Results For "Month: August 2012"

The Letter

Friday 31 August 2012

It’s been a little tough for the Girl to begin school. Going from the small environment and relative freedom of Montessori to the highly organized reality of public school kindergarten would have been enough, but the color-coded “positive behavior incentive program” has added an entirely new stress. All students begin on green, it was explained to us during orientation, and students update their color as their behavior changes. Blue and purple indicate great and superior behavior; yellow and red indicate problematic and bad behavior. “Finishing on green or higher is considered a successful day,” said the principal.

L’s goal from the beginning: straight purple. Her first day, she came home with purple; her second day, blue. A few days later, the unthinkable: green.

“I hate those colors,” K admitted shortly afterward. “Why do they even need that system?”

I understand the reasoning, though. Public school lumps together children from a variety of backgrounds, with parents who have more or less effective parenting skills. In short, there arrive at kindergarten children who aren’t very well behaved. They must learn the social skills necessary to make it through school successfully, and such a system is an attempt to foster a certain (edu-speak alert!) behavioral metacognition.

But for children who already have those skills? And for children like the Girl, who already have those skills plus a healthy dose of OCD perfectionism? It’s stress.

And then the email arrives from L’s teacher, Ms. B:

Good Afternoon! I just wanted to take a moment and let you know what a joy L is to have in class. She has such a sweet personality and is so much fun to teach. I can’t wait to get to know her better and let her show me how smart she is. Thank you for sharing her with me.

Thank you, Ms. B.

Stereo

Thursday 30 August 2012

The Girl was heading up to bed. Teeth were brushed, hair combed. But one thing remained.

“I’m going to bed,” she said.

“Oh, no, no, no! Not until you…” came the stereo response.

The Blind and the Blind

Tuesday 28 August 2012

They sit in their desks, which chance has placed side by side, and quibble. Snipe. Insult. Complain. One barges in on another’s conversation with an inane response meant only to provoke, then grows angry about the provocation. An act? The other talks about her nemesis as if she’s not there when in fact she’s within ten feet. Deliberate cruelty?

Mannequin disagreement by Ano Lobb. @healthyrx

I intervene, and soon one or the other is saying words that could have easily come out of either’s mouth

“She’s so irritating!”

“I can’t stand her!”

“She does that stuff just to annoy me!”

“She won’t quit!”

And I find myself saying, “If.” If you’re so annoyed by her, why provokeÂ her by cutting into her conversation? If you think she’s purposely irritating you, why encourage her by acknowledged her success? If she won’t quit, why don’t you?

The obvious answer isn’t always so obvious to adults; to expect a flash of mature intuition from thirteen-year-olds might be just looking for the miraculous. Still, I hope that eventually, once the blinders begin to fall off, they’ll recognize futility.

Choices and Impressions

Monday 27 August 2012

First impressions are important, we teachers tell our students constantly. They’re important, that’s certain, but in a classroom setting, where first impressions melt into 180 days of reality, they often don’t last. Naturally, they always change by year’s end, but it’s not a simple arc of development. They frequently shift, sometimes gracefully, occasionally violently; they often morph, like shadows or clouds; they sometimes circle on themselves.

I try to start them off positively, projecting a hastily-made but sincerely meant message on the overhead, wondering how they’ll interpret it.

First day message to students

How does one make a positive first impression in an eighth-grade classroom? They do their best: they don’t talk much at all; they sit in their seats, still; they hush up when I poke my head into the room from hall duty.

I do my best to make my first impression count: I am a hard-as-nails, traditional teacher. My voice is stern; my posture, perfect; my hands, clasped behind my back. I give them a drill sergeant routine. And then I soften, explaining, “I can be that kind of teacher as necessary.” It’s the same every year, but I don’t know that this year I am as successful in creating that tough, gruff exterior.

We make our first impressions, and we move on. Their opinion of me changes; mine of them alters. The talkers appear; those with bullying tendencies make those known; the unmotivated begin altering their body language.

And then comes a new student. He enters the room, a classroom already with its own atmosphere and dynamic just a handful of days into the school year. He has a decision to make, an impression to make. We all do.

“The fork in the road” by i_yudai

He stands at a cliche crossroads. He can never turn back. He can never recreate that first impression.

Sometimes, his choices are shockingly disappointing.

Practice

Sunday 26 August 2012

I learned to appreciate soccer sitting with friends at this or that bar in Lipnica Wielka or sitting with my in-laws, watching club play as well as Euro Cup and World Cup tournaments. It’s a deceptive game for the uninitiated, and since I’d never played or even really watched the game, I had no idea about much of it.

And so when it comes time to start helping the Girl with her new soccer skills, I have to rely on the basics, things I’ve inferred from watching but never actually been taught — like kicking with the inside-top of the foot for better control.

