sun Hailey
•
Ketchum
•
Sun Valley
•
Bellevue
•
the weekly
Carey
•
s t a n l e y • F a i r f i e l d • S h o sh o n e • P i c a b o
Local Practitioners Among Line-up at Wellness Festival
Wood River Valley Pays Homage to National Bike Month
Plan Your Week with our Full Calendar
Page 3
Page 5
Page 9
Elizabeth Fry Makes a Splash read about it on PaGe 7
M a y 1 6 , 2 0 1 2 • Vo l . 5 • N o . 2 0 • w w w.T h e We e k l y S u n . c o m
Classroom Experiment STORY & PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK
• Brings big Rewards •
E 2nd Place team, “Comfort Zone� from Bellevue. Carson Johnston, Paul Hopfenbeck, Curtis Hopfenbeck COURTESY PHOTO: BILL TORMEY
Trolling Derby was Magic-al BY PAUL HOPFENBECK
O
kay, that may be a matter of perspective, but it was a beautiful day to be on the water. Saturday morning started as so many of my previous hunting and fishing forays seem to start, with a restless night’s sleep filled with anxiety and anticipation- and a 3:00 a.m. wake-up alarm. Make coffee, take a shower, pack lunch, wake the boys, make hot chocolate, fill the thermoses, double check EVERYTHING! Kiss my wife Linda (our biggest fan) and try and make amends with the golden boys, who, after sleeping on top of our gear bags by the door, suddenly realize they are not to be included. On the road! Because of the unseasonably high water and lack of beach at Magic Reservoir, I changed my mind about launching our boat at Hot Springs Landing and then motoring to East Side under the diminished but still sufficient light of last month’s Super Moon. Instead, I made the drive to Baja thinking that I could pull the boat out before weigh-in if the afternoon turned windy, making the mooring situation sketchy. As I drove to the reservoir that morning I really thought that I would be a littlelate to get a spot on the dock, but as I found out later, the majority of the derby participants who camped at Hot Springs made an evening of it and continued their revelry until the wee hours. Steve Begley , who beats me to the dock about 50% of the time, motored up just as my son Curtis, and I were tying off! Last year, at 4:30 a.m., in the black of a new moon and in an obscuring, driving rain, my son Curtis took a very short and inopportune walk off the end of the dock at Hot Springs. This year, not being one to let the opportunity of establishing an “annual eventâ€? pass him by, as soon as he pulled the boat trailer off the ramp, Curtis donned trunks and made another swim in the 55 degree water! Tradition begun! Okay, now I like to catch fish as much as the next guy-maybe more. The derby gets my competitive juices flowing and every once in a great while the water gods smile upon our boat, Comfort Zone, and we land a fish or two. I have always happily accepted any earned prize money and bought my share of drinks with a percentage of the winnings. A good time was had by all, etc‌! But, this year was special for a number of reasons. First, I was fishing with BOTH my boys, Carson and Curtis, for the first time since the inception of the Magic Derby, 18 years ago. Win, lose, or draw, it was going to be a great day.
continued, page 4
very week Quenia Gonzales surveys her fifth-grade class at Woodside Elementary School looking for condos to buy. “It’s kind of like playing Monopoly,� she explains. “I buy one of my classmate’s condominiums and then they have to pay me rent.� The condos Gonzales is so hot to buy don’t come equipped with Energy Star appliances and granite countertops. They’re merely the desks that she and her fellow classmates occupy for the duration of the school year. But teacher Mary Gin Barron treats them as if they’re solid gold real estate in a year-long exercise that teaches students about what it’s like to work to earn money to pay rent and buy a house in the real world. It’s an exercise that was born out of frustration. “Five years ago I had one of the most difficult classes I’ve ever had. I couldn’t motivate them—they just didn’t care. I started reading everything I could on motivation and came up with this,� Barron said. Barron’s current classroom of 20 students is brimming with motivation now, especially at auction time when the students get to bid the money they make from collecting rent and other exercises on toys that have been donated by Costco, Best Buy, The Toy Store and other stores, say Barron’s co-teachers, who can hear the bidding several doors down the hall. “It’s fun doing this because we learn about how to buy stuff,� said Kasen Boren. At the beginning of the year, students choose from a list of jobs. Among them: policemen, who collect fines for missing homework and keep the peace in the classroom; computer techs, who plug in laptops and boot them up each morning; interior designers, who help with bulletin boards; librarians, who check books in and out; and custodians, who keep the classroom sink cleaned. Stacey Pedraza works as a postal worker. Gonzales works as a banker, certifying her fellow students have made the proper deposits and withdrawals in their checking accounts and counseling them on how they would have been better off if they’d bought a condo before splurging on M&Ms. The students get paid different salaries for their tasks, just as they would get different salaries performing different jobs in the world outside their classroom windows. Students also earn $100 for each “A� they get—$200 if they get 100 percent of the answers correct. And they get bonus money for extra credit projects, partici-
Emily Lizarraga pays $1,200 every month for her condo, or desk, so she doesn’t end up homeless on the floor. pation in after-school programs and for dressing up on specified days. “After-school programs and sports make us use our brains and be healthy,� explained Sebastian Zavala. Conversely, they get fined $100 if they don’t have their homework done or if they’re tardy. “I don’t have a problem anymore with kids turning in homework—they strive for good grades,� Barron said. “And, while attendance was a problem at first, I do not have tardy kids anymore. They’re in their seats ready to go because they don’t want to pay a fine.� The kids use their earnings to pay $1,200 a month rent on their desks, or condos, writing out the rent on checks provided especially for the students by Bank of America. The more enterprising kids—like Gonzales—buy other students’ condos so the rent goes to them. “If we don’t pay rent, we could become homeless and end up on the floor,� explained Emily Lizarraga. But there’s an even bigger payoff for keeping a healthy bank account: monthly auctions in which they get to bid on M&Ms, Monopoly games, pogo sticks, basketballs and other toys. Barron saves the most prized items, such as Harry Potter books and LEGOS, for the end of the year so the students learn the value of saving. Students have bid up to $15,000 for a lava lamp and $10,000 for a pillow pet or disco ball. Many have saved up to buy things for a brother or sister’s Christmas or birthday
Kasen Boren shows what happens if a student doesn’t save enough money to pay monthly rent on his desk. Mary Gin Barron has only had one case of a student ending up homeless in the five years she’s done this exercise—and that didn’t last long.
As one of the classroom bankers, Quenia Gonzales keeps the books for her classmates’ deposit
present. One of the payoffs of this unusual classroom exercise is a better understanding of what their parents go through, said Barron. “They understand the real world now,â€? she said. “They hear their parents talking about why they have two jobs or why they’re struggling to pay the rent‌ and they get it.â€? tws
RELATED STORY ON, page 7
Scott Miley Roofing AssociAted construction services, inc
the re-roofing professionals $0/46-5"5*0/ "/% $0/4536$5*0/
208.788.5362
-FBS -BOF t )BJMFZ *% TDPUUNJMFZSPPmOH DPN