First Ward School: Fill & Download for Free

Step 1: Forget about facilities. So much money is spent on better facilities, but many of the finest educational institutes have relatively primitive buildings. Proper heating and cooling and comfortable desks are a must, but beyond that there is little uniformity in requirement. Your chemistry teachers will need different things than your dance teachers. Give everyone a climate controlled room of appropriate size and then let them be involved in the design and layout of the room.Step 2: Let staff, students, and parents decide on rules and then enforce those rules. Attendance is very important. Work with parents to decide what times of day and what days in general are the best fit for students (within some minimum requirement). Accommodate parent concerns as much as you can. But then when the rules and schedules are agreed upon, enforce them strongly. If the school decides that cell phones are verboten, then you must enforce that rule. Nothing says “I can get an exception, so I don’t have to worry about this stuff” like poorly-enforced rules.Step 3: Pay teachers all the same amount. Merit pay simply doesn’t work. It rewards teachers for being randomly assigned to teach higher achieving students. It punishes some of your best teachers - they’re the one working with the most difficult students! How much do you pay them? A lot. You want stiff competition for these jobs so the best and most qualified will be chomping at the bit to get them. Once you have teachers in place, use a fair and equitable evaluation process to ensure that teachers maintain high quality. Do not take test scores into account. Rather, look at other measures of teacher performance that are universal. Things like teacher attendance, the variety and quality of lessons, etc. Hold teachers accountable, but don’t hold them hostage. Evaluate administrators using similarly fair criteria and hold them just as accountable as the teachers. All of these rubrics for evaluation should be public, agreed upon by the parties in question, and based on evidence and facts.Step 4: Open up the curricula. Right now, most states mandate “You Must Teach This”. In many cases, “This” is not terribly valuable. Teachers, parents, administrators, educational researchers, and students should be brought to the table to discuss what sorts of courses should be made available. Students perform at a much higher level when they see some value in what they’re doing.Step 5: Academics first, academics last, academics always. Everything in your school (apart from safety) takes a backseat to learning. Clubs, sports, extracurriculars, fundraisers, you name it - if they impede learning, they don’t have a place in a school. These are the source of many teacher frustrations and are akin to giving out free cigarettes in the oncology ward. Schools are for learning first and foremost - everything else is secondary.That’s it. As we say in the biz, nobody rises to low standards. So set standards, uphold those standards, and rise. It’s that simple.

I have several friends who almost never drive and two of them don't even own a car.The two who don't own a car are a married couple. She is a young professor at UT Medical School in the Texas Medical Center, and her husband is a medical technician at Memorial Hermann Heights Hospital. They routinely do everything on bikes and their lives literally revolve around a bike-centric culture. Whenever they do need a car (which is rarely) they will use Uber or rent a Zip car.They routinely do their shopping and errands on bikes. They've outfitted bikes with removable panniers that can accommodate several days of groceries. She has a basket on the front of her bike that she can even attach her cat's pet carrier for trips to the vet. They live just west of downtown in the first ward so they can use the Buffalo Bayou and Heights Bike Trails to get virtually anywhere they need to go, although she finds her easiest and safest route to work straight through downtown on some of the less busy streets east of Main Street. I should point out that they both moved from Chicago about 2 years ago and they say that despite Houston's lack of cycling infrastructure, it is much easier to get around than Chicago, especially in the winter. The heat isn't an issue for them because in the morning it is usually still mild and they both have showers at work.I have several other friends who routinely commute to and from work on their bikes. Some of them live in Montrose or the Heights and they have pretty much mapped out the safest ways to get from those neighborhoods all the way out to the energy corridor. Another lives in the northeast Heights and takes her two daughters to day care on 19th St. (using a bike trailer that she leaves at the daycare), then rides to work in Greenway Plaza, almost every day.When I used to live in the Heights, my then girlfriend (she's now my wife) and I would routinely ride all over the Heights, Downtown, Museum District, East End, Rice Village and Montrose on our bikes. We've even hosted several bike pub crawls where as many as 80 people will show up.It does take some strategy and I recommend riding with someone who is used to bike commuting to show you some out of the way shortcuts and side streets. Houston's bike community is exploding in growth. There are hundreds more people using bikes to get around every year.

