At the Crossing we all teach and live by five core values that really effect every movement of life. If you are a new reader of these blogs it will help to know that our five core values are: Relationships, Empowerment, Love, Integrity and Truth. At the Crossing we “live” these values out with all [...]
February 24, 2010 – 7:42 am
At the Crossing, class is never completely dismissed. I was sitting at my desk today and heard Carrie* chuckle about something. Last week one of our volunteers and I noticed a cute and peculiar mannerism of hers, and I was reminded of that as well. The sounds, sights, smells and even touches of the kids [...]
January 15, 2010 – 12:38 pm
Below are pictures of the Automotive Design Elective taught at my home as an extension of the Butler Crossing. I have 8 students in this class, and we are building my next street rod. This is a ’58 Buick wagon being retro-fit to a ’94 Caprice cop car chassis that we stretched 9 inches by [...]
December 18, 2009 – 5:54 pm
School is school is school, right? Students end up at the Crossing for a myriad of reasons ranging from poor performance in school to violence to arrogance to resistance to any kind of authority or very poor attendance. For the stubborn child we have found they need something to believe in and to be a [...]
December 3, 2009 – 2:35 pm
I spent the day yesterday with Rob Staley and Becky Brown. I had to be up at 4:00 and out the door by 5:00 to meet them in Goshen by 7:00. It is always a tough decision to be gone from my building, I have a perfect attendance record, I have a great and competent [...]
November 29, 2009 – 5:35 pm
OK………That NWEA crap test we had to do in the Fall really cut into our productivity! It screwed up a whole week of work and for what? We did this so we can defend our status in the political realm and so our numbers can show improvement and so on! Our kids need the time [...]
October 7, 2009 – 6:15 am
We are all working so hard. We are absolutely beat at the end of the day, and by mid-week we are bushed. Be blessed with this story. Yesterday Nelly, a new kid this year, got thinking. She walked across the room, knelt in front of Mr. Winan’s desk and said, “I don’t want to burn [...]
September 30, 2009 – 3:00 pm
There is so much to learn about and from every student. This is a true story from the Butler Crossing that covers the gamete from serious to hilarious and everything in between. We have had a full week of serious injuries at our school starting with Karen Miller crashing her motorcycle and road-rashing herself really [...]
September 4, 2009 – 5:57 pm
These kids are such fun to play with! We took the boat, a tube, a kneeboard, and two kids from the Butler Crossing to the lake last Friday and had a great time! Crossing kids are recklessly courageous and will try anything! We had those two doing the zaniest stuff on the tube! This cost [...]
August 25, 2009 – 2:22 pm
“Kind words promote instruction.” Solomon, the Old Testament author of the book of Proverbs, is so very correct. We can move a lot of people a long way in a definite direction if we are diligent in using this principal of wisdom. Build people up, speak of their preciousness, remind them they have a potential [...]
August 20, 2009 – 3:44 am
Wow! I thought the first year at the Crossing was great! We are off and running this fall with a truly unbelievably strong start! I remember last year Jen (our trainer) said that eventually daily life at the Crossing will “flow”. A rhythm will surface from the busyness and the STEEP learning curve we experienced [...]
Thursday I had a Campus Coordinator meeting in Goshen. I also had a chance to talk with Rob (Staley, Executive Director) in a private conference prior to that meeting. If labels were passed out when I was a kid (I am now fifty-seven), I would have been labeled ADD and ODD that is, Attention Deficit [...]
This has been a very demanding couple of weeks! My big blond lab had to be put down because she was old and had bone cancer that had spread to the lungs. I held her while the vet put her to sleep prior to the final shots. She was a faithful old friend. One of [...]
“Nobody said it was going to be easy.” ‘ever heard that before? How ’bout this: “if it were easy, anybody could do it!” Now I don’t claim to be special, only supernatural! You might be guessing that we had a demanding week. We did. It started with prank phone calls from a weekend party the [...]
February 17, 2009 – 6:00 pm
At the Butler Crossing we have the usual mix of alternative school students: the drug affected, the drinkers, smokers, pot smokers, and the list goes on. These are not evil humans. In most cases they are just misguided, and often addicted, young Americans. They are gutsy, gritty, outspoken, distracted, and distractible children, often with children [...]
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