It soon becomes clear, though, that the Girl either kicks the ball with the side of her foot or the front of her foot — perhaps too much too quickly.

Other skills are simpler, like stopping the ball.

In the end, though, we deduce that the best option is simply to encourage the enjoyment of the game, The finer points will come later.

On the Field

Saturday 25 August 2012

It’s perhaps a cliche of parenting, the desire to give more to your children than you had as a child. Unfortunately, it seems our culture equates that “more” materialistically more often than not, but the question of experience seems more important. And to that end, we have to step out of our usual circle and involve others — for instance, ten others, to make a soccer team.

Providing the Girl with the opportunity to kick a ball back and forth is easy enough: we’ve done it in the backyard a time or two. Attention spans, though, tend to be short in such activities. There’s always a cat to chase, a trampoline to pull out of the basement, or something else — squirrel! Somehow, though, things change when kicking the ball in a controlled environment with virtual strangers. Perhaps it’s a desire to create a positive impression; maybe it’s the drive to conform and kick along with the others. Whatever the case, the Girl’s first experience with soccer provided her first and foremost with a concentrated dose of semi-organized sport.

Still, kicking and even throwing a soccer ball, even in concentrated doses, only provides so much, and it’s all physical.

There’s more to sport than the physical. In fact, the physical, at a certain level of competition, is only incidental. World-class athletes have practiced so much that the maneuvering and contorting involved in a given sport is almost a matter of muscle memory. Watch a gymnast doing a routine on theÂ pommel horse and it’s hard to imagine he’s thinking through every single move, every single flex of the muscle. By that time, the game is mental. He knows he can do his routine perfectly: he’s done it flawlessly in practice countless times. It’s now a question of doing it when there’s something — everything — at stake. It’s now a question of confidence and mental strength.

A gymnast can’t really take his pommel horse skills into the business world and do much with them. He can, however, take his self-confidence and his ability to perform well under stress into non-sporting life and achieve just about anything he wants. So it’s not so much the physical I’m worried about as I watch the Girl run about the soccer field.

I’m grateful, of course, for the improvement in coordination and strength such an activity brings, but more important is the mental development.

I’m more pleased when she calmly chases down a ball that’s gotten out of her control, maintaining her cool the whole time, than I am when it becomes clear that she’s one of the fastest kids on the field.

I’m more pleased when I see her calmly go get a ball that a teammate has kicked away from her out of childish spite

than I am when I see a good, strong kick.

But I’d be lying to deny that the kick makes me feel good, too.

First Day 2012

Wednesday 22 August 2012

Who knows how many times I’ve done it. If I had to count, I probably could count how many “first days” at school I’ve experienced. With time on both sides of the desk, I suppose I’d have to be now nearing thirty first days.

But I still remember my first first day. Some degree of nervousness, some level of excitement, some small amount of disappointment mixed with a great deal of joy.

I would like to think the Girl will remember her first first day. That she will remember how the night before her worries and fears melted in the morning to a smile and a paradoxically calm excitement.

That she will remember her idea to have a desert picnic after dinner. That she will recall her planning and packing for the picnic.

That she will linger over the memory of cuddling up to her mother, snuggling with her baby brother.

And that she’ll think of that first day every time she sees an ice cream truck.

Face Off

Sunday 19 August 2012

The Girl loves our cat, Bida. Loves. Too much. It borders on obsessive, and she traditionally has shown it in ways that are far from gentle. This probably explains why the Bida loves the basement hideaway we set up for her.

It also might explain her trepidation with our newest family member.

Fortunately for her, there’s really only one thing he wants to do.

Support

Wednesday 15 August 2012

The first real step toward mobility is probably the ability to roll over. The only thing we as parents can do to help that develop, though, is simply to put the Boy on his belly as often as possible, most frequently just before feeding.

Sitting, the second step, is something we can help him with. All we need is something to support him — from every direction.

Yet he remains more interested in his bib.

Orientation

Tuesday 14 August 2012

Exactly eight years ago today, to the minute, K and I were in the midst of our wedding party. One might suggest that I’ve made a mistake. “It’s six hours later in Poland,” one might protest. “That would make it almost five in the morning there.” Obviously, such a protester has never been to a Polish wedding.

At five in the morning, we were still going — perhaps not going strong, and certainly not all of the guests still with us, but going all the same.

Eight years later, we’re still going, but there’s four now, which makes the going a bit more ponderous at times. Yet we still share the same future- and present-orientation that brought us together in the first place: family.

And we’re still going ever-new places. Like kindergarten orientation.

Kindergarten? Already?

Yes, and someone’s already set to be in the teacher’s seat at that.

« Older Entries

Matching Tracksuits

Fun in Fours

Results For "Month: August 2012"

The Letter

Stereo

Choices and Impressions

Practice

On the Field

First Day 2012

Face Off

Support

Orientation