Thank you for the A2AThis is very very subjective…and I guess I’ll keep updating this.1st prof:Anatomy Dissection Hall CadaversSleeping with bones.Pricking our fingers in Physiology to draw blood… and getting our aprons stained (with blood and Leishman’s stain)College Fest and Pre-festDJ night till 7 am in no. 4 and then classes at 9 am that very day (happens in the subsequent years too)Getting your first Stetho and BP machineUsing a fibula to suspend your emersion rod during winters2nd Prof:First ward posting (The selfies in OT wear)Watching Surgeons do breast surgery, laparoscopic cholecystectomy (many more to enlist)OT mishaps like when you’re literally ‘craning’ into the area of operation → surgeon cut an artery by mistake → spurt of blood on your spectacles…god forbid if you aren’t wearing specs… (you rush to see the serology of the patient of course)Cringing over stool examinationGetting your apron stained with Giemsa stain & Iodine.College Fest & Pre-festAttending conferences like Illuminati, MEDSICON and going to PulseResearch (iff your college is enthusiastic about that)Arranging your own regular medicines by pharmacological groups (pure OCD)Learning a bit of Biostats and SPSSArranging simple things like nail-cutters, combs, cream and toothbrush into categories like “Keratin Care”, “Skin Care” & “Dental Health”.When the robotic surgery demo people come to your college and you sit on that console… Yep, 7th heaven.Final Prof Part 1:More OT (and this time you just don’t gawk. You have to know the steps of the Eye and ENT surgeries…you’ll be tested)If your demo teacher is generous enough…he mayyy let you keep those special numbered blades (better not get any wrong ideas)Meeting one of the coolest surgery professors who scolds you like a sergeant but teaches you clinics like a dad…patient and just awesome. Just lit (I just had to specifically mention this)Meeting other awesome profs!Finally having official doctor wala feeling… Cases become a part of your exams.Signing “P R E S C R I P T I O N” to a deaf & dumb patient in ENT ward and getting to witness her happy smiles…(then getting inspired to further learn the ISL)Changing the history given by the patient in university exams…AFTER a GOOD discussion with your practical group. (by 3rd year no one's thinking of flaunting their knowledge or impressions and everyone wants to pass so that's that)Rural area Family visit…PSM n Picnic combined!Organising your college festIntroducing new stuff in no. 9Realising how immune you’ve become to the professors insults and the over-nighters you can pull (wow)Laugh at people who say med students study too muchFind new hobbies…and the fact that you can do so much while still doing medicine…but, not vice versa. So you get into coding, poetry writing etc (the list is endless)Learning more of SPSSJoin a students’ organisation and go for seminars and workshops and…list is endless (Can start this from the 1st year) -Also gives you an opportunity to meet Nobel Laureates like Dr Varmus.Practising suturing skills on banana skin then skin pads in suturing workshops and finally three sutures on an actual patient during caesarian section plus hold the Doyen’s retractor during the same like your life depends on it (that supposedly becomes the most important job for you there)Hear the surgeon scold someone about sterilisation and wonder “Those classes are useful after all”Assist in normal delivery and realise how bad you are at assisting the mother to push!!!Hold the speculum (again like your life depends on it) while the Obstetrician puts in the Copper TSee some really cool IVF procedures like ovum pickupMore ConferencesWhen you get sick during exams and refuse to get admitted…then convert your room into your personal ward (IV fluids and intracath included)… and the interns and PGTs who live around you help you out with your IV.Blood backflow into the IV line…(scary but)Going for vivas with an IV line stuck up your veinFinal Prof Part 2:OMG the baby when it’s delivered outThe fetus moving in the mother’s stomach- You can literally feel the hands- or feet (still guessing what it was) while obstetric examination. Even seeing the skin over the abdomen get all wavy because of the movements (if you know what I mean). That was terrific!Flexospasm in Medicine ward.Hearing a murmur for the first time- then comparing it with yours, your friends, your roommates’ heart sounds.Caesarian section with Placenta praevia… Thats a LOTTA blood.Getting to know how awesome your strict professors really are after a 7 day long proteststill have two more years to go…loving every minute of it.Edit: A school friend of mine studying at SKMCH, Muzaffarpur got to work with a combined research team comprising of doctors from SKMCH, CDC Atlanta, NCDC Delhi ,NIE Chennai, IGIMS Patna, AIIMS & NIMHANS. He was actively involved with this research team who’d gone to investigate the recent epidemic that took the lives of so many kids. Working with stalwarts from these giant institutions is like a dream. At this point of time, they’re waiting for results from the NIV, Pune.Peripheral medical college kids are behind? Bunk that stereotype!