Egghead Brainiac Club

The differences between me and Ray

2011-06-14T20:06:00.001-07:00

were easily summed up by yours truly at the bus stop the other day. Ray is very much a "don't rock the boat" kind of guy. While I am standing on the prow, waving a flag, yelling "full steam ahead".

Ray is conservative. I am liberal. Although we have had a mellowing effect on each other's politics over the years, things can get testy here around election time.

He is affectionate. I'm like a cat.

He can cook. I like sci fi. I guess those two don't go together except we each happen to hate what the other one likes in these instances.

Despite it all, we really get along. I'm a lucky lady.

Another year!

2011-06-13T19:23:00.001-07:00

Well, I knew it had been a while since I posted but yikes-since September??

This may have been our best year at Sudbury even if at one point I was sure I would pull them out.
I know I'm supposed to trust the process but it's hard. Amazingly though, everything seems to work out so maybe if I hold the lessons of this year in my heart it will be easier from now on. (Doubt it.)

Since we don't get progress reports or parent teacher conferences I will create my own.

Amelia: She took off. Served on JC for something like 5 months. Joined the sewing club and was introduced to the trials and tribulations of business when she busted her ass making stuffed animals, creatures, to sell at the Winter Gift Sale and only sold two-to me and her grandfather. Was involved with the Playground committee and they hired this guy Rusty Keeler to help them build a natural playscape. She was right in there pushing wheelbarrows and using a drill. Started reading chapter books. She's in a rush to grow up and likes hanging out with the older kids. Also got into playing Magic. She taught me but I haven't gotten the hang of it yet.

Desmond: The changes in Des are more subtle. He's learned how to read but isn't reading books. He pretty much just hangs out with his friends all day. More interested in music but refuses any instruction. Ray and I go back and forth on this because he seems to have a genuine talent for it. He also learned to play magic.

Cady: Cady has actually shown herself to be more independent and resourceful for her age than Des and Amelia were. I think Des just got certified for the microwave this year. I'm not sure if Cady is but she has no problem asking for help with it and she managed to acquire a couple of mugs to heat her stuff up in. One thing I learned about Cady is that she would rather ask for forgiveness than permission. We've had to sit down a few times and explain our expectations and standards that have to be met whether they are the rules at Sudbury or not. Also, I have had to rescue a lot of stuff from the morgue.

Ray: Still suspicious, still thinks it wouldn't kill them to have some formal instruction. Still worries but maybe a little bit less.

Me: Was asked by Amelia to stop posting stuff on the email list because she didn't like hearing about it in SM. There are three parents responsible for about 90% of the discussion on the list. I am/was one of them. It just occurred to me that she would go bananas if she knew about the blog. Went from loving the school to hating the school to loving the school again by years end. Why? Possibly from holding it to an unrealistically high standard, especially when you consider what they are trying to accomplish. "Democracy is messy" is a common refrain at HVSS. It's also imperfect and I found myself observing two separate situations with students, who were not my kids so I won't go into details, and became increasingly frustrated as I saw SM get it wrong, in my opinion (qualifying every statement with the phrase "in my opinion" is also very common at HVSS) , over and over again. Until they got it right. So this year I learned that I need to be as patient with SM and allow them their mistakes as I am with my own kids. Because, the majority of SM are students working through their own stuff. I wish I had come to this conclusion before sending an impassioned but inappropriate and wrong headed email to staff. Oh well, as I grow older (I turned 40 in December) I find it easier to work with some aspects of my personality rather than try to completely change it.

On a completely different topic, I read quite a bit of war diaries of Field Marshal Alanbrooke. He was the commander of the British Army during WWII. I realized that lots of short posts (or entries should I ever return to paper and pen) can be as satisfying as long meandering ones.

Questions and odds and ends

2010-09-23T21:33:00.000-07:00

That elimination diet I got bored of blogging about? I made it all the way down to water and it has completely changed my diet. I've stopped snacking and still haven't had soda. In case you were wondering. that's an odd and end.

I've become preoccupied with trying to figure out exactly what my path was down the stairs. This started when I realized that all of my bruises were on my right side. I also knocked some pictures off the wall and have a hazy memory of actually taking a step or two. Maybe. But my bruises surprised me because I had this image of being on my left. Maybe because I broke my left wrist. That falls under "questions".

Cady has started at Sudbury. She is loving it. I stopped by the other day and loved seeing her there. There are more little kids than I thought. I had this terrible image of her following/being rebuffed by D and A and their friends all day but that isn't happening. I knew it wouldn't but I like to worry. This is neither an odd, an end nor a question but this blog is supposed to be about Sudbury after all so I thought I would throw it in.

The story of me falling down the stairs

2010-09-19T20:00:00.000-07:00

I often have trouble sleeping, I usually wake up at 3 and can't get back to sleep. This morning that happened except it was 5:30 but really dark. I hemmed and hawed and then decided to get up and get some work done (play on Facebook) before I went to work.

Normally we have a hall light on but the kids were sleeping at my MIL's. I could see the end of the hall from the faint light of the nitelite in the boys' room. I didn't turn the hall light on because our door was open and didn't want it to bother Ray. I took a step into the TV room and my foot went down. I thought "That's funny. i don't remember there being a step here." My other foot was on it's way, and my brain shrieked "oh fuck! the stairs!"

My mind turned a rectangular darkness of an unlit room into a descending diagonal darkness of an unlit staircase as I fell down. I know I was thinking "I'm falling. I'm falling. I'm falling down the stairs." and my face and arms were banging and banging away until I got to the bottom. It happened very quickly and very slowly. When I got to the bottom I knew I had to scream to wake Ray up but when I did scream it didn't seem loud enough but when I said "Ray I fell down the stairs!" it sounded like a scream. He was dazed but turned on the light and came rushing down. He helped me turn over and I said "Call 911". As he was on the phone I got myself up and staggered over to the couch. My left arm hurt when I moved and my head was in a world of pain. He brought me boo boo kitty for the worst bump and kept saying I would be ok. I said "You don't know that!" I couldn't believe that I might have killed myself all because I didn't turn on the light.

I broke my left wrist, I have two black eyes plus scrapes and lumps on my face and a big contusion on my right shoulder. We were back from the ER by 10 am. I am thoroughly exhausted but can't go to sleep. The kids are home, and even with three lights on I'm worried about them up in the middle of the night. I'm worried about me in the middle of the night. I'm worried that the staircase will suck one of us down and this time we won't be so lucky.

I know this isn't a typical post but I wanted to get it out of my head so I can get some sleep.

Day 5

2010-09-03T18:22:00.000-07:00

Bye bye eggs and dairy. I drink a lot of milk. and it's tomato season so I have been eating fresh mozzarella like nobody's business. Oh well.

