A Free Tutoring Service: Preparing for the Future

                                    Cleophas "Mike" McAlpin...Executive Director/Chief Tutor  

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Lesson Review Electricity and Electronics.....Saturday, December 12, 2009      Lesson Review  Dec2009 B ...Anew student

John...20...or better known as...."Little John", a wonderful young man!

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                            Lesson Review for this Session...(Christmas Vacation is upon us....We are still active...See below!)

Little John was right on time! It was 10:00AM when he stepped into our 'tutoring room", as I had learned to call it. After all, it had been constructed 9 years previous when the front porch of my home was enclosed. After realizing there was no need for a front porch, and all the need in the world of keeping tutoring students from the blast of winter weather, and the heat of summer days and nights, I decided to hire a contractor to enclose the front porch and convert it into a.....tutoring room. The cost of such a venture was in excess of $5000, but as I explained to Little John, I was in the habit of maximizing living space. Having purchased a new house in Carson back in 1965, and having enclosed every available space, to create a mansion. My most prized construction was the enclosure of a patio space, to turn it into a magnificent den, complete with a gable roof, containing beautiful skylights, a hardwood floor, a free standing fireplace, a beautiful leather bar with comfortable bar stools, a huge mirror behind the bar, and a free standing fireplace that glowed during cold weather. I added light brown leather furniture, with an exotic coffee table. Everyone gravitated to this beautiful room, which saw its first use as a beautiful pool room, the table being bought by a lady who I took in, Cousin Opal, because she had no place to go. What a blessing she was to me and my family! It is as I have always said, being good to someone might mean that person will be able to repay you ten-thousand fold! And that she did! Being homeless is really no fun, and Opal spent many, many happy days with my family before she succumbed to illness....God rest her wonderful soul. Little John had no idea he was in for a 6 hour stint, and neither did I.

I had been a little hoarse, possibly due to a virus...perhaps offered by a tutoring student, or other students.  I had visited King Drew Magnet school and delivered a speech to the 9th graders in an Algebra One class. I had invited the class into my Free Tutoring Service, to which a lot of parents responded. I had a habit of extending my invitation into a lecture on the ills and traps of society; illegal use of drugs, sexual promiscuity, the need to be honest and true to yourself, and a belief in God. I had the habit of using some of my life's experiences to make my point, and Little John was soon to suffer the same fate! Without realizing it, I was immersed into a lecture that took nearly 6 hours to complete, and I will outline some of it in the next few paragraphs. Sit back, go get a cup of tea, as I have just obtained, at this early Sunday morning hour of 3:30 AM. I will try to be as brief as I can, but why should I? After all, this is a diary of education, that all might see...the struggles that Black people face, in the pursuit of education. Or must I repeat, as usual, that I am considered by many, to be....an Educational Minister...that God places words into my mouth to say.....and so, I just let...it...rip!!

I told John of my past educational experiences. I started out with my having skipped the 5th grade because I was just too darned smart for my own good. I was a straight "A" student before that and a straight "A" student right through my "free- one- year- scholarship" to a local Black College. After that tirade, my father came to me and basically said, "now what are you going to do?" That was terrifying for me as it must be for all 18 year olds, who are facing life on their own! I wrote to my older brother in Chicago, my hero Webster, and he invited me to come to Chicago to live with him; promising me a chance to attend the University of Chicago, Institutes of Technology in Michigan and Illinois...to which were mere pipe dreams, as there was no way of paying the $1200 dollar per year tuition of a University of Chicago. But I did pass the entrance exams with flying colors (Can you pass this examination?). My brother worked as a warehouseman and barely made $1.50 per hour, I presume. In other words, we were near to poverty, having lived in a one room place with a community bathroom and kitchen, with several other roomers. What a mess! He sacrificed his life with his girlfriend and her 6 year old daughter to take me in and place me and the little girl into the "big bedroom" ( I tried my best to study), while his girl friend and him, occupied the "illegal fire escape room" that had apartment stairs running right down through it. What a tremendous sacrifice they made for me...that gave me the opportunity to enter the  University of Illinois at the Navy Pier in Chicago! Chemical Engineering was my choice of career, and I have yet to figure that one out! I was in a class of 35 Whites, who had slide rules dangling from their belts, and I had never even seen one! I told John of how the Physics Professor placed a problem on the board and told all of the White students and me....that you have 1 minute to give me the answer. I could only sit in shock as all of the students whipped out a slide rule and went to work! I was the only one who did not raise a hand when the Professor asked for the answer to his "Scientific Notation" problem. I was hit with a double dose of reality; I was ill prepared for the rigorous task of education regarding Engineering, nor was I equipped to deal with Race Relationships, either, as I had hardly... or never spoken to a White person in all of my life!! I took German; I made "A" grades; Semi-Micro-qualitative Analysis of Chemistry; I took Quantitative Analysis; Physics, Calculus and P.E. (boxing) What an awesome bunch of classes...and what a small amount of studying time I had to pass each of them! John was shocked when I told him I was the only one in the class who can converse with my teacher in German, Mrs. Brunfeld!

