Badgermama

whipping post
Originally uploaded by msabcmom.

We got the memo today that our school district failed its whatchamacallit test scores. So now we’re officially in “PI Status” which means “Program Improvement” but I think what that actually means is that we are now labelled a “bad” school district.

It’s hard to tell what effect the official status has: a confusing array of meetings and studies and inspections and Title Somethingorother funding reports or revisions. I’ll study it and figure out and report on all of that.

It seems likely that the immediate effect is that the yuppies will pull their kids out and put them in private schools, which probably makes the test scores go down further. And also, as the schools hunker down and freak out, teaching to the test, that is even more disincentive for anyone who doesn’t need “test lessons” to want to go to schools in this district.

And how stupid was it to de-fund bilingual education? And then just sort of expect that everyone learn English even though teachers don’t have any training or time to teach the kids from an ESL perspective?
What can I say. NCLB sucks. It is guaranteed to hit all of you. ALL of you. As far as I understand it, every school is deconglomerated or deaggregated, or… Whatever, split up into categories that are logical to that school. And in each category, a certain percent, say 24%, of the students must pass The Test. Every year the percentage of students that pass in each category has to go up. By 2014, all schools all over the country are supposed to have 100% of students pass.

So if you’re wondering why news about schools sucks so bad, blame “No Child Left Behind”, the worst idea ever in public education. It’s a horrible setup so that our entire public education system can be de-funded and undermined. Get ready for your kids to go to McCorporate Jesus Military Academy Elementary because that’s what will replace it.

game club
Originally uploaded by Liz Henry.

The lunchtime game club at Moomin’s school is going well. It’s chaotic. I expected there to be more kids who knew the basics of game playing. It’s astounding that out of such a big crowd of first and second graders, there were only three of them who knew the rules of checkers.

Is this spectacularly un-punk-rock of me to say? Rules and structure are important. Playing a game by its rules is important. Losing the game is important. Playing it again, and getting better. You can feel and measure your success. It’s competition on an individual level, in small doses that anyone can grasp.

It’s odd how schools seem to have lost this basic principle. Competition is not a bad word! Winning isn’t either! Kids should win and be proud of it. You’d be amazed how anti-winning the culture of public education has become.

I’m starting to learn the kids’ names and personalities. The shy girl who watched for two whole recess periods but wouldn’t play or even speak? It was a pleasure to watch her face finally light up as she double-jumped Moomin’s checkers! I was proud… and also was proud of Moomin’s aplomb, and of the kid who cried but then stuck with the game and had fun.

crossing guard
Originally uploaded by Liz Henry.

On the way to school today, Moomin was freaking out a little that I was dropping him off. Would I be able to figure out exactly where his dad drops him off, not at the bottom of the hill, and not at the top, and sort of in a sort of parking lot but not really, and he will try to show me? (What? No.) Was he late? (Almost.) Was I going to walk up the hill with him, like I used to?

No – instead I parked across the street and explained I’d watch him cross at the corner with the crossing guard. “That’s what the crossing guard is for. It doesn’t matter exactly where you get dropped off, as long as you know where to go.” “Are you sure, Mom?” “Yes.”

He walked across the street, deliberate and slow, with his back very straight and his chin up . . . I could see he was scared but proud to be crossing the street by himself. And at the other side he gave me a thumbs-up.

I was so proud of him!

????
Originally uploaded by droolcup.

Scenes from yesterday:

“Moomin, put the book down. Drink your juice.”
“Aaaa! Look out! Your elbow is in the yogurt! Maybe if you stop reading at breakfast…”
“Please get dressed. Put down the comic book.”
“Please get dressed. Not reading time. Getting dressed! Time for school! Arrrrgh!”
“Stop with the book. Dressed. Now. Put a bookmark in it. Socks, shoes, then read.”
“You’re getting the… Oh! Aaaaa! Book DOWN!”

“Okay okay okay mom! I’m stopping, I’m…..”

