Nevada Caucus participants “standing-up” for their candidates.

My wife and I helped make history today by participating in the first Nevada Caucus for president. I teach elementary school, but my BA is in political science, and I found the process and experience interesting and rewarding.

First, we live in a part of town that we jokingly call “Republicanville” because of the high percentage of Republicans that live in this part of town. So it was enlightening to see some of our neighbors in attendance that we didn’t know were Democrats.

In addition the turn out was incredible. They so underestimated the numbers that they had to print copies of the ballots that you handed in to make a paper trail of your vote.

Caucusing to persuade Kucinich voters to change candidates.

After some introductions and explanations attendees were asked to stand-up and move to different parts of the room to vote for their choice. An initial count was made, and using those results it was determined that there were not enough votes for Dennis Kucinich for those votes to be considered “viable,” and there was one uncommitted vote. At that point the actual caucusing began and Obama, Clinton and Edwards voters began to mingle with the “unviable” voters to persuade them to their point of view. After those voters made their decisions’ a new vote was made and posted. In our precinct Obama won by a slim margin over Clinton and Edwards came in third. I wasn’t surprised to see almost all of the Kucinich voters change to Edwards. Edwards got exactly the minimum number of votes required to be “viable,” and that number grew a bit after the caucusing.

Upon returning home we saw that Hillary Clinton had been projected the winner in Nevada. A good, somewhat “messy” experience in American Democracy.

Nevada’s first caucus memories.

Nevada is a large state land mass size, but our population is just over 2 million, so we don’t usually garner much attention from candidates. So this was a great experience having our caucus early in the process. Why was Nevada allowed to have our caucus this early? Nevada is a state with a diverse population (especially compared to Iowa and New Hampshire) located in the west.

Learning is messy!

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Originally uploaded by BCrosby

I found out today that there probably is money to send me to NECC 2008! I’ve already gone to 2 conferences this year, and there is an unwritten rule that you get one per year, if there is even money for that. One was a conference that I went to actually as a favor when someone else suddenly couldn’t go, and in 2 weeks I present at the Nevada School Counselors’ Conference in Las Vegas about our INCLUSION video and apparently they don’t “count” that one because it’s “in state.”

So I just might make it after all!

Learning is messy!

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Originally uploaded by BCrosby

T-shirt the Nevada State Education Association wants me to wear to the Nevada Caucus on Saturday.

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Originally uploaded by BCrosby

My class had another adventure today. A magazine article is being written about how students use technology in their learning, and part of the article involves my class. So the magazine paid for a bus and a photographer – we went into a typical “high desert” location and shot photos of the students with their laptops in the snow and sagebrush for an hour. Only one skinned knee, but lots of fun for the class. You can check out a few more photos on our Flickr account.

When we got back to class the students were working on their blogs so the photographer took pictures of that too. The important thing is that all the laptops were still working when we got back … even though 2 of them ended up in the snow when students slipped. One of them had snow crammed in every port (ethernet, firewire, USB … we got the snow out … let it sit with that side of the computer facing down so any water could drain out … and when we got back to school it started right up … not bad for an 8 year old laptop that has been used to death. : )

Learning is messy!