Recently in Schools Category

Did you miss it?

Today was a "National Day of Action" for educators around the country to agitate for attention to the shamefully necrotic education system in the United States of America. Apparently the Lotto is not covering school costs as much as everyone though it would. Surprise.

Here in California, where 1 in 8 American school children are educated, we are running a race to the bottom, desperately competing with Mississippi and Guam for the title of most mediocre school system. At the rate we're going, we might just win it! If we can gut the schools enough, its homeschooling for everyone!!

The Golden State, with an economy larger than most countries, has decided that education is not such a priority after all. How the mighty have fallen. This is how.

Be afraid, be very afraid.

In the school’s ceaseless charge to make my life difficult, because the constant barrage of pointless pieces of paper that need my signature is not enough, its Crazy Hair & Hat Day!!!!!!

The Things and I went out and got some supplies for the event. We don’t have crazy hats, and I really don't feel like throwing some together. (As mentioned previously, I loathe arts and crafts with the children, because I’m a bad mom.) You can see the results for yourself. I’m starting to worry Thing 2 is going to be a handful: Tell me what you think....

Thing 1, who is in 4th grade and starting that pre-teen thing, took the safe route with extreme bed-head and a disinclination to have his picture taken. Thing 2 wanted to be...sonic the hedgehog? Points for panache, dude. Not thrilled by the demeanor of your stance, however.

O. My. God. The face.

Ok, for a person who majored in art and is not particularly technical, I sure seem to attract a lot of computers. The school has a raft of original iMacs, most of which will run the most recent os with a little coaxing. So, I'm trying to set that up. They're slow, relatively speaking, but its not like the kids are planning to render a movie or something. The plan is just to introduce more up-to-date browsers so they can take advantage of more of the cool ed. stuff available online.

So Thing 1 and Thing 2 and I have been off to the lab pretty regularly lately. They are liking the time playing computer games while I do stuff. They also like that I project a movie for them when they get really bored and start fighting. Sigh, I am not terribly proud of my parenting in this respect, but hopfully this will be but a brief period in their lives. Here are some photos, this is so wildly unusual for me, I can't get over it. First, a view of my little spot in the middle of the lab where I made the image machine,

. Its not terribly pretty, but it gets the job done. The boy's ersatz theater is here . Then there's the army of computers waiting for me in the library: Fifteen on the librarian's counter, another 16 on tables around the room . I have no idea what these photos will look like in the blog. This is an experiment.

Meanwhile, once I get all the older iMacs set up, also pushing the previous lab eMacs out to the classes, I get to set up spiffy new new (as opposed to merely new) flat screen iMacs that aren't even in yet for this fall. Yee Ha!!

For the Kinder

I wanted to add these photos of Thing 1 and Thing 2 trying to look serious and meaningful in glamour shots of some recent Lego creations. The wanted them posted to the lego site, which I did, but the site wisely does not allow you to include pictures of humans. The guys were dissappointed, so here they are in their full glory, Thing 1 and his amazing Zipper 2000, and Thing 2 and his Zipper 32thousandmillion (ha! that will teach his brother!!)

Lest you get the idea that this computing precludes knitting, HA! Its amazing how many rounds one can do on a sock while the computers are uploading some brains. Well, fewer rounds than I had hoped, but progress is being made on the STR solstice slip.