*protests trail off as he goes slackjawed at the appearance of Dr. Magneto or something, while stepping on his homework and continuing to read*

*I extract the book from his hands and firmly bookmark it*

later in the day
“Okay now… bedtime, pajamas. How about getting ready.”
Child wanders into bedroom, book open, naked.

Ten minutes later I stop reading my own book and go to see if he’s ready
“Hey, you’re still naked. Time to get dressed. Put down the book.”

(Repeat several times)

Around 11:30pm last night I was brushing my teeth with one hand while reading “Memoirs of Madame La Tour du Pin” with the other and vaguely thinking “Isn’t it funny how this Tom’s of Maine toothpaste tastes so weird and bland … but you get kind of used to it … HEY!!!! BLECH!!!!!!”

I was brushing my teeth with diaper rash ointment.

eleanor roosevelt liquor decanter
Originally uploaded by Liz Henry.

At the library today we hauled a big stack of books, some chosen by me, some chosen by Moomin, over to a good spot on the floor. I offered to read anything in the stack. Over Batman, Marvel Team, the Amazing Ant-Man, Garfield, and more cracktastic comics… he chose “Eleanor Roosevelt: First Lady of the World“, a comic-book style biography. We learned that Eleanor’s mom and dad and brother died before she was 10. She taught dancing at a community center, got married to her distant cousin, had 6 kids really fast, and hosted a lot of dinners and parties and by the way she hated war. Then Franklin got polio. And then was President and stuff. (And then I took a moment to explain the Great Depression.) He liked the part about how Eleanor was at a theater or movie or something, and refused to sit on the white side or the black side, but instead put a chair in the middle of the aisle and would not move.

Most of the book was about Eleanor being a delegate to the United Nations and how she was all fierce about it and about writing the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights. I thought this would be the most boring thing in the world to a 6-year-old who complains if there is not combat occurring every few pages, with liberal use of words like “Pow!” and “Ka-THWAP!” I was wrong. He was fascinated and asked me a lot of questions about what “Human rights” meant.

I have to boast, I am sorry… On the page where Eleanor was in the Red Cross, he said “Hey! I know who founded the Red Cross! Do you? Because it was Clara Barton, do you remember the book about Clara Barton?” Really… I thought I would burst with pride there on the library floor… What a terribly smug feeling. I have to remind myself this is the kid who, just recently, meanly pinched the arm of another kid for casting a Dungeons and Dragons spell on his character’s in-game pet mutant zombie rat. It is a good thing that he has an occasional flaw, like being carsick or whining for more lemonade.

Then we read a Batman Strikes comic book about Dwight “Night Train” Goldwater, whose family was kidnapped and threatened by crooked bookie gangsters backed by the evil supervillain “Bane”. There was a lot of kapow, some ridiculous electrified Bat-Bolos, and about 2 seconds of plot as we wondered if Dwight would throw the fight for Heavyweight Champion of the World. I had to explain professional boxing, gambling terms, Bruce Wayne’s detailed research into the real estate holdings of the gangster, and all sorts of other strange stuff. Moomin impressed me with his expressive readings in different voices, particularly the way that he did the TV and fight announcers with pompous masculinity. It was awesome.

I was shocked to read at the back of the book that Eleanor Roosevelt was the only female delegate to the United Nations. 1946! Surely somewhere… but no. I didn’t think I could be surprised by sexism ever again, I’m so damn bitter. But there it is. I was surprised. I thought that in 1946 there maybe would have been more than one token woman in the attempt at global policy-making and politics. I explained to Moomin that I was surprised, and that things are a tiny bit better now, but only a little bit.

For a while on the drive home I imagined a wonderful graphic biography series of women in rock music. I totally imagined myself interviewing Joan Jett about her life story and writing the copy for the comic book biography for 2nd graders. Wouldn’t that be awesome? You’d read it, wouldn’t you? A whole series of biographies! Hell, why stop at punk rock? I’ll write the 2nd grade comic book edition of “Judith Butler, Gender Warrior” too.