I told John of my stays with other brothers, and the violence seen when one brother engaged himself in too much drinking. Moving from room to room, eating daily vegetable plates that cost $0.25, was really no fun! Moving from roach infested room to room, with 2 week stays in each, was no problem since I only had 3 coat hangers of clothing....to include a couple of white T-shirts, two pairs of kahki pants, and a blue serge overcoat with a large split up the back....in the blinding snow of winter...and the heat of the Chicago summer...yet education was in the forefront of my mind, and not the bitter cold wind that blew off Lake Michigan! I persevered through the University....though at times it was the most difficult of things to do, and the temptation was there to quit and just give in. It took me two years to do just that, and to acquire a job at the United States Post Office in Chicago. This was by no means, the end of my educational dream,  but the beginning of it, as I worked hard to transfer to Los Angeles, California's Post Office, and I succeeded! My reason for transferring...was to attend California's "free schooling"! And I had to learn most of the streets of two very large cities, and pass Scheme Tests to signify my knowledge, simultaneously, in order to make my move!

Los Angeles Trade Technical College was the first school I attended, taking the Class of the Electronics Technician, because I figured I needed a vocation while attaining other educational heights. From Trade Tech came a job at Autonetics (A division of North American Aviation), where I scored a 59 of 60 on their electronics exam ( no one had ever done that!), and was ushered into the business as a respected....Functional Test Inspector! What status, to be able to walk around with shirt and tie, to stamp an approval on the guidance system of a Minute Man Missile One System, or a Terrain Avoidance Computer of Jet aircraft, or each assembly of many other pieces of armament for the United States Military! I was really a very tough Inspector who saw the ushering in of solid state devices... such a transistors, and diodes and the like. What a glorious time for me...as Engineers struggled to make a circuit work, when I stamped a "reject" on each piece of equipment that didn't. What a wonderful place to be educationally, that saw the beginning of miniaturized electronics gear, to include cell phones, calculators, and computers, and more and more sophisticated computers....What a blessing God bestowed unto me...and I did not let Him down, as I obtained information on the latest of the Tech-Tronics Oscilloscope,  and all of its plug-ins...the rapidly changing computer world saw me burning the midnight oil to keep up with the latest technology, as I WAS a Functional Test Inspector of the highest caliber, with the need to stay abreast of the changing electronics landscape.....and I did it with gusto! Education at its highest of levels...totally dedicated to learning...that nothing should interfere with my need to know....not the girls...not the necessity to party....not the necessity to engage in frivolous behavior: just the notion to sit at a kitchen table and spread out schematics before me....into the dawn hours...because I really had the need to know...why did the "pulse shaping electronics work", to cause the "rise and fall time" to fall with a specified time zone?.....or how did the "wave guides" work to transfer radio energy, or how did the pulsing screen on a Pilot's cockpit TV work to deliver a "clearance plane" below a fighter jet of 2000 feet... really work. What educational fun that was for me!!! Or a break-a-way cross, that told a pilot when to "bank his jet" away from the hell fire that his missile would create when it exploded to destroy and enemy jet! And to make matters better for me, I studied very hard to reach the level of an Advanced Class Ham Operator, Kb6yhi, as I remember...to send Morse Code at a rate of 20 words per minute....and able to operate a radio station such as KJLH  in Los Angeles! What a seemingly disappointment for me...for as I purchased communication equipment... I could find no buddy to communicate with!