Well, the excitement has been building for a couple of weeks now, it was at a fever pitch this week at the school and at our house: Spring break! The kids are squirrelly with excitement. As at Winter break this year, the big excitement of Easter happens in the first couple of days, leaving the entire rest of the break to be filled with diminishing expectations. So, its a break from school where we all realize that school is in fact, pretty cool. Until June, when it looks boring again. We're not doing anything exciting. SysGuy will be continuing apace with the gainful employment thing he's got going to keep us warm and dry (thanks honey!). I plan to try to paint the boys' room as part of the incremental process of eradicating the pale mauve paint that was slathered over the interior of the house when we bought it. I'm thinking of letting the boys help with one wall of many colors. We'll see how patient I'm feeling when the time comes. There is a flower farm in Carlsbad that has a sweet pea maze. I'd like to take them there on Tuesday, 'cause I'd like to see it, we're suckers for mazes here. At the end of the week we might pop (!) up to Sacramento to visit relatives. Like I said, not too exciting. And that's how I like it. We are not a religious family, but Sysguy and I are open to season change celebrations just to fit in. So the boys have been dreaming out loud of what the Easter Bunny will bring. When did Easter become a mini Christmas? It never was when I was a kid, and it has never been for our kids. The pervasive advertising of Easter crap seems to have given them the idea that there is the possibility that there will be toys. There won't be toys. It is a purely sugar driven holiday here chez kmbrknits. I hope they won't be too disappointed, but I feel that as a parent it is my job to help them learn how to deal with disappointment. Its hard. I hate to disappoint the kids. It would be much easier to just give them everything they want and see them super happy for 30 second bursts. I worry about those 30 second bursts of excitement. The thrill of new stuff is addictive meth that keeps you from being able to appreciate the pleasures of old stuff (or just life) after a while. You just wander around hoping for the next hit. I prefer them to cannibalize their old toys to make new things. Its fun to see what they come up with. For all of us. Happy Spring Everyone!

Ok, after the long winded tirade yesterday (that was cathartic!), I would like to add that the most exciting thing happened at my jobette this week! (If it was full-time, it would be a job; part-time=jobette, just in case anyone was going to get their knickers in a twist) So, I run the computer lab at the elementary school my kids attend, about which you now know way more than you wanted to if you read yesterday's post. One of my goals is to matriculate 5th graders who can type like the wind, without even thinking about it. There are lots of things they can learn on the computers, but in elementary school, I think the most useful thing they can learn during my time with them is how to type with speed and accuracy, so they don't have to deal with typing issues as they get older and use the computers for more intellectual pursuits. So I look for web sites that have free (public school, we're all about free) and fun typing programs. One of which has this cute game called Spacebar Invaders, which is basically what you imagine, only with typing instead of torpedoes. I set it up so that whoever could beat my score (96,750) was entitled to a lab period of playing a popular non-educational computer game while the balance of their class toiled away at the usual school work. After four weeks, I got a winner!!!! A fifth grade kid blew past me to score 108,750, which is pretty darn respectable, even for an adult. I am so psyched to have had enough enthusiasm behind the deal to get someone to actually beat me! Yay! I am fairly certain I was more excited than the kid was. I know there are people who are opposed to "play" time during learning time, but if its good enough for the air force, its good enough for me. My standard line with the kids is that if they can map the nintendo/gameboy/Xbox/ playstation/whatever interface to their fingertips, they might as well do the keyboard. Take advantage of the neural plasticity while you've got it, I say! Which reminds me, I totally screwed up my atomic analogy the other day (thanks Dad). That's what I get for blogging so long after science classes wore off. You all got the idea.

Well, that's not what my street is called, but it might as well be. Sheesh.

Sevenish years ago, Darling Sysguy and I with wee bairn Thing 1 began a life of genteel poverty in this house we afforded by the skin of our teeth, in order to be in the best possible school area we could. Because at the time, that is what mattered—if you don't know an area at all, the school scores seem as reasonable a measure as any of potential compatibility. I don't think that's true anymore, but we'll get to that later.

A bit of background: I grew up in a mostly blue collar town, a suburb of Peoria, IL, if you will. My dad was in middleish management at Caterpillar, and he felt it would be silly to move to a "better" neighborhood once he could afford it. I don't think he was wrong, but I was hoping to "buy" my kids way out of having to associate with the twits I went to school with (by twits, I mean the future barflies that threw lit matches at the the more ambitious types while waiting for the bus. Good times.) Boy, was I misguided. Not only did I not manage to elude the rougher element (Lord of the Flies for the toddler set, who knew? Boys will be boys you know!) in peers for my kids, we're smack in the middle of Entitlement Land!