Moomin, who is obssessed with growing up to be the writing partner of Dav Pilkey, thought of a book. A few days ago he was putting underwear on his head while describing the book to me. It will be “The Best Book Ever” and will be called “Silly Underpants Stuff.” Over the last few days a song developed, a sing-song chant.

Silly underpants stuff
Silly underpants stuff
Underpants on a horse
Underpants on a truck
Underpants on your head!

I was sick, and then went to a PTA meeting and an editorial meeting. Then there was homework.

Today we finally did the photo shoot, which was silly beyond what I had imagined. We giggled so hard we both had asthma attacks. He knows about Flickr, and tagging, because we look on there to find stuff like “starfish,” “Jupiter,” or “orcas” and I have explained that all sorts of people put the pictures they take on the computer and then upload them onto the Internet. He only has a vague concept of the Internet, but then again that’s true for all of us who haven’t been reading RFCs for the last 30 years. So he asked me to put the pictures on the computer, and print them out. Fine.

“And then Auntie Minnie can see them, and then, she will make some, and we will see them… because they will have the sort of title like a book, of “Silly Underpants Stuff” and we can click on it… and other people can make them and send them to us….” It is very Web 2.0 of him. Suddenly I’m thinking, “Hell, is he going to run for President someday and people will be calling him “President Underpants”? One hope is that every other kid of his generation will have equally silly and overdocumented pasts. The other hope is that he will grow up to be so silly by nature that this episode pales in comparison.

Now you understand better that comment his teacher made on the last report card – it was something like this: “We all enjoy Moomin’s unique sense of humor, and how happy it makes him, even if he can’t explain what he’s laughing about.”

It was a great afternoon. We had a lot of fun being ridiculous!

truth, liberty, toleration
Originally uploaded by Liz Henry.

While I was at recess today, I saw the mean lunch lady in action; I think the same one that the Latina moms were complaining about at the meeting Monday night.

I was sitting with a lot of children playing games, at a picnic table, the one nearest the stage. On a bench right next to us, two children were eating their lunch, and a mom with a toddler. All sitting together quietly with sandwiches spread out on napkins, the kids swinging their legs casually from the bench. This white woman came up and started yelling harshly at the two little girls. “You’re not allowed to sit here! You’re going to trash the place up! You better pick up that garbage! You better not leave any of that trash here! You’re supposed to sit at the picnic tables! Do you have a parent here?” The kids looked at her in shrinking non-comprehension. Keep in mind this is right in front of, 3 feet away from, the Latina mom who was looking right at her in the face and was obviously the mom of one of the girls. Also keep in mind these are little girls either in kindergarten, first, or second grade.

I stood up and said, “Excuse me, what is the problem exactly?”

“They leave their trash everywhere and it makes a lot of work.”

“They seem to be eating their lunch to me. I agree we should ENCOURAGE ALL the children to clean up after lunch. That’s why we should ASK THEM RESPECTFULLY, and POLITELY, to keep the lunch area clean.”

She walked away.

I didn’t do anything else because I was flustered, and also was in the middle of a simultaneous game of Parcheesi and Chutes and Ladders with a group of 12 children. But now, I wish I had talked to the mom sitting behind me on the bench and her children too. We had exchanged a few comments but I woudl like to tell her “Que mal educado este lunch lady, y por qué? Porque ella está tan racista y no sabe como comportase bien.”

Also, I will be writing the principal and the HR person for the school district to report this behavior. I will write tonight, but I’ll find out for sure tomorrow what that woman’s name is because in the morning I’m going to the school to hunt her ass down and explain to her what I feel that I saw. I saw her yell at two little children who may not have even understood her language, and she did it on purpose in front of their mom, to harrass and intimidate the mom and make them all feel small.