I noticed a couple of things today: I haven't been waking up hungry. Usually the first thing I want in the morning is too eat. I also am noting true hunger. Not the light headed crankiness that I feel and view as hunger. My hunger is a different sensation and one that is so infrequent normally, compared to my other food cues, that I almost had to stop and identify it.

I also thought about abundance today. At dinnertime, I was standing at the open fridge and saying "No,no no" to just about everything in it. I have been eating the same stuff over and over: peanut butter and carrots, peanut butter and apples, breadsticks, corn, tomatoes. I didn't want any of it. I started poking through some more and made myself a nice little salad and found some zucchini Ray had sauteed. This made me think how easy it is for us. When I'm hungry, I just grab some crackers or if I'm out a bag of crap and munch munch munch. I don't think about what I'm going to cook or eat. I can have whatever I want and I almost invariably pick the worst but easiest option. But when my choices are limited I've become more creative and stretched myself. Maybe food shouldn't be easy. Maybe I should always put the thought, time and consideration into my meals as I have the past few days.

Day 4

2010-09-02T19:54:00.000-07:00

Meat was not a problem. Trying to eat food without additives in this culture is incredibly difficult. Especially if you find yourself out and starving. I ended up eating a half a bag of carrots with Finn.

Quitting soda is almost as hard as quitting smoking. Not the internal craving but the external cues. That shit is everywhere. Everywhere, dammit! Saying no to myself makes it easier for me to say no to the kids though. I would cave and give them garbage all the time because I wanted it myself.

This experiment is so much about small victories. I was making corn muffins for Finn this morning and took a bit of batter. A couple of moments later I realized what I had done and started down the "I already had one so one more won't hurt" path. I stood there looking at the empty batter bowl (one of the joys of my eating life is empty batter bowls, as a child my spatula wielding aunt was my sworn enemy, there was nothing worse than hanging around the kitchen as my grandmother made brownies and see all those glorious leftovers for me and my sister, we would draw a line down the middle of the bowl with a finger for fairness sake, only to have my aunt come in and ruin it with that wood handled white plastic top spatula saying "ma, look how much you're leaving") thinking, how badly do I want this? I seriously stood at the kitchen sink for a good long while, trying to decide if I should indulge in a bit of scraping. I finally decided to skip it and then make a point to see if I felt like I had missed something or felt deprived. Of course I didn't.

On the other hand, later in the day I had a screaming headache again and I did take some excedrin. It seemed better to take that than to suffer all night and feel discouraged and talk myself into taking more liberties. I think the little swipes and nibbles are more damaging in the long run because you don't think about their cumulative effect.

Day three

2010-09-01T18:20:00.000-07:00

On the surface, today would not appear to be very successful and yet I feel wildly successful. Today I was supposed to give up refined sugars and flours. Plus, I needed to pay more attention to additives. The first problem was at breakfast because almost every single thing had additives or refined sugar or refined flour or some combo of the three. I finally ate half a bagel feeling that at least it didn't have additives or preservatives. I had meant to bring lunch with me to a friend's house. Forgot it, she had pasta so that's what I had. but a small bowl. Then I had some panzanella bread with Ray. Again i rationalized this as no additives. then I had a small bowl of ice cream (because I have to give up dairy on friday) with no additives but, oops, sugar. That's the bad news. The good news is no soda AND I didn't resort to an excedrin. I drank tons and tons of water. When I had said bowl of ice cream I picked out the bits of chocolate chip cookie dough. I felt like I was continuing to make better if not great choices.

Tomorrow I give up meat. Which is why I had a delightful, if bunless, hamburger for dinner tonight.

I also ate a bunch of watermelon and salad and tomato by the way. It wasn't just a carb struggle all day long.

My experiment

2010-08-31T20:02:00.000-07:00

Since I bought the store my health and diet have gone straight to hell. It is most evident in my weight but I get no sleep, no exercise and I just don't feel well. My friend Nina does this spring cleanse every year and gave me a copy of the routine she follows. The way it works is that you eliminate a different aspect of your diet until you are down to water which you drink for two days and then start reintroducing foods again. I have never done anything like this before. No juice fasts, nothing. But I'm going to give this a whirl and hopefully update my progress daily.

Why am I doing this? Because I want to clean the slate. I feel like I'm cleaning out a closet and then putting it back together with only the stuff the really want and love. Hopefully the foods that I really want and love will be wholesome.

Today was day one. Actually day two because day one is eat a normal diet. On day two I eliminate caffeine, alcohol, any drugs(except prescription) and additives. Alcohol and drugs are not an issue. Caffeine is a big one because I usually drink 1-3 sodas per day. I made it through today without having one. Woo hoo!! At 5 pm I had an evil headache so I opted to take an excedrin which I guess is a drug and it does have a small amount of caffeine. I probably consumed some additives in the chipwich I had at the pool. I was so focused on not buying a soda that it didn't occur to me to opt out of other snacks too. All in all I'm going to give myself a grade of 90 for the day. I didn't eliminate these items 100% but I was incredibly mindful and did not use the small setbacks as an excuse to sabotage myself before I started.

Tomorrow I'm supposed to eliminate all refined sugars and flours. Uh oh! there goes half my pantry.

Hellooooo.....

2010-03-07T16:16:00.000-08:00

Well I had just forgotten all about this. Because I am busy busy busy. Those boxes of books don't move themselves down perilously narrow stairs, you know.

My blog is just like my diary. Every other entry is an apology for not writing more often. I always wonder who I'm apologizing to in my diary. Scholars studying it for hints of future greatness?

Anyhoo, I'll just quickly fill you in on the past 5 months. Des and Amelia are having a great year. Very few complaints about staff or boredom this year. They have been working on a movie called "Magic Number 7" that has something to do with time travel, and for the sake of continuity, needs a lot snow to film. Amelia became certified to work in the school store. I think she may be the youngest kid certified. Des tried to but it didn't work out. He took it surprisingly well. I guess they are growing up and able to take knocks a bit better. I can't believe they'll be 8 next month.

Cady, who I worried about having a crappy year because she was going to school with a bunch of 2 and 3 year olds has ended up having a wonderful time. Everyday the little kids take a nap and she spends one to two hours with the Paula, her teacher, doing whatever interests her. So now she's reading. That has lit a fire under Amelia's ass. Every time she sees Cady reading with us, she comes trotting by with a book of her own to read. It's really funny. Des seems abashed that Cady and his 5 year old cousin are both reading but it hasn't provided enough of an impetus to get him going. And I'm ok with that too.