I am aware of how ridiculously spoiled we are here, how hideously expensive it is to live in SoCal, especially in the style to which I am accustomed. (See the post about the disney annual passes. Spoiled.) Anyway, in addition to the idiotic toddler mom, the neighborhood we had such high hopes for with the spate of babies the same age as ours has turned out to be a hotbed of education snobs, too! Yay! What, this crap couldn't wait till College? Our local elementary school has scores within 50 points (just a stab, I don't care enough to look it up) of nearby SnobSea schools. SnobSea regularly has the top public school in the state. And well they should, because if an annual $1 million endowment from the local education fund doesn't buy your hamlet school district top scores, baby, nothing will. I won't even mention the totally stressful "All studying, All the time!" ethos of the town, but lets just say its a little more competitive than I want my kids to deal with. Ever.

That, and the fact that there is no way in hell Thing 1 and Thing 2 will be coming into a BMW coupe for their 16th birthday, and I don't want them to associate with kids who have that to look forward to. I have limits. I will grant you, SnobSea is pretty, I like living near it, driving through it, and not having to pay my property taxes there. And the Starbucks is convenient. However, my wack neighbors have A) Sent their kids to private catholic school (all the better in that case). B) Sold their house to rent in SnobSea until the prices go down enough for them to buy, to get their kids in the district. C) LAUSD teacher is thinking of sending her kids to SnobSea (how, I do not know) because her kid won't get into the GATE* program in 1st grade at my local school. Um, because the GATE program doesn't start till the end of third grade, when the coaching by hopeful parents pales and innate brilliance shines through. (If your kid is a genius before then, by all means, get him some appropriate help, just don't expect the school to bow before his intellect. They're busy with all the mainstreaming they have to do.)

Its getting to the point where the principal just looks at me and says "Hey, I heard from another one of YOUR neighbors today". I feel so special, and not in a good way. Its never a social exchange with the school, my nieghbors always want something for nothing, or they stomp off and put their $ and volunteer time (if any) elsewhere. Because why would you waste time volunteering at the public school when you can buy a prestigious education elsewhere? I guess I'm a crazy loser who thinks I can make a difference there, and set a good example of community service for my kids. Duh.

Wee bairn Thing 1 is now in second grade. Thing 2, who did not exist back then, is in kindergarten. They are thoroughly, happily, average. If they were above average, I wouldn't tell them because I expect them to work for their successes, not assume they'll have them through talent. The school is delightful, with a very high percentage of parent involvement in which I participate and thoroughly enjoy. In fact, the thing I dislike about the school is the constant pressure to up the damn scores that drew me in in the first place. Nothing says "cash please" to Sacramento like a slightly higher score every year. Because children are exactly like widgets, and they come out better, faster, prettier, more streamlined every year! Lets push them!

So the kindergarten of yore, frought with fingerpainting, cooperative tee-pee building, and lovely naps, is now the meat-grinder in which our shiny new offspring are introduced to the treadmill of American Work Life. ABCs, colors, numbers to 30, and sight reading of at least 30 busy words is expected by the end of the year. If your kid can't cut it, get thee to a better preschool, or hold him back! The poor kindergarten teachers are expected to work this alchemy in a mere 3 hours per day! That's right folks, none of that all-day kindergarten required, we can ram the widgets through in half the time! I am feeling grateful that we had children early enough to miss the mandatory kindergarten algebra.

The kicker to this for me is, if anything extra happens at the school, anything at all, a bus to a field trip for instance, the PTA pays for it. The realtor failed to mention that, lo these 7 years past. Our fundraisers have fundraisers with twee little feverishly high pitched fundraisers on them. Because this is the only school in the district that does not qualify for Title I grants, too wealthy. So, we're all mortgaged to the hilt to get into the good school, and then we're expected to pay for individual paper clips, too. As Calvin would say, AAAaaaauuuug!