I am going to bust that woman, if it is the last thing I do, and if I have to go hang out on the playground every single day until I catch her at it again.

players and spectators
Originally uploaded by Liz Henry.

Our first try at a games day was a great success. Moomin’s homeroom teacher encouraged me to do this during lunch, and to come anytime, without the need for formal setup or approval.

I talked with the school librarian, who is there part-time. She has some puzzles and a chess set, and agreed to house whatever games I provide or can get from donations. I can have the games day there after school if I have arranged it with the office and there aren’t other activities scheduled. It sounds like the library is often full after school, with the special reading groups or something; the librarian herself is only paid for part time and so she leaves at 2:45.

The principal said that it sounds like a nice idea but “things are complicated right now” because he is trying to figure out how to implement some new program that i think is called the Healthy Kids Initiative. It’s an afterschool exercise program or maybe exercise and nutrition education combined, that someone on the PTA got special funding to develop. I don’t really know much about this project. I explained the basic idea of the Games Club and what I’m willing to do for it. (A lot.) So, there is no concrete answer or result, but since I’m not going to take no for an answer, we will see what happens.

The kids had a great time. I learned that since their experience with board games is not extensive, I need to supervise most of the games, remind about rules and whose turn it is, pretty much constantly. Jo Spanglemonkey’s daughter was good at leading games that she was in and I was proud of her leadership. With an after school club, we will get older kids who can play that role and who might be into tournaments or record keeping, so we can track winners. I also like the idea of writing up the club activities for the school newsletter. More things like that should happen… So I wrote up this games day in Spanish and English and sent it to the principal as well. Will he allow it to go into the Bulletin? I am doubting it. Again, we’ll see.

I expect there to be a lot of obstructionist foot-dragging… Screw that noise… Who’s your mama… etc.

The reaction of many of the kids was “WHAT? Moomin has all these games? They’re all his? How can that be possible? Does he know the rules to play them all? Really? Really really? How did he learn? Do you play games in your house, the whole family together? Really? No way. I wish I could. Do you speak Spanish? Can you teach my mom to play Parcheesi? Can we do this again?”

There was one boy who loves games already and knows how to play them; I hope I can rope him in. Plus, as I said, Jo’s daughter Sophie, who is short on patience but who understands all about big kid board games and can add 5+6 on dice without even thinking; a useful trait in Parcheesi.

mom, i want to spread out my blanket
Originally uploaded by Liz Henry.

I knew this was coming.

“Mom, can you show me how to spread out my blanket across my whole bed? Because I think I like that.”

The baby who could eat a fudgesicle at the park without getting his hands or face chocolatey — the toddler who refused to fingerpaint or play in the mud — has turned into a 6 year old who begs me for bed-making tips.

He just explained to me at length that he likes his room to be clean, and for things to be in the right places, and his animals are happier when the bed is made, so could I help him do that, and show him how?

We made the bed. You can see how it looks.

Then he asked if he could please go and do another page of homework.

Oh help…. It’s cool but it’s scary…

Thank god half an hour later we were dancing around wearing underwear on our heads and chanting “Captain Sillypants, Penguin Sillypants, Armadillo Sillypants, I-am-from-the-underwear-planet-take-me-to-your-leader!” That, I know how to do.

“Mom, we could make a book called, The Book of Silly Underpants Stuff, and we’ll take pictures of all the silly things you can do with underpants! Hahahaha!”

Okay, okay, we can do that tomorrow, but it’s time for bed now. In bed. Lights out! Bedtime! Sleep! It’s past your bedtime! (I’m so responsible! Go, me!)

“Mom aren’t you forgetting something? You forgot I have to brush my teeth. And before I brush my teeth I have to take my medicine.”

Oops!

Next he’ll be doing my taxes… with underpants on his head…

Chutes & Ladders
Originally uploaded by javavenus32.