Finn. Well, Finn is 3 and all the good and bad that comes along with it. I feel like we are at mile 25 in the marathon of early childhood. He's potty trained. He almost sleeps through the night. Is just about finished nursing. Can mostly dress himself. We are so close!! Then maybe I will get my sanity back.

The store is covering it's bills. which is great. But I can't pay myself yet which is to be expected. I love it though.

Lots of great stuff happening at school which I may or may not get around to talking about. for now though, I'm going to watch the Oscars.

Toodles.

confidence - humility = arrogance

2009-10-12T18:06:00.000-07:00

I'm all about humility lately. Maybe because becoming a small business owner is very very humbling.

I never did get around to finish my philosophy discussion recap. and I've forgotten most of the details to make it meaningful anyway.

I do recall there being a lot of talk about confidence and how kids need to develop it. In the sudbury process not a lot will happen until kids are confident enough to try things. Public or traditional schooling can be confidence sapping because you are constantly being judged. I love when I go to elementary schools and you see all sorts of art projects on the walls and there is a ridiculous sameness to it. why does every snowman have to wear his hat? why can't some of them toss it into the air a la Mary Tyler Moore? I can remember what it was like as a kid to be told that my drawing or coloring was wrong. I remember my first grade teacher used to stamp our work satisfactory or excellent. there may have been a poor stamp too but I never got one. I craved an excellent stamp in the worst way but I would color outside of the lines or miss a spot or whatever, I just never got one. I finally worked my ass off to color a unicorn. I only used blue. I worked on it forever, especially the horn, the tricky narrow horn. When the papers came back I waited for my excellent stamp and was pissed when I only got a satisfactory. I don't actually remember being pissed but I must have been because I was upset enough to ask why I didn't get an excellent. She told me that it was because it was blue and horse are brown or black. I said "But it's a unicorn. It's imaginary!" I kind of wish I would come across her and tell her that I think she was an idiot.

My long winded point is that I still remember it 30 years later. That feeling of wrongness. And it was all about coloring. Really, the wrongness I should be feeling is about how the kids used to tease this kid Christopher because he had wet his pants through most of kindergarten but we were in first grade now and he had gotten it under control. That's what she should have been giving poor and excellent and satisfactory stamps about. right on our snotty little foreheads. Hmm, I've gotten off track here.

Confidence and encouragement are important but I think there has to be a certain amount of humility. It's fine to want to accomplish things on your own but at some point you need to be able to accept help, even if you don't want to. People who are sure that they know everything, that they don't need to listen or won't even entertain the possibility that their thinking might be flawed are arrogant. Arrogance is not only unattractive and off-putting, it can be dangerous. Arrogant people tend to be dismissive and poor listeners. I remember complaining about a creactive writing teacher who was an awful writer. We went to one of his plays and it was soooo bad. I wanted to drop the class and I certainly didn't want to listen to a thing he had to say but someone I knew and respected warned me off from this thinking. She said lack of talent doesn't mean lack of expertise.

Talk Talk

2009-09-28T21:12:00.000-07:00

Remember that band? and song? And maybe even album? I would see the video on MTV and that little scrap of info that they gave at the end, in the lower left hand corner, would say nothing but Talk Talk. It was the video with all the animals. This will probably only make sense to people born in the 70's or earlier. I should just end here and count my gray hairs.

Anyhoo, I was thinking of them because we had a great philosophy discussion on saturday and did lots of talk talking.

As I had said in earlier posts I had been having my doubts and Ray, who has never fully been on board with this, was expressing his more vocally. I had conversations with a staff member and other parents and was definitely feeling anxious about the school year. Since the year started there is a different vibe around the school. Hashing things out at the philosophy discussion was starting to seem anticlimactic. I know I've gone before and wanted to talk about something but the staff is so eloquent that I feel silly for ever having worried in the first place so I don't say anything.

That started to happen but then I said to myself no, even if I'm not feeling this way right now I'm going to express the fears that I've had because I know that I'll just go home and the warm fuzzies will fade away and I'll start worrying again. Well, I don't worry that much, but I know I won't feel like I've had my concerns addressed because I never expressed them.

Actually, what I really did was pretend that I was Ray and said what I thought he would be thinking about all of it. He, of course, did not attend, which is probably for the better because there is a good chance he would just give up on the whole thing and want to pull them out. It's much better to have me as a filter.

I felt like the staff was listening to what people had to say, that they were countering respectfully, that they still felt committed to the core aspects of the Sudbury philosophy but acknowledged that the school could use some "tweaks". What it comes down to for them, and hopefully someday for me, is that we can trust the kids to figure it out. That if they have the confidence in themselves they can get themselves to where they need to be. Academically or otherwise. I got there late but I think there was some talk at the beginning about remembering that the goal is to produce an effective adult. If I had been there for that I probably would have phrased some of my comments differently. There was some talk about respecting the changing priorities and not being able to know what any one person's priorities would be from one day to the next and therefore not judging. There was also discussion about having the confidence to say "I don't know" and being ok with that. One of the students was there and he talked about his experience with the process and he was quite eloquent on the topic even if I didn't agree with him. There was another guy there and the two of us did not communicate well but I'll get to him later.

I listened and thought about what people were saying before I spoke. Sometimes I am guilty of looking like I'm listening but I'm really just rehearsing my comments. But this time I was actually listening.

I said that I was afraid of raising confident ignoramuses who were perfectly happy with not knowing anything and with no interest in finding anything out. I said that it was probably good that my kids had the space at Sudbury to freely change their priorities because I had no problem judging them and telling them when I thought they were headed in the wrong direction. I said I would have a huge problem if my kid's priority was to live on the street and do nothing with their life. I recognize the absurdity of my statements but I had to let them out. what else did I say? Oh yeah, that I felt concerned about what kind of place the school would be if everybody was in the doldrums. That I don't think that the Sudbury philosophy fosters a work ethic. That you need to be able to push through when the passion isn't there.

I especially disagreed with the whole "it's ok if you give yourself permission to not finish something, changing priorities argument" because I think finishing what you start is a really important quality. I made it my New Year's Resolution a few years ago. I decided to become a person who would finish what they started. And the first thing I learned to do was not start so much in the first place. But I digress.

What I lost sight of during much of this but remembered afterwards is that this process is not happening in a vacuum. There is still JC and school meeting and my kids are not just zooming around the school by themselves. This discussion was focused on academics, sort of, but I had to remember to look at it all in the context of the school as a whole.

More tomorrow.

