My Club Ed Day

by Phil Houseal as published in the Kerrville TX Community Journal, Apr 1, 2009


In 1986 there was a movie called Ferris Bueller's Day Off. In it, Matthew Broderick took the day off from school. The movie details his adventures eluding authorities and avoiding responsibilities.

Not long ago, I took a day on to school.

This day started at 5 a.m., when I rolled out of bed and headed to the Fredericksburg High School gymnasium. For an hour, I joined a group of marginally-in-shape yet enthusiastic men in our morning basketball game. That activity is community education - part of Fredericksburg ISD's program.

I showered and drove on to the Kerrville ISD Club Ed office. During lunchtime, I sat in on a new Conversational Spanish course. Monica Happ led our band of merry men and women through an hour of brushing up on our Spanish speaking skills. Esta es community education.

That afternoon, 30 dedicated dulcimer players descended on the Auld Center for their weekly jam session. For two hours, they practiced in preparation for a performance at one of our Kerrville ISD elementary schools. Of course, I had to tune up my mandolin and strum along on a few numbers. That is community education.

After work, I had just enough time to get across town and grab a chair in our adult beginner Take-A-Bow orchestra rehearsal. It is one of the many lifelong learning opportunities the United Methodist Church offers. Yes, that is community education.

At 6:30, it was time to zoom over to the dance studio, where I waltzed in and changed shoes for my adult tap and ballet classes. You guessed it - that is community education.

Whew!

I was describing my day to Emily Cale, who many of you meet as she takes your registrations and plans your courses for Club Ed. As I finished, she said, "Write that down. That is community education!"

For 20 years I have tried to come up with a 25-word description of community education. The concept is so all-encompassing and ever-changing that I have never succeeded (the other day I answered the phone and someone asked, "Is this the department of other things?"). But after my "Club Ed day," I realized Emily was right. What I did that day is community education.

Look around at how you spend your time when you are doing something you don't have to do. I'll bet you will be surprised at how many activities involve learning something new or stretching yourself beyond that stuffy comfort zone.

What's that? You're not doing those things? Well I happen to know a place where you can get started.

Unlike Ferris Bueller, we'll see you in class.

XXX

Plan your "day on" with our Spring 2009 Club Ed catalog! Visit www.clubed.net to sign up, or call 830-895-4386.

Club Ed is the Community Education program of the Kerrville Independent School District. Each year, we offer more than 400 classes throughout the Texas Hill Country, along with online courses, business and individual training, and after-school and summer camps. Comment online at clubedcomments.blogspot.com.

The Secret Life of Snowbirds

by Phil Houseal as published in the Kerrville TX Community Journal Mar 18, 2009


Goodbye! Goodbye!

I heard the cries from the door to the classroom where the latest dulcimer class was just finishing.

It was spring, and one of our adult students was heading back north.

A snowbird?

"Oh yes," he said. "I come every winter, and this year I just had to take this dulcimer class - it is the only one offered in the hill country!"

Why not move to Kerrville and stay, I asked him.

"Grandkids," was his one word answer.

The encounter got me thinking about the phenomenon of "snowbirdhood." Having lived here for 30 years, I have come across snowbirds in other aspects of my life. A large group gathers in Fredericksburg to help build houses for Habitat for Humanity. We used to have a clowning instructor who would teach for us, as long as it was between Oct and March.

The whole concept of snowbirding appeals in a bittersweet way.

It is always sad to have to say goodbye to friends you have met and known for several months. Yet it must be an exciting existence, like leading a double life. In summer you bump around the Midwest dressed in overalls. But each winter you travel to that exotic locale - "the south."

(As a former yankee, I understand the appeal of living half the year - the cold half - in the warm, sunny south, where you can wear shorts on Christmas day and plant your garden in February. To a Midwesterner, that's like imagining living on the moon and being able to jump six times higher - simply incomprehensible.)

You'd like to think that snowbirds would invent a wholly different life to go with their southern residence. An engineer in Nebraska might become a secret agent in Texas. An English teacher could become a best-selling author of steamy romance novels.

But that doesn't happen. I've noticed that wherever you travel physically, you drag your personality and comfort zones with you. A homebody in South Dakota will also stick close to the RV while parked at the edge of the Grand Canyon. We haul our worldview even into the virtual world. While taking a class on Second Life - an online world where you create an avatar that represents the real you - our students would tend to build "mini-me's," perhaps making the hair a shade darker and trimming a few pounds off the mid-section.

But our personalities don't change, whether we are stalking the plowed fields of Kansas, padding through the bluebonnets of Texas, or soaring in an electronic sky.

So here is to snowbirds! Long may they fly, though sad when they flee, and all we wish for them is that the day they alight, let it be in Club Ed, Texas!

XXX

Snowbirds can take a Club Ed class from anywhere in the world! For information or to sign up, click www.clubed.net, or call 830-895-4386.

Club Ed is the Community Education program of the Kerrville Independent School District. Each year, we offer more than 400 classes throughout the Texas Hill Country, along with online courses, business and individual training, and after-school and summer camps. Comment online at clubedcomments.blogspot.com.