While I was thinking about my idea to go play board games at the school at recess, I realized that I’d never successfully persuaded our next door neighbor to play one. So today I tried it. He and Moomin and I played Chutes and Ladders. Nukie could count up to 6, but had to have a lot of explanation about the concept of moving from square to square in the right direction. I thought about how Moomin has been exposed to grids of 100 numbers since he was three.

It was hard to tell where Nukie’s points of confusion were. Finally I figured out that he can read the numbers 1, 2, and 3 but is uncertain when they go higher. My instructions don’t always make sense to him. He began to catch on, though. Most interesting for him — the children who did something good or bad. (In case you don’t remember, there are moral tales built into Chutes and Ladders; if you land on a ladder, there is a picture of a kid bandaging an animal’s paw, or mowing the lawn. If you land on a chute, then there’s a kid who broke a window with a baseball or ate too much candy and gets a stomach ache. ) He wanted to know the children’s names, and the names of their parents, and their brothers and sisters, and if they did it because they were bad, or if it was an accident, and what happened to them afterwards. Also, who saw the crime? For the kids who did something good, his response is “Now everybody likes him.” His focus was on the social aspect of the game.

Sneakily, it is functioning as math practice.

I watch Moomin considering whether to cheat or not, and mostly deciding not to. We had a conversation about how anyone could win a game of chance. A game of skill is more fun in some ways. Parcheesi mixes chance and skill, so you use your brain for strategy, but the dice rolls are random chance.

After 2 games that was enough for me. It’s really interesting for about 20 minutes and then I get cruelly bored if the kid doesn’t pick up concepts and skills with lightning speed. This is why I make a bad teacher. I can fake it for about another 20 minutes. Then, spacing out, irritability, wandering away, sneaking off to my blog.

Aristotle’s feet
Originally uploaded by maha-online.

But before I go to the school meeting, let me get my rant on for a moment here. I keep thinking of those conversations about school funding and school quality. The conversations where someone says, “Well, of course I want my child to have every advantage.” Meaning, I want them to go to the best possible school, and maybe it is time to think about private school.

I keep mentally completing that sentence, “… every advantage over someone else’s kid.” And not liking that.

The argument goes that we have to let the already rich schools do their own fundraising only for themselves because they won’t raise the money for everyone, because the money, that 100K, spread over all the schools in the district won’t make any significant difference. But that 100K in their own child’s school will make the school better, and if even a few rich educated privileged families leave the school, the whole district loses out. So we have to build inequality into our district, on purpose. We have to have some schools better than other schools, or the fancy people will yank their kids and put them in private school and there will be no good public school. At this point, understand me, I think “good” means “can afford not only a stapler in every classroom, but a phys ed teacher, or a full-time principal, or enough teachers.” On another scale, unfortunately it is clear that “good” means “highest test scores” which means “has the most native English speakers”. Which gets you very quickly into basic racism and since I have only a few more minutes to rant, I’m not going to spell all of that out.

At t his moment I just want to harangue someone, even myself, about the differences between “having every advantage (over)”, which is inequality, and privilege, and entitlement; that vs. “equal opportunity” which means everyone gets access to the resources for education to happen. Not everyone is going to be brilliant, not everyone will go to college and maybe not everyone needs to. Anyway, equal opportunity is not only a nice concept of social justice, it is also the law of this country. But that is not what we have and it is, apparently, not what the privileged want.

Yes, at heart, I am also a product of that kind of privilege, and I still want my child to be tutored by Aristotle in a palace made of gold. But not at every other child’s expense. I think of what I wish I had, and what I could have learned. Of course I want my kid to be able to have opportunities I didn’t have. But, there is nothing in me that makes me think that other people don’t also want their kids to have those same opportunities.

Oh well, this is all a rather hi-falutin’ way to say that I am dissatisfied with the very boring worksheets he brings home and the lack of anything interesting being taught, like science, natural history, geography, culture, history, politics, or anything other than “basic skills you need to score well on the test so that the principal has an upward trend in his career and can say he improved the school’s average test scores” and simultaneously I feel a little bitter and resentful towards the other parents who justify their elitism and stick their kids in private school or homeschool them. I respect y’all on a basic level, of wanting what is good for your kid, but, I have very, very grave suspicions and mixed feelings about doing either of those two things.