Beverly Cleary solves all problems

2009-09-24T19:14:00.000-07:00

Amelia has not been happy with her siblings lately. Des is "ANNOYING" and Cady "does nothing but BE MEAN to me" and Finn "RUINS all my stuff". She's been feeling quite put upon and I can sympathize. I'm the oldest and I know how it feels to have pesky siblings who trash every thing and activity that you have going on in your life. She has been especially hard on Cady. She yells at her, teases her, punishes her if Des shows favoritism. I often intervene. I know some parents don't and maybe it works well for their families but just because there is no violence involved doesn't mean that the behavior isn't damaging.

Then one day Cady turned up at bedtime with Beezus and Ramona by Beverly Cleary. I've never read chapter books with Cady and we started off cautiously. If there is one criticism I have of Mrs. Cleary it's that her chapters are insanely long. So we started off reading a few pages a night. When we were midway through chapter two Amelia asked if she could listen. It was great. We would laugh and shake our heads at how naughty, yet creative, Ramona could be. Amelia would absolutely howl with laughter at times. There were some passages that explored Beezus' feelings about Ramona. How hard it was to have a little sister and how even when Ramona didn't get her way, she still seemed to get her way. I saw Amelia nod in agreement at one point. The last chapter involves the girls' mother and aunt recounting how they didn't get along when they were younger but were now great friends as grownups. We finished the book and talked about our favorite parts and how good we thought it was and then Amelia said "Come on Cady, let's go to bed and you can sleep with me tonight." We looked in on them and they were cuddled together.

Ray is not happy

2009-09-23T19:57:00.000-07:00

and I've finally figured out why. He doesn't get the Sudbury timeline. I think he thought they would be achieving the same things that kids in public school do but just arriving at it through a different route. Since second graders know how to read Ray wants to know why Des and Amelia aren't reading. He's concerned that we're raising happy idiots. People with great self esteem and no useful skills.

We're mulling over the idea of sending Cady and Finn to regular skill for kindergarten and maybe first or second grade. It would make him feel better knowing that they are at Sudbury with some skills. I don't want to deal with public school bullshit. Dumb assignments and stuff like that. PTA. Because there is no way that I could send my kids to public school and not get involved with the PTA. And promptly become a thorn in everyone's side.

Am I ok with the Sudbury timeline? I think so. For me it's not just about developing discrete skills. I know I need to step it up and be more involved in what's important to them. It's engagement with the process that concerns me. You don't feel like reading? fine. But I want to see them feel something. Which I do. I definitely do. I can't do these late night blog posts. I just go around in circles.

My job is so great

2009-09-20T00:52:00.000-07:00

And here's why:

These are all the things I talked about and contemplated today-
world religions
medieval literature
copyright law
Catch 22
Byron
Robert Browning
The Velveteen Rabbit
Mark Twain
Philip K. Dick
magic/magick
lovely fall weather
Isabel Allende
Meryl Streep
food writing
dictionaries and the art of translation
Jack London
Edith Wharton

Not a bad gig.

How was your day dear?

2009-09-15T21:03:00.000-07:00

Amelia handed me a piece of paper with a list of words with checks next to them and "100%" at the top. On the back she had written a short description of her day. She and her friends have been doing "real learning stuff".

Des spent $8 on soda and then smashed 5 of the cans with his friends to see what would happen.

The day before we had a big blowout here because Amelia had signed up for yet another webkinz type game and when I started to say something she yelled "Des watched the Matrix again!" (Amelia has always been a total tattle tale. I love it!) I don't know why I blew up at that moment. Well I know why, because I had been paying bills at work. Money is really tight since I bought the store and bill paying time always brings that home to me. So I after spending an hour writing check after check, the thought of spending thousands of dollars for them to sit in front of a screen just made me a little nutty.

More drama!

2009-09-14T20:58:00.000-07:00

Oh it never ends with me. This is Sudbury drama now.

The school is facing a serious shortfall. Unbelievable amount. Some kids they expected to come back didn't, sliding scale figures were lower than expected (ours definitely were) and they used money from this year to pay for stuff last year. They are also owed about 40,000 in uncollected tuition. Jeepers, that's a lot of money. It's a problem and I don't know how it's going to work out.

There has a been a good discussion on the Assembly list. It started with a heartfelt invitation from one of the staff to encourage people to come to the next philosophy discussion. He talked about the purpose of the school being to help kids become effective. I asked what people thought effective meant. It's a pretty abstract goal and I knew there would be different thoughts about it. I'm not sure what an effective adult is. My idea was much more concrete. Someone who can support themselves. There was a lot of discussion about the philosophy in theory but I felt that it should have been more about the philosophy in practice.

I ruffled some feathers with the phrase "underlying hostility towards formal education". The staff members thought I meant them but really I meant the culture of the school. I can't wait til the real life philosophy discussion. Egghead loves to tussle!

Drama!

2009-09-13T23:07:00.000-07:00

Short story:
Amelia fell at the playground and had to go by helicopter to a pediatric trauma unit!

Long story:
Amelia was trying to copy something she had seen an older (and taller) kid do and whacked her head but good on a metal bar. She had a nasty looking bump behind her ear so we called 911. We asked if she had lost consciousness and all the kids said no.

The initial responders (police and local volunteers) did an initial assessment and called for the pros. The paramedics came, and in talking to one of the older kids decided that she may have had 'altered consciousness' and therefore needed to be seen at a pediatric trauma unit. Which we don't have in Ulster County. So they called the medevac in. A freaking helicopter landed on the front lawn of the elementary school and off we went to Albany. Part of me thought it was over the top but the other part of me couldn't help but think "Natasha Richardson" so we went along with this.

When Amelia broke her arm, the first time, Ray went in the ambulance with her while I got the other kids settled. I got to the hospital and she asked why I didn't come. I said "honey you were ok with Daddy" and she said "But you're...my mother!" So I know if I don't get on the freaking helicopter I will officially be World's Worst Mom. I have been on airplanes many many times. Small planes too. But since I had the kids I have developed a mild fear of flying. It doesn't stop me but I worry more than I ever did.

I had to sit in the very front and it's floor to ceiling glass. It made me feel very vulnerable. Like it was easier to fall out somehow. The helicopter took off and I pretty much stopped worrying about Amelia and started worrying that we were all going to die. You know what flying in a helicopter feels like? Rickety. Like you're riding in a rickety piece of crap that is going to fall apart at any minute. It doesn't help that my brain is now retrieving all bits of knowledge about helicopters that it has acquired over the years. The one that it keeps repeating is "In essence, a helicopter is constantly falling." NOT reassuring, brain!

