John Oliver Smith
Bio
Baby, son, brother, child, pupil, athlete, collector, farmer, photographer, player, uncle, coach, husband, student, writer, teacher, father, science guy, fan, grandpa, comedian, traveler, chef, story-teller, driver, gardener, regular guy!!!
Achievements (1)
Stories (121)
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The Good Teacher
Like a mother is always a mother to her children, a teacher is always a teacher to his or her students. When my mother was 90 years old and I was 60 years old and my brother was 58 years old and my sister was 64 years old, my mother still fulfilled the role of mother for us. She still mothered us. She still cared and worried and fussed and doted and did whatever a mother has done all of her life with respect to her children. Once a mother, always a mother. No matter how old you are, your mother is still your mother. No matter how old a mother’s children are they are still her children. The mother and child relationship, no matter how it played out way back when will continue to play out in the same way forever, until death do us part. That relationship is one of the everlasting truths in the universe. There is no other relationship that comes close to that one except for maybe the relationship between a teacher and a student. That relationship also plays out and continues to play out in much the same way over the years. It always stands the test of time, and the younger the child when the relationship started the more similarly it plays out when the student becomes older.
By John Oliver Smith4 years ago in Education
It's Story Time Boys and Girls
Today in our story, let’s build a polypeptide. Imagine if you will, a big hotel (in a super big hotel chain) in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Therein worked a Master Chef, Maurice (just like any of the other Master Chefs that worked in any of the other 50 trillion hotels in the chain). Maurice had just received a very important e-mail message from the CEO of the chain, Mr. Smithers (no relation). The message stated that several of the hotels in the Tri-State area were desperately short of Maurice’s very famous frosted chocolate brownies (according to the latest hotel customer satisfaction surveys). Mr. Smithers requested that Maurice search through his unbelievably huge recipe file and find the recipe for frosted chocolate brownies and get them made, pronto, and keep getting them made until all the people in the hotels in the area had enough of those frosted chocolate brownies – his very famous frosted chocolate brownies.
By John Oliver Smith4 years ago in Education
Hand Dryers in Public Washrooms
Public washrooms are a really good place to do some serious people watching eh? Like . . . let me rephrase that okay! What I mean to say is that whenever I go into a public washroom I notice things that just make me want to take out my camera and start taking pictures . . . er, uh . . . this is not going well, let me start again . . .
By John Oliver Smith4 years ago in Humans
Changing The Lines
I have played around with different careers and roles in my life. I have been a farmer, raising hogs and chickens and growing grain crops. I have been a presenter and a director in a Science Centre. I have hosted my own radio show and, in fact, got married “on the air” in an attempt to allow more people to attend the ceremony and, to cut down on costs, of course. I have been teacher for over 30 years and I have been a student for another 20. During the time I was teaching, I decided to do something to help perfect my craft. I decided to enroll in a Stand-Up Comedy course offered by a near-by College. I felt that if I could stand in front of an audience and bare my soul by telling jokes and stories, I would somehow be more natural and entertaining in my day job of teaching. One of the exercises that my fellow students and I had to complete was to take lines from any movie and change them in a way that would turn the film into a comedy of sorts. Whatever genre the movie started out as, it would now become a comedy because of our line changes. My attempts at this assignment are offered below. I do believe, however, that the changes appear much funnier, if indeed, the reader has previously viewed the film in question. Regardless, read on, and hopefully enjoy.
By John Oliver Smith4 years ago in Filthy
Some Things You Just Never Hear
During the final eight years of my teaching career, I had the wonderful opportunity and once-in-a-lifetime experience of teaching in an International High School in Wuhan, China. There were so many things that took place on almost a daily basis in that school over those eight happy and memorable years that I will never forget and which seemed like an annoyance at the time but really were the substance of good-hearted fun. In the account below, I will list a few of them, in a format that may only make sense to teachers and students who have encountered the same experiences during the same time period.
By John Oliver Smith4 years ago in Education
The First Day
Fall is simply the best time of year. Fall is all the golden, red and yellow mash-up tapestry you only get to see for two not-long-enough-weeks after summer has checked out. Fall has crisper, more urgent air than summer. Fall air takes nothing for granted. It reintroduces itself with each breath as it moves through your nose, your throat, your chest. Fall air is much like spring air, but fall air is fresh in a more carbonated way – a way that sensitizes for a winter that will eventually put an end to everything that fall is. Fall is football and World Series baseball and vacationers coming back from their summer sojourns.
By John Oliver Smith4 years ago in Education
The Pears of Black River
'Las Peras del Rio Negro' was the bright red title on the poster hung on the cork-board outside the employment office door. I attempted to say the words aloud, not even knowing for sure the language in which they were written. I somehow suspected they might be Spanish because I recognized the word “Rio” from a couple of old ‘dusters’ I had seen at the cinema when I was a kid. I liked the way the phrase sounded, even though I knew I probably wasn’t pronouncing it correctly. I opened the door, edged into the crowded waiting area, closed the door behind me, then made my way to the queue marked ‘New Job Opportunities’. One of the agents was making his way up and down the lines, handing out the updated job list as we stood waiting. The list provided something to do as we shuffled from foot to foot over the half hour or so of moving forward at a snail’s pace. It also gave us a head’s up on what to inquire when we finally made it to the window at the front of the line. On perusing the list, I again noted the title – Las Peras del Rio Negro. “Interesting!”, I thought.
By John Oliver Smith4 years ago in Fiction
Ode to a Moose
It was late April and we had just experienced another cold snap. Out my cabin door, I could see that the big pond had taken on more ice. The winter ice never really went away, and now that the temperature was dipping down to minus 15 degrees at night, any open water that might have been around, was thickening up pretty quickly. There were some smooth clear patches here and there that were alright for skating. Regarding ice thickness and skating safety on lakes and ponds, I always remembered the little verse I learned during Red Cross Swimming Lessons when I was a kid – “One inch – NO WAY, Two inches – ONE MAY, Three inches – SMALL GROUP, Four inches -OKAY”. Since I was skating by myself, I knew that the ice really only had to be about two or three inches in order to be safe enough for my medium-build frame to be supported as I lutzed and sowkowed around from patch to patch or when I took a slapshot to see how far a puck would actually travel.
By John Oliver Smith4 years ago in Fiction