Fantastic Four Comic Books
Originally uploaded by fantomCEO.

Moomin noticed I was reading his huge compliation of Fantastic Four comic books. I am on issue #2 or #3, which is a plot about “The Moleman” who is sucking all the nuclear power plants in the world underground and who has a cave made of diamonds.

“Wait, Mom, you don’t know about the Fantastic Four?”

“No… I’m reading this for the first time.”

“I have to show you something, I’m going to show you Alicia…”

And he took the book from me, paging through to the middle until he found the exact page where Alicia was introduced. “What are her powers?”

“Powers? She doesn’t have powers. She’s just a daughter. And she’s blind. Her dad is a supervillain, the Puppetmaster, but she doesn’t know it, see?”

“Oh… so… Hmmm.”

“Then, she looks kind of like Invisible Girl, so she is dressed in her costume, to look like her…”

I tried for a while to fathom why he wanted to show me Alicia. Who knows!

I observed genially, to tease him a little, that it would be very strange to find out suddenly that your dad was a supervillain. Rook straightened up from the stove where he was making lunch. “Ahem. Yes. It would be bad if you found out that I – Oh – Whoops!” “DAD!!! STOP BEING SILLY!!” As we discussed our secret laboratory and the possibility that we were superheroes not villains, Moomin left the room in protest. He really hates to have his reality messed with, which I understand, but in this case it was hard to resist.

I enjoy the energetic rollercoaster prose of these comic books… And the fast pace of the plots. There’s a problem? Nuclear power plants sucked underground in French Equatorial Africa? Hey! Let’s jump into our private jet and go investigate! My calculations show that the center of the disturbance comes from… Monster Island! Wait, a menacing goliath reaches its tentacles from the volcano…

It’s so simple and quick. There is a problem and you can find it, or it finds you, and you fight it directly. I love comic books and adventure stories for that reason.

Possibly the way I fight in reality is far too much like Cuchulainn fighting the waves, a possibly noble, but impossible to win, fight that looks like madness to onlookers. Comic book heroes never have that problem.

you could win a prize
Originally uploaded by Liz Henry.

An enormous sheaf of sales catalogues and flyers came home with Moomin the second week of school. Before he had any homework, he had fundraising materials. These catalogues are pressure on the child and on the parents.

I notice the school does not give prizes for academic achievement.

They give prizes for selling some overpriced candles or wrapping paper or cookie dough.

This infuriates me on many, many levels.

I enjoyed selling crap from those comic-book ad schemes, on the level of looking at the prizes and dreaming of a tent or a transistor radio, and an afternoon spent knocking on all the doors on my block to sell christmas cards. I also enjoyed momentary schemes to sell lemonade, rocks, and craft projects. However, that was a youthful lark. Not a SUBSTITUTE FOR TAXES.

The companies that participate in this sort of scheme are not helping schools. They are exploiting the labor of children and women and throwing us some crumbs. They get free marketing. They use the idea of charity and pity: small cute children selling stuff door to door, and you’ll buy the wrapping paper because the kids are cute.

It is not cute. It is not right.

They might as well have forced labor in the school itself, and turn the kids to doing at work-at-home schemes, or prison-level craft projects, or factory assembly work. All in the name of funding the school of course.

I repeat there are no prizes for academics. There’s no art contest, no sports contests. That might destroy a child’s self esteem. That might be unfair to children who aren’t good at anything. Nevermind that not having academic acheivement, not having competition, might destroy the smart kid’s opportunity for self esteem.

These fundraising sales schemes give the message that it’s okay to lean on people’s class privilege — because being able to sell a buttload of wrapping paper depends on class privilege — and that it’s okay to give prizes for that, and guilt the children into guilting their parents. You’ll get a prize if your mom takes you around your neighborhood to sell stuff, or if she takes your sales catalogue to work and gets her co-workers to buy the stuff out of their regard for her and desire to be nice to her.