There were a few moments where I wasn't worried about dying and here is what I thought:
1.That the view was spectacular and I feel lucky to live in one of the most beautiful places in the world.
2.That when you look down and see all the teeny tiny cars and monopoly houses and thimble size swimming pools from an airplane you laugh and think "My how small everything looks." But when you are in a tiny glass fronted space high in the sky it also gives you the perspective of how very small we are. We are miniscule. We are atoms in the universe.
3.I found myself reflecting on the nature of faith. In between mentally going for refuge by reciting the same buddhist prayer over and over again, I thought where am I really placing my faith? In the laws of karma, hoping that I have enough merit stored up at that moment so i don't die in a helicopter crash but trying to maintain equanimity so that if I do I will generate a good burst of energy a I go hurtling into my next life? In god? Because I definitely threw a few prayers that way, just to be safe. Or in the secular god, science? I had to have some faith in the capabilities of human engineering, and the diligence of maintenance crews to get in the thing in the first place. Right?

After a very long half hour, we finally landed at Albany med- on the goddam roof no less, one final spectacular burst of anxiety for me. The triage nurse sees us and then we more or less sat around for two hours and a CT scan of her head to find out that she was just fine. I am very, very grateful for that at least. :)

Coda to all this: It takes an hur to get to Albany from where we were. It took the helicopter 12 minutes to get to us, 6 or 7 minutes for us to get on and take off, the trip was 30 minutes. So all of that rigamarole to save 15 minutes tops in a non critical situation.

An interesting link

2009-09-07T20:45:00.000-07:00

This is from a friend. Not the friend whose son actually attended this school but somebody else. It's a small sudbury world.

http://www.mountainlaurelsudbury.org/classes.asp

(I wish I knew how to do that thing where people just click on a word. It's so much more attractive.)

I'm goign to try and explain learning this way to Des because he has a tremendous amount of hostility to anything as soon as you say the word class. Maybe I went too far with my brainwashing against traditional schooling. I think some of it has also come from school itself. Amelia wants some kind of gathering but she doesn't want to do it herself and says that people at school aren't into it. She only knows of two kids who have even tried it and both times it didn't work out that well. For someone reason she wants someone to co-sponsor the motion with her because she is afraid of how much work it will be to set up. Plus she doesn't know exactly what topic it is she's interested in.

My friend and I thought the last paragraph was interesting. I had gotten the sense that any topic offered was supposed to be generated by the students. But here is a founder, not just any old founder, but the big guy himself, Dan Greenberg, saying that sometimes he just tries to whip up interest in something. I am so ok with this because I know Sudbury and attendance is not mandatory and I like the idea of putting it out there. I wonder how this came about. Maybe they had times where their school was in a lull and this was an acceptable compromise to spark things up a bit. Or maybe I am confused about the philosophy itself. I'll have to do a little more digging and return to this another time.

I know that anytime something like this is suggested in our school the stock response seems to be that if you offer something then you give it more weight and importance and automatically exclude other things. Or that the mere offer puts pressure on students to participate. I think that's crap. I think that if you are really cultivating freedom and openess then these kids will feel secure enough to opt in or opt out. Right now, and I could be totally totally wrong here, I feel like there is a reverse pressure against participation. I get the sense that organized activity is deemed unsuitable somehow.

Great Expectations

2009-09-06T21:09:00.000-07:00

Oh, hello again.

I haven't posted this summer for the usual reasons (bookstore, exhaustion, not a lot to say) and a not so usual reason. I had some negative feelings about the school and didn't want to air them publicly because they might have given my millions of readers the wrong idea.

But the school year is beginning and I'm trying to approach it with both an open mind and a watchful eye. I was preoccupied last year and complacent. Over the summer I gave some serious consideration to taking the kids out. What stopped me was the reality that home schooling is not an option right now and traditional schooling is not looking more attractive just because Sudbury is looking less attractive.

I also had to think- why was I unhappy? I realized that I still support the main tenets of the philosophy that I have always supported and continue to question the things that I have always questioned. My problem was that this particular school felt dysfunctional. I don't know if it was a combination of staffing issues, student mix, slavish adherence to dogma or what but it didn't feel right. Now I see that I wasn't alone because a bunch of kids have left. Some graduated, some because of money and more than I would have expected because they either don't support the philosophy or don't think it's working in this school. So I hope there's going to be some soul searching this year.

I also realized that I had become too passive as a parent. Even when I saw stuff I didn't like, I didn't discuss it with Des and Amelia as much as I ought. I also had to get straight in my head about what I wanted from them. Two friends of Amelia's are talking about going to more traditional schools next year and they need to get themselves caught up this year. So now Amelia is talking about "learning" but she isn't sure how she is going to do it. I had told them both that we expected them to accomplish three things this year. It couldn't involve a screen and it had to be something that they made a motion to school meeting to accomplish. I laid it out for them "Mommy and Daddy are paying thousands of dollars for you to go to this school and we can't afford to pay this money for you to be on a computer all day. We need to see you doing something more."

As Amelia and I were discussing learning she said 'the reason I like Sudbury and not regular school is that I want to learn things that I want to when I want to. I don't want to do math this year." That's when things clarified for me and I was to able to clarify it for them both. I said "honey, I'm not worried about you learning specific things. I'm not looking to test you. Daddy and I are giving you a tremendous opportunity and freedom to choose what you learn. What we want to see is you going through the process. I want to see you set goals and work towards them." She started getting frustrated and said "Well I'm not sure what I want. I want to read but I don't want to do that at school. I want you to teach me. I want to have a sleepover on a battleship." I said "I'm happy that we're having this conversation now. I want to see you thinking more about how you'll spend your time there. Not just showing up and seeing what happens." Even though I expect, and think it's totally appropriate for lots of that to happen. What I realized tonight is that I want to see them engaging more actively in the Sudbury process. It's not an all or nothing proposition. They are still 7. But I do think after two years of running amok it's OK to ask them to be more thoughtful in their pursuits.

We'll see.

Elections

2009-06-17T20:34:00.000-07:00

Staff elections were this week and ended today. This was a rocky one. Trust the process, I keep saying to myself, trust the process. Because I went back to work I just couldn't be a part of things the way I used to be. So I didn't go to the annual assembly meeting, the special assembly meeting, no more fundraising committee,or the last philosophy discussion. It sucks. I miss it. First of all, I genuinely like all the people that I see at these things and you just sort of hear about what's going on.

Anyway, back to the elections. I don't know why two current staff members ended up not making it onto the final slate and there is a brand new staff member that I have serious reservations about. The worst part for the kids was that on the final two slates they had to pick between two current staff members. Amelia was upset because she felt like she lost two people that she liked and wound up with someone she didn't like. Des hated having to choose. He wanted both people on staff. I think for the final slate vote they were thoughtful. They took it seriously.