The joy I felt when a Minute Man Missile One blasted off  into the upper atmosphere, to move 4000 miles down range, to finally hit a target in the Pacific with an accuracy of 20 or 30 feet was.....exhilarating...to say the least....for I had used my T-52 stamp wisely!

Little John did not mind me delving into the past to determine that education is available to all who would take time to engage in it. Taking subjects like Geometry, Algebra, and the like really had true meanings in the real world. Whether it is calculating the gravitational constant "G" of 32.2 feet/Second/Second to determine the "Clark Orbit" of 22,000 miles above the surface of the earth, to keep your ( www.satcodx.cox    Satellites in their orbits) satellite dish pointed in the right direction...with the rotation of the earth... has a lot to with Physics. To know about Centrifugal Force and Gravitational Force is the key to watching Satellite Television, Cell Phone Communications and the like. To know about geometry is to know about the Physics of Sliding bodies down an inclined plane of 30 or 40 degrees...to find the acceleration, for one would know how much gas or brakes to apply.....to save a life....even around a curve in the highway. To know Physics is to know why "hydro-planning" has no frictional force to stop a moving vehicle, as Sir Isaac Newton so eloquently explains in his "Inertia Law", or that something in motion, will remain in motion, unless acted upon, by some external force...Which is Newton's First Law of Motion. John took note of fact that I was an Artillery Surveyor (A Paratrooper with 32 jumps) of the highest caliber...transferring my Fort Sill Knowledge in Surveyor School, to the Civil Surveyor (self taught Civil Surveying to come out number one or two on a Civil Service Examination) of the Los Angeles Recreation and Parks Department, as the first Black to hold such a position, to be hounded by the Racist Supervisor Wynn Roche, 70 years of age and unwilling to deal with the smart- assed new breed of Blacks ...but to survive his calling Martin Luther King....."Martin Lucifer Coon"....I know he must reside in Hell, Now! 

As a hospital attendant at age 16, to a Supervising Senior Electrical Tester to the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power for 28 years....I have seen education as a necessary ingredient....and I could have done nothing without it.

We moved to the tutoring room from the "Refrig-computer" (computer near to the refrigerator: there are five computer stations here), where I entered this "Diary  of Education" to point out our self- help- pages, our Lessons of the past and our students of the past... moving to graduate from Colleges and Universities across America; to make this world a better place for all. We moved to the tutoring room to take John's photo and to look at books on electronics and the like: to be reminded that education in all subjects would be taught.......In my experience as a Chief Tutor, it seems so natural that I can move from letting a generation of young people know about the dangers of Drug use, to the dangers of Alcoholic Consumption...to the Dangers of smoking anything! To letting them know of the areoles in the lungs, to take in oxygen and not smoke...for smoke kills so many of us...to tell John and others that cocaine "frys the brain"... chemically changing it into something that God did not intend....and that drugs have no place in the life of someone who is moving to the top educationally.....and that the CEO would frown of such drug habits....and so do I!! The quickest way to gain scorn in the Professional Community is to say...." I SMOKE MARIJUANA!" For the youth are our hope for the future....and one would abandon anyone so inclined to use such "drug words", as they are detrimental to the success of the Black Race...as so many have succumbed to gunshot wounds, prison sentences, both within the U.S. and Mexico. To involve oneself in the drug culture is to give credence to the belief that it is o.k.  to kill women and children in such places today as Juarez, Mexico...where thousands are dying even today, to support the Drug Cartel.......and we, ignorant as we should never be.....are able to brag that we...might take a drag....on a "BLUNT"!   I rebuke such rhetoric from all ignorant people....and refuse to teach them....anything...except "they should refrain from smoking marijuana or anything else"...I can not and will not support any person who engages in such behavior as to smoke marijuana... while in a desperate attempt to move educationally to the top!!