This kind of fundraising also further supports the class differences in our school district. How much money do you think the school in the hills will raise, vs. the school across the train tracks?

Taxes, people. We pay them for a reason and one of those reasons is to guarantee equal opportunity in education to every child in this country.

Our system is very, very broken when we have to resort to these schemes in order to pay a P.E. teacher part time or buy some art supplies.

I boycott all such fundraising schemes now and forever. I won’t work for them and I won’t let my kid do them while I still have that option. I bought a pencil sharpener and a stapler for my kids’ classroom, but any money I’m donating will go to the whole district.

Screw these “reach for the stars” glossy flyers, screw the candles, the wrapping paper, the crap and the cookie dough. I’m not buying it.

2nd grade open house
Originally uploaded by Liz Henry.

Our back-to-school night experience was just darn weird. This is the middle of the third week of school. We got there at the appointed time, 6:30, to find total chaos. Kids were running around and there was a lot of pizza, all in the outside area by the playground. It was too loud and chaotic to really talk to any one or meet new people. Don’t know why, but I had pictured that we would sit with the kids and parents in our kids’ class, which might have been useful. Should we have been eating the pizza in his homeroom? I wish I had known, if so…

Then, someone made announcements but no one could hear. We went up to Moomin’s homeroom teacher’s classroom but that was the wrong place! Our handout from last week said “K-2 Orientation Room 19” and “First Grade Standards rm#15”. In some other room we ended up in “2nd Grade Standards”, which was one of the teachers with some stuff on the overhead projector and a handout printed from the web (in English). He gabbled bizarrely about The Test in May, and went on … kind of a lot… about how when he taught 4th grade the kids never knew any math and the state requires them to teach measurement, time, and money, they don’t learn it, t hey make them teach it again in 3th grade, they don’t learn it, they make them teach it again in 4th grade and they still don’t learn it because they’re not ready. Oh, and they also could learn it even if they weren’t ready but they can’t because there isn’t enough time, because American education is too broad. A parent then spoke up in tenative English to ask if we were going to get “the list of 100 words” that the kids have to be able to read by the end of the year. (It is really a list of 200 words.) Somehow although the question was obvious, our Leader did not get it through 3 repetitions. He did say that 20 words would come home per week and there was a pre-test for next week’s words and a test on this week’s.

Then we were lectured on how over the next two years we should help our kids learn things like measurement, time, and money, by experential learning. “You learn with your hands, you learn with your hands, you learn with your hands!” he berated us. “Give them a ruler. Let them measure 10 things in the house. Help them.”

It was all quite disheartening. The things I actually wanted to know were (and still are):

– what is the daily schedule? what’s the routine of the classroom?
– who does my kid have for what subject?
– how are the kids split up into classes or tracked?
– how can I help in the classroom to support ?
– what IS my kid going to have the opportunity to learn ? What will be fun? What about science and social studies and art and music?

Instead I was pretty much told some depressing gabble about tests and how no kid was ready for the subjects on them. The teacher seemed stressed and unclear on what the point was. He took questions, but then didn’t answer the question. For example, a woman behind me asked When the test was and what if your kid doesn’t pass it? Does that mean they don’t pass 2nd grade? How do you know if they’re going to pass or not? What determines it? She didn’t ask in exactly those words, but that’s what she was asking. Somehow it did not get answered! It sucked that the Spanish-speaking parents did not have a handout they could read although I would bet there is one. The whole experience for them must have been big-time pointless.

I don’t get it.

I was also sort of hoping that we would get shown marvellous examples of the kids’ work and get to look at the bulletin boards and things. That didn’t happen. At this point, also, they’ve been in school for almost 3 weeks and I have not seen a lick of homework.