I was surprised and not surprised by the outcome. I think this may be the first time that current staff members were voted off. I know it came close to happening last year.

Next year is going to be a test for us. This will be year three for Des and Amelia. I saw some changes in them this year that I wasn't happy about but I'm not sure if it's them or the school. really, I should say Amelia. And I have concerns about the culture of the school and now I have concerns about the staff. The year after next would be when Cady starts. She'll have Des and Amelia there but I won't be around as much and I don't know if there will be as many little kids coming in like there were when Des and Amelia started so I don't know. I'm not feeling good about this.

My head is overwhelmed

2009-06-01T19:23:00.000-07:00

It is so stuffed with ideas, to do lists, details, reminders and responsibilities that I pretty much feel like if one more person asks me to do one more thing or make another decision and it will explode. I'm becoming very efficient because if I get a chance to do something I just do it so I don't have to think about it anymore. I just want to get it out of my head.

Yes, my head is very full right now. And there is so much work to do. Books to shelve, books to sort, books to trash, books to donate, books to read, books to list online, books to mail out, books to order. Then there are people to call, publishers, magazine distributors, local groups to partner with, my accountant, the landlord to get the lease, my sister to keep her moving along on the logo,a literacy group, some booksellers I have met, a few artists that I would like to set up for a show, the papers, web designers, a carpet cleaner, the window washer.

Then there is laundry, food shopping, Cady was sick and I spent an hour-a precious hour!-in the doctor's office, we need stamps, there is some play doh and play doh accoutrements that have been languishing on my deck for weeks, I haven't put away the easter eggs yet, my knitting, the bills, winter and summer clothes are all over the place. Every single person in my house needs their finger and toenails trimmed.

Yep. got a lot on my plate right now.

A full month without me? How have you survived?!

2009-05-27T16:43:00.000-07:00

Weep no more, my dears. The egghead is back!

I decided to completely redefine the concept of "busy" as it applies to me by buying a used bookstore. My life is either The Kids or The Store. I have to pretty much warp the space-time continuum to make room for anything else.

It is a huge project. HUGE. Sorting, shelving and pricing almost 15,000 books-and that's just upstairs! Being surrounded by books makes me so happy. Even though I'm making no money(quite the opposite). I'm having interesting conversations with my customers. I get to make all the decisions (for better or worse) and I get to run around and buy great books and not feel guilty about never reading them. It's wonderful. And it has nothing to do with my kids. Being a mom is just a fact about me when I'm there but nobody is really interested in them or in talking about parenting. Sometimes I feel like a secret agent. I'm spying on the world that does not revolve around children.

All I have to do is figure out a way to make the store pay for itself and I'll be set.

Lots of stuff going down at Sudbury but I'll have to talk about that another time.

Parental Pressure

2009-04-25T21:03:00.000-07:00

Our school is going to become a registered high school. What this means is that students can sit for some stupid new york state test and get a high school diploma. There was a discussion about this on our google group and one person mentioned that a potential downside was that parental pressure would be exerted upon a student to take the test.

My initial reaction was a defensive one. Why? Well I thought this person was making an argument against doing it because of possible parental pressure. It doesn't make sense to me to not do something because of a purely hypothetical reaction. And a hypothetical reaction that takes place out of school at that. I don't think it is staff or school meetings business to worry about how people parent their children. It does happen naturally of course. I mean you get to know people and you can guess how they will react to certain situations but ultimately, unless it's a case of abuse, it really is out of their control. I feel the debate about what is and isn't offered at school should focus solely on the opportunities it presents to the students and the school. As parents we know that we give up a great deal of control over our kids when we send them to this school but the school should, and I think is, be respectful of the fact that it's official influence ends when the kids go home. To make a decision in an attempt to influence or subvert a parents wish for their child does not sit well with me. Not that that's what was going on here.

I heard another argument against offering things at school that weren't generated by the students as wrong because 'kids might feel bad if they don't sign up". I hope that I misunderstood this because these sorts of worries lead to decisions based on fear. And they are fears about things that cannot ever be controlled- a person's emotional reaction to something.

But back to parental pressure. Is it a bad thing? No, not at all. And it is often very subtle or even unconscious. I don't think it's wrong to give your opinion about something or tell your kid what you think they should do. It's definitely a fine line. To convince but not coerce. (I love alliterative phrases!) I think it's unrealistic to expect parents to instruct and socialize their children but have some sort of off switch when it comes to what they learn or what path they follow.

Comparisons and competition

2009-04-19T21:26:00.000-07:00

I went to an information session to give the parent's perspective for some folks interested in the school. I almost immediately got into a contentious discussion with a woman who clearly was not buying what we were selling. Somebody else asked me what differences I saw between my kids and kids in more traditional schools. The first thing that came to mind was that my kids were more relaxed. They don't worry about school. More importantly, they don't worry about failure and they don't worry about how they measure up. They aren't afraid to try things because they aren't afraid of failing.

There are a lot of kids out there who get good grades, not because their work is so exceptional but because they know how to get good grades. Ultimately, if your goal is a good grade, not the acquisition of a skill or knowledge, and you have a winning formula where is the impetus to try something new, to go beyond what's asked of you. Failure is not the worst thing in the world, it's not without consequences but it's not irredeemable. I think that the grading system blows the importance of the end results out of proportion and it takes it's toll on kids year after year.

I think that age mixing actually reduces some anxiety also. When you have 20 six year olds to compare yourself to every day, it's easy to start developing skewed ideas of what normal is and how you fit into that. When you are hanging out with kids of all different ages, differences can be ascribed to age rather than some inherent rightness or wrongness about yourself. It's a gentler rating system.

I've noticed that many of the Sudbury kids are generous with their praise of one another. Again, without these constant comparisons and measurements, there is a lot of room for generosity and encouragement. I'm not saying there isn't competition but it's an aspect of what goes on at school not the main, I'm at a loss for words here, factor.

Dither, Deliberate, Dither , Deliberate

2009-04-17T21:50:00.000-07:00

What's the difference between dithering and deliberating? How well you like the person engaged in it!

I've probably said this before but a huge drawback of democracies is that everybody gets their say and it can be hard to get things accomplished. When you have to discuss and vote on every little thing you can get bogged down in the details.

The plus to this is that with a good deal of discussion some very creative solutions present themselves. At my pre-kid job we had this meeting every morning that was a monster. It was supposed to be about the patient rounds but it would go on for hours. Now I see that it's because the person running the meeting wanted to solve every problem indicated by the reports right then. That's impossible!

Sometimes democracy feels like an endless series of meetings. We're about to have our annual assembly meeting. This is an important part of a Sudbury school. For one, the budget gets voted on line by line and you know people get nutty when it's time to talk about money. I think, this will only be my second so I'm not sure, that it's also a way to look at the direction the school is taking and gives parents a voice.

