From time to time I told you all I was going to talk about my kids going to school amidst a pandemic. Today I want to touch on that subject, but not the pandemic specific stuff I usually do. I want to do something a little different.

My wife and I are doing all the parent teacher conferences this week. Now that both of our kids are in school, we have extra conferences, and they have been quite eye opening. We are finishing them up tonight but we had one yesterday with our son's gifted teacher. My son has been in this whole gifted program through the school district since he was a kindergartener. We love it. He loves it. The program gives him a challenge he doesn't get in his everyday class. Now it is not that he isn't being challenged in his usual fourth grade class, this gifted program just pushes him to further his creative thinking and learning. The curriculum at the gifted school is made to teach the students to use different parts of their brain, and I am fully on board with all of that. We have had conferences every year, but last night was the most fired up I have been, in a good way, talking to my son's teacher there.

First of all, his teacher is amazing. Big shout out to her and all that she is doing. She is excellent at her job, and my wife and I both totally appreciate everything she is doing. Talking to her via a phone call last night was great. She was super informative. She had an answer to every question we asked. She talked about what my son needs to work on and what he is doing well. I liked that she focused more on what he needs to work on too. We all know he is smart, what he is good at doing in school, I want to know what he needs to work on so I can help him at home as well. I want to put in the effort to help the teachers as much as I can. This was where my mind was literally blown while talking to his teacher last night. When we talked about what he needs to work on, he wrote this down himself by the way, we are not judging him, his teacher told us he wants to get to know coding a bit better so he can do a 3-D print project at the end of the school year. I let out a verbal gasp when the teacher told us they had a 3-D printer in their classroom. I could not believe it. I am not totally computer savvy, but I know my way around one. I write blogs, I record a podcast, I can check email, I know the basics. But the idea of creating a coding program that would lead me to 3-D printing is so beyond any level of computer knowledge I could ever know or have. I was blown away. I thought this was the coolest thing ever. I have seen some 3-D printing products, but never something that I have created or my wife created or my kids created. Now my son is learning how to do this, during a full school day, and I couldn’t be any happier about it. The idea of a 3-D printer, when I was in 4th grade, would have blown my mind. It would have been the only thing I focused on all year. I would have obsessed over it. I would have poured over it. It would have been the only thing in school that mattered.

The fact that they have 3-D printers also proves to me that I am getting older. That a 3-D printer is commonplace in school now shows my age. I remember getting Oregon Trail, and that was the best. I am old. This is the equivalent, I assume, of when my dad and I were driving home from a college football game maybe four or five years ago and I pulled up a different game on the radio on my phone. I had, still have, an iPhone at the time, we had just watched Michigan barely win and my dad was driving the five hours back home. He wanted to listen to other games while we drove, so I pulled up an app that had college football radio stations, downloaded it and we listened to a few games on the way home. He told me that that technology would have been so foreign to him in his teens and 20's. That is how this 3-D printer being in my nine year old's classroom is for me. It is so wild, but also very, very cool.

I love CCL. I love the gifted program. And now that they have these great tools to help the students learn, while it blows my mind, I love it so very much. This is a good thing. This makes me happy. I hope they continue to grow and learn and add the proper, and needed materials for schools. I'm a big fan of all things CCL, especially the new 3-D printer that my son is currently learning how to use. So awesome.

Ty

Ty is the Pop Culture editor for SeedSing and the other host of the X Millennial Man Podcast.

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