My computer lab jobette, and the librarian? Paid for out of a special grant intended for extras. Because those ARE extras, right? Did YOUR elementary school have a library? I don't like sounding as though I don't appreciate people who truly love to excell, or do so innately. I do. I just don't think you can force it on someone and expect them to have a happy life, or condemn them to certain failure for not wanting to participate at that level. I see burnt out and hopeless 4th and 5th graders. Why? For scores that keep the property values up so more kids can come in and improve the scores? Who benefits in the end? End of Rant.

I'm going to watch House and knit. Hugh Laurie is much cuter as a crank than he was as a fop, don't you think?

 *Gifted And TalentEd: can be synonymous with "mom and dad are so desperate to have created genius I have no idea if I actually am one".

Geez, this was a long month. Between the jury duty and the this and the that, I'm just glad its over.

Monday, I took my Mom to Disneyland, with Thing 1 and Thing 2 of course, for our first trip on our shiny new Southern California Resident Annual Passes. They're about as close to a good deal as one is going to get from the mouse. The $2 senior discount my mom got was certainly not worth writing home about. I had forgotten about spring break in the midwest (ours isn't till the week after Easter), so the happiest place on earth was one of the more crowded places, too, but we still managed to have fun and get some good rides in. (By the way, teenagers and their aimless wandering are really, um, annoying.) The boys and I can pop in and out at will now, so it was a good day, even if it was short. After which, Mom and I were exhausted.

Of course, the boys had a nap in the car on the way home. By nap, I mean Thing 1 slept like a rock and Thing 2 did stream of consciousness babbling all the way home, which is about an hour in LA traffic. So, I was physically exhausted from the day, and mentally exhausted from desperately trying to make my ears stop working while threading through traffic on the drive home. I keep telling myself this is just a phase, and I will probably pray for its return when Thing 2 is 14 and communicates in monosyllables. Some days, I would really like for him to practice having inaudible thoughts.

We got the breathtaking $6,000 estimate for replacing the main sewer line while my parents were here, so I am suddenly feeling very poor. The couch arrived, fits perfectly, is everything I hoped it would be and more. Sadly, now that its paid for, we can either afford food or sewage to remove used food. So, it will take longer for the puffy cushions to tamp down a bit, what with all the wasting away we'll be doing. Hey, that's less work for the sewer line, too! Win win! And for the week's finale, the elementary school variety show was friday night.

Thing 1 and two other boys did a dance number (fairly audacious for 2nd grade) to "Can't Touch This" by MC Hammer. I got myself stuck with sewing hammer pants. The pants did actually materialize about an hour before the show. (Yay me.) Thing 2 was with a group of kindergarteners singing "Take Me Out to the Ball Game," which was cute. Both acts were every bit what one would expect from this age group: only the parents can love it, and we did.

The knitting content for the week is pretty slight: I turned the heel on #1 monsoon STR sock, set up the leg ribs and then proceeded to totally screw up the cable row several times. I have done cables before. Even complex ones. So I am clearly just too tired to twist at the moment. I've made a lateral move to a self-designed summer lace shift I've got going from sock yarn to feed my need for a day or two, then I'll head back for another go at the fiendish cables.

So its been 5 days already since I last posted, I've been informed. Oops.

I've completed the Madil Eden scarf for Thing 2's old preschool coop benefit on Saturday. It came out ok, not as super wonderful as I had hoped, but it will make a nice summer scarf. I know, summer scarf? It gets cold at night here in the desert, what can I tell you. Hundertwasser Opal socks are done though:


Now I'm on to the other 5 projects, I am looking forward to getting the percent list of what I've got on needles in the right column, just so I can keep track of what I'm doing. Currently at the top of the list is the STR sock and a tote in Cotton Classic from the Spring IK.