I thought more aobut the fact that one of the founders is not running for re-election. It did worry me but then I thought, I'm sending my kids to a school not a cult and if the school can't survive the departure of one person then there's a big problem with the school.

As usual I'm very very tired. And tired of being tired. but not tired of talking about how tired I am.

I have never been so happy to see my kids

2009-04-14T20:10:00.000-07:00

go back to school.

I feel horribly guilty about it but Des and Amelia fight all the time. They pick on Cady and snipe at me. And complain that being home sucks.

All Cady, All Finn, all the time is a bit much.

I need some space, people!

Still thinking

2009-04-08T21:23:00.000-07:00

What do I want from my kids school? If you send your kids to a sudbury school the real question is "what kind of people to I want my kids to be?" because the point of the school is to produce a successful adult. but how do you define that? can it be quantified? so here's my list in progress of things that I think are important:

A high standard of ethical behavior. They simply must be able to identify right from wrong and be willing to do what they think is right even if it isn't convenient or popular or doesn't benefit them financially.

I want them to have the tools of logic at their disposal because there is a lot of bullshit out there and they need to be able to evaluate arguments rationally.

They should know how to recognize and avoid trouble. This is especially important for my girls. They need to be able to notice a creep. They need to be vigilant about their safety.

I hope I can instill a strong work ethic in them. Sometimes you get lucky but most things come about from perseverance and hard work. Being smart helps but it isn't enough.

I want them to be in the habit of looking beyond their life, or their circle and actively seek out ways to be helpful.

Manners are important. Empathy is important. Honesty is important.

I'll think of more stuff I'm sure. :)

Veering

2009-03-31T18:50:00.001-07:00

So I know my past few posts contradict each other. I will once again think and type simultaneously and see if I can come up with an answer.

I don't want my kids sitting at a desk all day. I don't want their day micromanaged. That's not what I'm looking for. On the other hand I worry that the freedom they enjoy is fostering indolence. Or that the culture of the school becomes, ha we aren't going to do shit because you can't make us.

Sometimes I worry, because my kids are so young, that the "if they want it bad enough, they'll make it happen" rule is asking too much. When there is something go on, some project they can get in on, they come home so happy and excited to talk about it.

So what is it that I want from and/or for my children? I'm going to think about that for a bit.

Working through the tough stuff

2009-03-31T01:37:00.000-07:00

I don't know exactly what's going on but I get the sense that it isn't just my kids who have hit a wall but it feels like the whole school has. Right now there is a budget shortfall so they asked families to donate some extra money per kid. Less than half did. I understand that things are tight for people, I'm not unsympathetic, but nothing? Not even $20 to just help out a little bit?

I feel like the staff is overworked and can't be the kind of models that they want to be. One of the founding staff members is leaving at the end of this year and that makes me feel very nervous.

I'm hitting my own wall as a parent because I feel like I'm seeing and hearing about a whole lot of nothing. Des doesn't talk about anything but the computer. The few times that I have picked them up they are almost always on the computer. Amelia talked about more plans and ideas last year and this year, nothing. I know she was spending a lot of time in the art room for a while but that kind of petered out.

Hmm, let me take a step back and think about this. For a while she was into the art room, bringing home all sorts of projects. She is also reading. Not sitting down and reading a book but she tells me what things say so I know she's getting there. She can sort of add and subtract. She definitely gets snottier than she used to. She peppers her speech with the word "like" and occasionally adopts a valley girl cadence. She still shows amazing patience with her brother and sister but she is not as helpful as she used to be. She doesn't get written up very often. She still pretty much goes to school meeting only if she has a motion. She's very interested in the bookstore. Thinks I should buy it. :) I know some of these things are developmental and I'm not blaming the school for her growing up. What concerns me is the decrease in enthusiasm and ideas.

Des often complains of boredom and talks incessantly about the computer. Likes math. Is not quite along with the reading but working on it. Has become even more resistant to instruction in any way, shape, or form. If Des isn't convinvced that something is going to be fun beforehand or that he's going to be perfect at something from the very first try, he doesn't want to do it. He had a huge meltdown this weekend because Amelia went on this day long hike in the woods and he didn't. He didn't want to go because it was a drop off and when we got there he said it didn't look fun enough. fine. Turns out that it wasn't just a hike but there was a story involved and they found a sword and got to touch it. He went ballistic. It sucks that he has to learn this way that if you don't try things you often end up missing out on fun but there you go.

While Amelia was on this hike we went to the playground at an elementary school. Cady had to go to the bathroom so I took her inside the school and it turned out there was a fencing tournament. Cady, Finn, Des and I watched it and found out that there's a fencing club that meets at the school on tuesday nights. Des has been interested in swords and stuff like that for a while so last night I proposed going to a meeting. He was very suspicious.
"Is it a class?"
"No, it's a club."
"Well, do I have to do it?"
"No."
"I don't think I'm big enough to hold a sword with one hand."
"Would you be willing to try?"
"Yes. do parents stay?"
"Sure."
"Are they just going to teach me stuff. Is it a class?"
"No, it's a club and peeople might tell you things if they think it's helpful but it's not a class. If they see you holding the sword and your arm hurts they might say 'try holding it this way'."
"OK. do I have to go every week? What if I don't like it?"
"Des, I'm not going to answer that yet because you tend to like things but then say you hate them and never want to go again but then you go back and you do like it. So I'm not going to make any promises."
"OK. but what if I don't want to be in the club anymore?"
"Well, we haven't actually joined it yet so let's not worry about quitting. Why don't we just try going and see what it's like."

I have a conversation like this with Des about any new activity. Even the ones that are his idea.

Hilarious follow up to the anecdotal evidence

2009-03-23T09:55:00.000-07:00

So I got to have a conversation with my friend's cousin about his cousins. Turns out that they did live on a commune but ended up going to a well known progressive boarding school. I googled it and checked out their website. Now I don't know what the cost was 30 years ago but right now it's 40,000 a year for boarders and 27,000 for day students. But they are "committed to socioeconomic diversity" and in fact even full paying students are subsidized because tuition only covers 75% of of their expenses. That would make me feel so much better knowing that my 40,000 was a bargain!

The school does have many similarities to Sudbury in that it encourages the students to participate in the running of the school but doesn't seem to take it as far as Sudbury does. However they must do two independent classes of their own design and attend regular classes and have grades and all of that. This phrase I found somewhat chilling "Life at_______ is structured such that students spend almost every waking hour involved in learning of one kind or another." Really? Every waking hour?

