Tag Archives: Education

In 1975 backpacks were for hikers and all my school supplies fit in my pocket

Elementary school starts on Monday, which means we will be spending the weekend completing the scavenger hunt known as collecting the supplies on the school list. Big Brother is entering 3rd grade. I suppose that makes him an upperclassman in his school. I’m sure this will be reflected in his maturity level going forward.

Big Brother is expected to show up at 3rd grade with a veritable bounty of supplies. I showed up for my 3rd grade with a shirt, pants, and shoes. Everybody was fine with that. Eventually, I acquired a pencil, and after that, an eraser. They need a lot more stuff to write with now. Maybe they’re more furious writers; they probably press down harder on the pencils.

Our supply list consisted of the clothes on our backs and anything useful we could find in the woods. (Image: Lewis Wickes Hine)

Our supply list consisted of the clothes on our backs and anything useful we could find in the woods. (Image: Lewis Wickes Hine)

They need a bunch of sandwich bags too. If sandwich bags hadn’t become a staple school supply I believe the zip-lock people would be out of business. What American eats a sandwich small enough to fit in a sandwich bag anymore?

Buster starts preschool in a couple of weeks. This will be his last year there before Kindergarten. How can I be sure he’ll be ready to move on to Kindergarten next year? Because the public pays for Kindergarten, while I pay for preschool. So if Buster can’t read by this time next year, he’s officially a taxpayer liability.

Big Man will start preschool next fall, which is another reason Buster has to be out of the pipeline by then. Do you think Frank and Jesse James were allowed in the same preschool concurrently? Some things are just too much to ask of society.

I’m not sure Big Man will need two years of preschool, and my wallet tends to agree with me. I never went to preschool and I learned to read and write somewhere along the way. I’m mostly all caught up to the other readers in my age group by now.

My knowledge of letters and numbers was of little concern to my preschool teacher. It was more important that I have soft hands. (Image: Frances Benjamin Johnston)

My knowledge of letters and numbers was of little concern to my preschool teacher. It was more important that I have soft hands. (Image: Frances Benjamin Johnston)

My wife says she wants him to start preschool mostly for socialization reasons. He’s pretty good with other kids already, and sometimes I think she almost agrees he doesn’t need it. But then she takes a good, hard look at his social train wreck of a father and is reaffirmed in her conviction to spare no expense in preventing that tragedy from happening again.

It’s hard to argue with her when uses visual aids to convince me: like a mirror.

Once I get over the adjustments required by the new school year, I will settle down to the knowledge that Buster goes to a very fine preschool and Big Brother’s elementary is equally good.  The tuition and the supply hunting are a small price to pay to cement my children’s futures – though Big Brother is about to find out his future can be cemented just as well with a 24 pack of crayons as with a 64 pack.

There’s nothing you can do with antique fuchsia you can’t do with heliotrope.

This too is an important lesson in his education.

 

Dad: the unauthorized biography

Second graders today are doing work in school that was unimaginable when I was seven. It’s not only the complexity of some of the things they are asked to learn that is responsible for this, but also the fact that the tools they have to work with were simply beyond our imaginations 40 years ago.

At our most recent parent/teacher conference, we were asked to bring our second grader along with us. This change in protocol had an ominous color to it; we imagined them wanting us all together when they explained why we would be asked to leave the school district. Once we discovered we were not the only parents instructed to bring their child, we felt better about it.

Midway through the conference, our son retrieved a notebook computer from the corner of the classroom, logged onto his account and showed us a PowerPoint presentation he had been working on.  The kids were assigned a biographical presentation. My son chose as his subject a “famous” author. A few of the slides follow.

slide2

Biography’s don’t usually bring me to tears, but I found this one especially touching.

He found all the images on the Internet and incorporated them into his project. He is not bothered by distortion as far as I can tell. Some of the images got a little pixellated in the transition, but the most prominent distortion is the fame of his subject. Yet, we all have to make our own artistic decisions.

Speaking of distortion, some of his facts are a little off. His recollection of why he put a Christmas ornament into my mouth is incorrect: we never run out of cookies.

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Also, though apparently born there, I’m not sure where Mohalkvill is. I’m pretty sure he means the Mohawk Valley, but the New York part is right, so why quibble over details.

On the other hand, the part about having been born in 19 something is absolutely correct. That’s exactly when I was born. The age is correct, and I was relieved to learn that I am still alive, a fact that is sometimes in doubt but I hope he got right.

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He was not finished with the project at this time, so I’m not sure if he meant to remove the book covers from my face or do the more appropriate thing and completely paste over my head. For now, we’ll have to be content that a good portion of the unsightliness lies hidden.

Being the subject of a biography is a sobering responsibility. I have to work hard to prove I was a worthy subject. This will be difficult, as my natural inclination will be to let my new fame go to my head and to begin putting on airs.

