when I was talking in front of those kids. They look at you and hang on your every word like no other person... it's incredible. I swear I think I froze for a second. The teacher had them watch videos on water rockets and went over how they work first. I went over with the teacher and aide how to build them. It was fun seeing them so excited and into it. Then we went to launch them... first few times it didn't work but we eventually got to launch them into the air after finding the right ratio of water in the bottle. It was amazing to see the kids have fun as the bottles were launched into the air. Honestly, even I had a lot of fun. When I left, it was sad because a few of the kids cried. I now know how much work teachers put in... I was drained from just a few hours... I always had great respect for teachers... but now much more so. I am still trying to raise money for them as I have another 30 days... but have only been able to raise some from my family... anyway I am so happy I did this... The Education Fund gave me a memory at Avocado Elementary which I will treasure for the rest of my life.

Had two kids here for a total of six years combined and counting…read more Teachers are a mixed bag. Some seem like in purgatory, others are happy to be teaching children and my kids love most of their teachers. The class sizes seem a little large for the teachers to manage on the general education side. The special ed side has adequate teacher student ratio of 6 to 1 or less. The student population consists of a lot of new immigrants who do not speak English. They put the ESL kids in with general population, which is good, but not all teachers are bi-lingual, so I imagine that contributes to lack of teacher span of control. The teachers suffer from a lack of supplies, which should not be an issue. Expecting teachers to beg parents for supplies is not acceptable. The front desk is a mixed bag. They have been friendly, but have lost paperwork on several occasions. The school pickup / drop off is not too bad since it is in a rural area where you dont have to worry about traffic besides the commercial pickup service Vans who routinely cut and speed.