I told John that I refuse to communicate with drug addicts and drunken folks....they are as ignorant as an asses...and I am on a much higher level...that he should surround himself with only positive people ( and that included members of the opposite sex: brains count more than good looks: some "attractive" folks have nothing to talk about because they read and study nothing of value), and not be dragged into an association....because of the need to have friends......as friends are not people who might get you a stint in prison for illegal activity. A friend will protect you from such and not have you arrested along with him....to spend countless years in prison as a bystander to illegal activity is a terrible thing!  

I can truly say, that John listened to my lecture and seemed fascinated at every turn. Sometimes it dealt with the far reaches of the Universe; the speed of light and sound;  the light-year, and our place in the Universe; God is the Creator of All....the Red and Blue Shift of Radar...thermodynamics...artillery surveying  (Surveyor-paratrooper--32 jumps) ....firing angles and elevations; maximum range and elevation of projectiles; space travel and the moons of planets...the generation of electricity...and magnetism...the human body....electrolysis of water...Periodic Table of the Elements ( we used our Valuable Links Icon above to venture into the Internet...to find all of the information available to students...from basic math to the Differential Equations of Advanced Calculus ); Uranium, Copper, Gold, Aluminum and Silver as conductors of electricity; ohms and mhos, resistive components of electricity and magnetism..., exercise and diet...Politics and the President...his goals and ambitions...Race in America...other successful students....basic math and science...social norms...etc...etc...etc...

John and I read an electrical meter given to me when I retired, as well as the electrical meter at my home. Already, John, is a Meter Reader. We looked at the Clamp-on Ammeter, The Digital Fluke Volt-Ohm-Ammeter, and the Techtronic's Oscilloscope...as well as electronics components that we will be having a lot of fun with. John was so excited that he did not want our session to end...and neither did I, as I discussed his Rise to the Top, and his place in this Organization.......like Jarrell, a once failing student....WHO IS NOW A DIRECTOR....OF "A FREE TUTORING SERVICE; PREPARING FOR THE FUTURE!"

We took a break to realize that 6 hours had past....and I believe John was just as excited as me...when he said..." I can't hardly wait to come over here next time"!  It was then that I realized....that I had forgotten about the lunch my wife Gayle had placed on a table besides me.

 I shouted, : "Boy, am I hungry and thirsty!!"  To which she replied, "I placed your lunch in that table 3 hours ago!"

That only proves....that when God is in control....all you should do...is to let Him have his way!  Whether you might realize it or not....He is in control...all of the time!  All Praises to our God Almighty....Cleophas Mike McAlpin...This Lesson Review is dedicated to my brother, Colonel Aubry McAlpine, Retired USAF...and CEO of the once thriving...Logicon (tallest building in San Pedro)...a Stock Company (retired)....What a success story...when all of the odds were stacked against success!

Christmas Vacation is upon us....The Tutoring is Ongoing!

John came over to retrieve his Electrical Book. More chapters to be read and the test at the end of our first 40 pages has to  be completed.

Out to lunch with Volunteer Tutor....Peggy....to discuss tutoring

Out to lunch with Shalay..to visit Volunteer Tutors, Aubry and Patricia McAlpine. Shalay receive a lunch-lecture, as Aubry talked about Tuskegee and the need to attend and to  focus on math and science.

Showed John the work of our electrician and pointed out and described protective circuits, like GFI...and security motion sensor lighting. I discussed Solar Cells and their use in today's world. It is amazing how much there is to discuss with John, and he absorbs all like a sponge.

Students did not show up...like Ti'man (13) were Destiny, Karyman, Ronald...Out shopping, I presume.

Director, Jarrell, is busy with his IT duties at a Charter School. Took time to discuss program with Mia of Home Depot, as well as Danny (female)/ Told them they were invited to attend and to send e-mail....They seemed very eager to join our program, as they are young adults!

Review  Lesson M14   Assignment for John and all others....Our very own website!

John will be taught by.. Mr. Cleophas Mike McAlpin...who had a license to teach in California Schools: ELECTRICITY AND ELECTRONICS...Retired Supervising Senior Electrical Tester of the Los Angeles Dept. Of Water and Power for 28 years. See my Resume  "I can't hardly wait to get started"!...says Cleophas Mike McAlpin

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