 

We got the milk, now let’s tackle those cookies

Buster, our three-year-old,  struggles to pronounce certain consonant sounds. The most famous of these is the k or hard c sound. Buster has always compensated for this lack by substituting another sound where the k goes, usually a t. Hence, milk becomes milt and work becomes wort.

We’ve learned to recognize these hybrid words, allowing him to express himself. At the same time, I have been trying to train him how to pull his tongue back into his mouth in order to pronounce the elusive k.

where's that tongue?

Civil Defense workers searching mouths for the elusive k sound. Everyone did their part to help the war effort. (Image: Ann Rosener/U.S. War Information)

Our practice had yielded limited results. Then one day, he requested a bowl of cereal. When I asked if he wanted milk in it, his answer was non-committal. “Yes, milk or no, milk?” I asked again.

“Yes, milk,” he replied, clear as bell, whenever a bell perfectly pronounces the word milk.

I did a double take. “What? What did you just say?”

A smile of recognition stole over his face. “Yes, milk,” he belted out proudly.

I picked him up and hugged him. “You said, milk. What a brilliant boy! You did it!” I gushed as I spun circles with him in my arms. He beamed at me proud and happy at how proud and happy he’d made me.

When Mommy came home, he ran to her to show off the word milk like she’d never heard it before. More hugging and spinning ensued.

In the week since, he’s showed his mastery of milk to the next door neighbor and anyone else who happened by. When it’s eluded you for all your life, milk becomes powerful juice.

Even when I was a child, Mr. K stood in the shadows of Mr. M and Mr. T.

Even when I was a child, Mr. K stood in the shadows of Mr. M and Mr. T.

The other night, Buster, Mommy, and I were enunciating about milk. I happened to be about to eat a cookie that Buster had his eye on. “I’ll give you my cookie if you do two things,” I told him. “First, say cookie.”

Up until now, cookie has always be tootie. Buster thought hard. “Cootie,” he said, followed by “Tookie.” Getting two hard c sounds into one word is daunting work.

“Okay, that’s close enough. Now say candy.”

Buster focused. “Canny.”

“That’s so close. You got the c right but you left out the d.” D has never been a problem for him, but apparently there was no room for it in a word that already had a c.

“You’re very close. Try one more time.”

Buster looked longingly at my cookie. The pressure was too much. He couldn’t focus on the c and hit the d too.

“I know you can do it. One more try,” I pleaded .

Perhaps he saw the cookie drifting away from him. He looked at me hopefully, then shifted his gaze to the always compassionate Mommy. He took a deep breath and said with clarity and confidence:

“Milk.”

Sometimes it’s not the cards in your hand; it’s how you play them. He won two proud smiles and a cookie.

Reflections inspired by a German class for second graders

Our eldest is beginning an after school German class today. This is not the sort of news that normally makes one reflective, but here I go anyway.

In a perfect world, I should be the one to teach my kids to speak German. Implicit in that perfection would be my knowing how to speak German. My father spoke German, fluently. In the perfect world I mentioned, he would have taught it to me when I was little. I would have soaked it up, and it would be as natural as English to me.

In the imperfect world that formed me, my father did no such thing. He was a teenager during the Second World War, living in the USA and speaking German as smoothly as his immigrant parents. Not surprisingly, something in that combination convinced him not to speak German to his children.

I took German as a freshman in college. It was either a language or Math, and I felt done with Math. I picked German. Maybe something in my genes would mold it to my tongue more securely than the high school Spanish that had always merely swilled about in my mouth before dribbling down my chin.

German 101 supplied me the worst grades of my academic career, if you discard the high school Geography class I nearly failed because I was too busy protesting the methods of the high school Geography class and the methods of high school in general.

The edition I used didn't have such a lovely cover, which is probably why I wasn't inspired to do better in class.

The edition I used didn’t have such a lovely cover, which is probably why I wasn’t inspired to do better in class.

After freshman year, I transferred to a school that required no more Math or foreign languages out of me, which was good since I was done applying myself mathematically and I had no aptitude for foreign languages.

In fact, I was a pretty lousy student overall.

As the undergraduate years rolled by, it became clear that I was a poor classroom learner. Yet, for the very best of reasons (I couldn’t find a job), I attempted graduate school.

Graduate school taught me only one thing: there is nothing like higher education to suck the life out of a subject matter you love (or thought you loved).

I thought I loved History, until I tried to pursue it as a graduate degree. Apparently, it was something else I loved, an academic Cyrano de Bergerac, hiding in the bushes, feeding enchanting lines to the deceitful mouth of History. History itself is mind-numbingly boring; they taught me that in one semester of graduate school.

Since I’d learned everything I needed to know about History, I determined I didn’t require more than one semester of grad school.

That was the end of my formal education in German or Math or History or anything. Abrupt, but okay for a rotten student.

My son is excited about his German class. I hope that excitement lasts. I hope he’s a good student. I hope he inherited his mother’s love for school.

I hope he goes on to become much more than a grad school dropout who can’t even speak German.