Oh I almost forgot. The guy told us not to teach our kids multiplication at home. We would just confuse them. Instead it is better to make sure they have their basic addition and subtraction facts memorized. Memorized… no one mentioned understanding of concepts.

How completely insane.

From my point of view as an overeducated yuppie? This school blows… Unfortunately…

Can’t believe a teacher with a zillion years experience can’t give a simple half hour lecture saying:

Hi, I’m a teacher. Your kids are great. Here’s my contact information. Here’s what your kid is going to learn this year to fill the requirements to graduate 2nd grade. Here’s the list of math facts and the 200 words. Help your kid do their homework if you can and if you can’t here’s the information for the Resource Center that will help them or you. Oh and by the way why don’t you parents help each other help the kids, and here is a sign up sheet so we can all be in touch. Here are the exciting projects we will do while applying the learning of the basic facts. We will write essays about the life cycle of a frog, and play some math games.

No… this kind of speech did not happen. Alas. But that’s the speech I would have stood up to give.

Regrettably – anyone who could read and understand the Content Standards for Grade Two handout, which is a sort of legislative document written for school administrators and maybe teachers? Anyone who can understand this document is QUITE likely to have children who automatically will be able to do the things. Antonyms… synonyms… dipthongs… syllabication rules… comprehending narrative strategies. Yah, that’s really going to make all the parents in there all comfy and informed.

Bah.

I’m going to go in during recess and play Parcheesi and stuff like that with small groups of kids in the library, if they let me. Perhaps that will contribute to their math skills and ability to learn, think, and become civilized human beings. I kept offering last year but the only thing I was ever asked to do was provide juice or drive the kids to a movie theater on a “field trip” with no educational value and then the trip was cancelled anyway.

Oh, and we had to pay 5 bucks per kid for the “pizza party”.

Did I mention that I’m feeling a bit negative about this school right now… and when I offered to set up a school blog and email list the principal said it was against both the district policy and the PTA’s national policy?

Am cherishing, suddenly, visions of the guerilla school blog and yahoo group for each homeroom. Seriously now. Or what about committing to have a person from each classroom in K-2 interview a teacher or report on what’s happening in the classroom and we make our own freaking newsletter and pass it out? No one ever knows what is happening. Last year the only way I found stuff out was by loitering around the hallway before school lets out, to gossip.

I am seething… I am not sure why… What do I even expect? I like Moomin’s homeroom teacher a lot . I can see they don’t get paid nearly enough and are overworked. What to do? How to improve things? I think the principal and this one teacher have already pegged me as a troublemaker because of my question-asking, and my gentle objection last year to their choice of the movie “Chicken Little” as a curricular linchpin for kindergarten and first grade.

off to school
Originally uploaded by Liz Henry.

We used to have difficulties getting ready in the morning, but then Rook began racing with Moomin to see who could get dressed fastest. The joke is that Rook acts double-fakey-sneaky, and tells him to relax and play and read some comic books. “Oh Moomin! Don’t get dressed! I’m sure it’s not time for school yet! You can just daydream for a long time, all you want! I’m not getting ready yet!” All in an obvious lying voice.

Moomin has now caught on that not all teasing is bad. Every morning he lights up and yells, “Aha! You’re trying to trick me! ” while he slams on his clothes, boasting and taunting…

It’s much much nicer than coming in the room every 5 minutes to yell “Put that comic book down!”

Thanks Rook, for your awesome mad parenting skillz!

baby with rubber chicken
Originally uploaded by Liz Henry.

Do I really even need to write anything? This is amusing enough by itself. This particular baby, Mali, has one of the best WTF looks ever.

For good reason.

“Mom? Dad? Auntie Badger? Why are you making me hold this rubber chicken? Why, cruel world? Why, you demented freaks? I shall now invent the theory of relativity while you undermine my infant dignity…”

Her dad Seymour has a collection of rubber chickens in his office. During the latest heat wave it was so hot that one of them melted!