At the computer lab, it is report card week, which is somewhat crazy making. The report card software is "written" (I imagine the same way I "write" the code in this blog) by someone in filemaker pro and seems to be working ok, despite dire warnings that it was horribly buggy. There's a bit of operator error involved, I think, on the part of the teachers. At my school, the report cards are printed in the computer lab, because the fast laser printer lives there, so there's a lot of last minute dashes to get me to print the things out.

For some reason, after my bout of flu, I actually feel like cooking somewhat complicated food. Challenging even. I've been such a workaday cook for the last year or so, it is really refreshing to be inspired to extend myself again. I'm not talking Julia Child or anything (hey, it's still after work/school), but food involving more than 3 ingredients and chopping is unusual for me lately. Cooking day to day dinner is such a drag, I can't even make light of how I loathe it. Yeah yeah, I am keeping my family healthy and showing I love them whatever. I'm ready for the Human Chow food pellets in a 50# bag. Oh, wait, we have that already, its called cold cereal.

On an exciting note, I have a trip planned for the distant future. Thing 1 has decided to take me with him when he becomes the first person to travel to a black hole and return. I can hardly wait!

Well, blogging has not been at the top of my agenda this week, clearly. I have been very unusually tightly focused on the goings on of my digestive system, having just endured a short bitter bout of flu.

Nothing says enjoy your good health like a day trip to extreme Nausea-land (South of Smal-land). And hey, while you're there, a side trip to scenic Clogged Main Sewer Line Drive is a lot of fun! I have a theory that if I wait till I just can't take it one more second, and then start thinking that I can't even remember what it felt like to be well, as dramatically as possible, that I'll get well faster. The key is to wait to have the thought until you just can't stand it any more. All the concentrating on not having the thought is very much like not thinking about Zebras when someone tells you not to, but it keeps me occupied when I am incapable of even knitting. (To those of you who know me, that's saying something.) Of course, I've thankfully never been seriously ill, so I really know not of what I speak. I am normally possessed of the complete inability to hurl a bad oyster even if I want to.

I returned to work on Tuesday, after the jury duty lapse. Tuesdays I shepherd about 150 children through various forms of electronic interaction with the world. Probably the darling little germ vectors had nothing to do with my ensuing debilitation. I've been told by the old timers that the first year working with kids is really killer on your immune system. Parenting pre-schoolers is apparently not vaccination enough.

As long as I have brought up my job (computer lab docent at an elementary school), I'd like to make a request: Would you people with elementary school age children allow them to make their own time-consuming and cringe-worthy mistakes occasionally? Honestly, this is a group of kids with learned helplessness like I cannot believe. I literally spent the first three weeks of lab time explaining to them that mistakes are the best way to learn, that I could fix anything they could possibly break. Because I had first graders who were unwilling to make a single mark on a digital paper in KidPix for fear of making a mistake. Just for fun, no purpose, just have at it and enjoy yourself.

They froze like deer in headlights. That is so sad. I had to take the eraser tool away. Then, somehow, it wasn't their fault if it was "wrong". Sigh. Like kid art is ever wrong.

We are planning on these people growing into self-determining adults, right?

So it is Friday, usually my day "off", as much as a mom gets the day off. My little guy, Thing 2, is home sick. He's 5, and missing kindergarten (plus a few hours in aftercare, which I will not normally relinquish on my day "off"). In our Southern CA school district kindergarten is of insufficient import to get a full day of attention, at a later date there will be a post about the school situation. Right now, I still need to educate myself on this whole blog thing. I know I am coming late to the party with this, I really dislike the feeling of being behind. The path is the goal, right? So, I'm enjoying cuddling next to my small boy radiator and absorbing the lessons of WordPress. And iChatting with my sister and a friend in France...and checking various blogs that I can't live without any more, checking email (because we stay at home moms get so much), setting up the school newsletter for the month. The usual bon bon eating mommy existence. At least I feel slightly guilty for blowing off the laundry. Like its not going to be there tomorrow.