Billy Hill has a hearing impaired daughter. His off spring are presently enrolled in the public school system having been pulled out of a home school environment a couple years back. Fortunately, they are in one of the greatest school districts in the state because Billy Hill has typically been quite skeptical and critical of the public school system. In face, Billy Hill sent his oldest offspring through private school. But rather than getting into Billy Hill's anti government educating my kids position, Billy Hill wants to share a little story.
You see, recently his daughter's Speech and Language Pathologist that works there at the public school schedule a conference to review her situation. As is typical of all these parent teacher conferences, Billy Hill was expecting to spend about 30 minutes sitting in a chair that was way to small for a man of his stature, and listening to some government employee spend about 70 percent of the time with small talk, and then telling me my daughter was doing fine and not to worry. Well, Billy Hill was presently surprised....
Billy Hill was instructed that his children could not come into the classroom and so he sat them in the hallway with their iPads and said "please don't kill each other". He entered the room and sat down in tiny little chair at the tiny little table and waited. One by one six different people entered into the room and took a little chair to themselves. Billy Hill was think, what????
Once the parties were in position they began to introduce themselves. The person calling the meeting was the Speech and Language Pathologist. But also present was an Audiologist that drove, the Vice Principle of the school, a Special Education Teacher, a School Psychologist and even my child’s teacher. We spent about 2 hours talking about my little girl, the time they have spent with her and laying out a plan for helping her to have as much of an advantage as she can given her situation. They had conducted a litany of tests on my sweet little angel to establish where she was in her auditory skills, vocabulary, comprehension, enunciation and even how she was emotionally handling her situation. They had worked with her to develop skills in dealing with her impairment, including giving her tools on how to communicate with others about her impairment. They had been working feverishly as a team to ensure she was properly analyzed and then completed a mountain of paper work outlining their procedures and applying for funds to provide further assistance in ensuring that she received the proper equipment, instruction and environment for maximizing her education.
Billy Hill had never asked for this to be done, the "government" school took it upon themselves to recognize that my little girl with her Spiderman hearing aids was struggling and to initiate the process to get her taken care of. It reminded Billy Hill of a story . . . .
A coal mine in a small Pennsylvanian town had collapsed injuring many and killing several of the miners but two miners had been trapped inside. The town had come together to try to dig the miners out but after several hours of intense work and unstable conditions, the people were forced out of the mine to avoid further casualties. The mining company then decided to attempt to drill another shaft down to a point they felt was behind the debris and hopefully open a route to bring the trapped miners out safely. But time was of the essence knowing that they only had a limited amount of oxygen and that the exposure, lack of food and unknown injuries made this an urgent matter. They commenced drilling as soon as possible. Local news picked up on the story and soon the story was released nationally. It became very apparent that the mining company had insufficient equipment and that by the time they could drill the hole, it would be too late to rescue the miners. A company in California got wind of the story and within a matter of hours, the company disassembled their state of the art mining system, loaded it on a train and shipped it to this small town in Pennsylvania and flew a team of equipment operators in to the town. The team set up the equipment and commenced drilling the rescue shaft. After many hours of round the clock work, they broke into the main shaft and quickly lowered a rescue team to search for the miners. They were both alive and as one of the miners was raised through the shaft and back into the crisp fresh air, he looked around and saw all the equipment, the hundreds of local people with tents set up to feed the workers and pray for the miners, the large number of workers, the TV crews with cameras and lights, the medical crew on standby to treat the miners, the man said “all of this, for me?”
So, Billy Hill sort of had this kind of feeling on this particular day to see all the care, concern and effort that was being expended on his sweet little girl, all of that for my sweet girl!
So, is the government school system all that and a soda pop. No, it still sucks but Billy Hill's county just sucks a little less. But, these teachers and professionals, with a love for kids, working within the confines of the government system, went beyond the call of duty, worked the system and brought about good for one random little girl.
All the negativity that is promulgated about the government school system and the poor educational system in our country, Billy Hill still believes it is true. But now, Billy Hill is more motivated than ever to bring about change. Because this team of individuals made it clear that it is not the teachers and professionals that have created this demise, it is the government's involvement. If we can get our teachers to get paid more than the skulled tattoo bearing pizza delivery guy, stop forcing them to do ridiculous mandatory pass or fail testings, and let smart business people run the system, no telling what these teachers with hearts could accomplish.
Recently Billy Hill was on the set for the filming of an upcoming movie. He was blown away by the amount of money that is spent making just miner elements of the movie. All of this money being poured into generating 90-120 minutes of entertainment. And yet, many of these same people that are cheerfully consuming such massive amounts of wealth are standing up and pointing fingers of condemnation at wealthy business people and demanding that they pay more taxes to take care of underprivileged people. Yet these entertainment people that generate no benefit to society are flying first class or in their private jets to attend extravagant parties and returning to the multi-million dollar mansions. They applaud Bruised Springsteen for taking a ludicrous position on commode etiquette and drive a young person out of business for standing on her beliefs.
It makes one ponder . . . .
Billy Hill here, I like it neat
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