I'll have to own up and tell my friend that these success stories are the product of a more conventional type of education than she thought. I'm just too honest.

More thoughts on my anecdotal evidence

2009-03-16T10:41:00.000-07:00

I used the phrase "didn't have to do anything" to compare this school to Sudbury but it's a really simplistic comparison. It's also easy to misunderstand what someone might mean by that.

First of all, there are basic requirements for every student at a sudbury school: They must attend school for a minimum amount of time each day. They must perform a minimum amount of community service hours. They must do cleaning jobs. They must serve on JC at least once during the school year. These are responsibilities that I think of as being civic in nature-in order to maintain their society they all have to pitch in a certain amount.

What they don't have to do is engage in any sort of intellectual pursuit that they aren't interested in. They are not compelled to vote on any matter, even though it may be in their best interest to do so. They have no homework. They don't have to regurgitate information at someone else's command to prove themselves. They are completely free, once they have fulfilled their duties as a member of school meeting, to spend their day as they see fit.

Keep in mind that "not having to do anything" is not the same as "doing nothing". Sometimes it looks that way to people, even me, but part of that is because we're conditioned to kids having their day filled for them. And part of it is that they're just sitting around doing nothing. (that's a joke!)

Is there anything more compelling than ironclad anecdotal evidence?

2009-03-15T01:05:00.000-07:00

I have a friend who is very skeptical of the Sudbury philosophy. Her concern is that kids won't learn what they need to learn and she doesn't like the idea of an unstructured day.

She called me yesterday and said that she was talking to her husband and "of course I told him what I thought about it." Her husband said that his cousins had gone to a similar type of school in New Hampshire on a commune. Whether it was a sudbury school or not is debatable but his impression of it was that "they didn't have to do anything". I guess their father had no faith in formal education whatsoever and that's how they ended up on the commune.

What became of these cousins? One retired in his forties after starting his own computer company and making a boatload of cash. His sister became an actress and was nominated for an academy award this year.

Chew on that, o ye of little faith. :)

Why am I awake so very early? Or did I just stay up really late?

2009-03-12T03:00:00.001-07:00

Insomnia. Evil evil insomnia.

Postcrastinating

2009-03-11T08:44:00.000-07:00

I have some stuff to do that is way more important than this but I just don't want to deal with it.

There are some financial troubles at our school. The budget is always tight but more people are having problems paying the tuition because of losing their job or they are self employed and business is down. It sucks. I wish we could pay full tuition, I would, happily. That's why I'm so grateful for the sliding scale. Without that there would be no sudbury for us.

OK back to the real world.

ok

2009-03-09T11:04:00.000-07:00

hmm that was weird.

My mystical magical box is behaving strangely today. I hope it is not suffering an imbalance of humors. (my knowledge of computers is equivalent to that of a well educated person from the middle ages knowledge of medicine but I think their terminology is more fun!)

testing testing

2009-03-09T11:03:00.000-07:00

All my posts have vanished so I want to see what the deal is

Behavior Modification

2009-03-08T21:20:00.000-07:00

Des has the most irritating habit of shouting for no good reason and singing quite loudly. He is a loud child to begin with but when he sneaks up behind you and shouts some gibberish the effect is jarring. To say the least. Some of his songs are entertaining, but then he sings them over and over again, loudly. so it kinda takes the shine off. Our favorites are Hey, Finlay! , Ohmanoma (the lyrics to this one consist solely of "Ohmanoma, cheebadeeba") and I Hate Everyone(Because They Don't Do What I Want).

Anyway, on the way to the bus the other morning, Des let it slip that he might get suspended if he doesn't stop shouting all the time at school. Ray said "So where are you going to go?" Des said "I guess I'll go to a babysitter with Cady and Finn." Ray said "No way, there isn't even room for you at Cady's school. And we're not paying for Sudbury and a babysitter. If you get suspended you're going to regular school." Nothing strikes fear into Desmond's heart like the threat of regular school. Now most likely he would only be suspended for a day so I don't know what Ray was thinking. And in the time it has taken me to type this I can't remember what my original point was. Oh yeah, behavior modification. So it's great that sudbury will get in a kid's face about their behavior. Not just the big stuff like stealing, lying, breaking rules etc. but in this case being annoying. Once again, JC is a neutral tool for telling people that the way they are acting just will not work in the community.

We can't suspend him from our life though. And we wouldn't want to. I wish we could get him to take a music class or something and let him go nuts there. Ray and I are not musical people. We don't know how to find a positive way to help him express himself without driving us all crazy.

Egghead likes her booky book!

2009-03-07T19:36:00.000-08:00

So I'm thinking about buying a used book store. for realsies.

I starting working there this week to see what it would be like to work and have four kids. since I'm only working from 10-2 it's not that bad.

I'm in heaven. For starters I have adult conversations the whole time I'm there. I might mention my kids in passing but they aren't the focus. How refreshing! Secondly, I'm surrounded by books. I've already come across about 30 that I want to read. Plus so many that I have read. It's like running into old friends.

The store itself is a disaster. There are probably 40,000 books. There are boxes and piles and stacks of books everywhere you turn. It's insane. It smells. It needs to be painted. Half of the books need to be priced and shelved. And people don't read the way they used to. Idiots.

Ray is not into it but I feel like this is where I'm meant to be. It makes me so happy to be around these books and talk to people about books and look at books and alphabetize the books.

I think i just may end up doing this!

Believe it or not, I should probably thank the sudbury gang. Seeing what they have accomplished with the school made me feel like I could accomplish something for myself. The people who founded the school or have been involved from almost the beginning are a very smart energetic bunch. I've learned so much from them.

I have to backtrack here. This whole bookstore project has been a revelation to me about what I can and can't handle and what is really important to me. I also feel like finally, at age 38, I'm actually daring to do something. Something hard but possibly rewarding. I'll have to continue more on this tomorrow. As usual, someone is crying and needs me. Ah, motherhood.

Church

2009-03-05T12:40:00.001-08:00

We had to go to my uncle's funeral yesterday. It was in a catholic church. A novelty for my children. As we enter the pew Des says, "Mommy why do they have a statue of a man being crucerised?" Before I can answer he says, "Who wants to look at that when they're going to church?"

Later on, in the car, he says "So you're telling me that people get married in front of a big guy getting crucerised?"

I tried to explain to him that it was a reminder of Jesus' suffering for all of us and Ray pipes in with "There is no guilt like Catholic guilt!"

A testamonial

2009-03-02T17:41:00.000-08:00

I've been meaning to share this for a while. It's amazing.

To Sego Lily School

A note from A Dad.

My daughter H. graduated from Sego Lily in December. What a long amazing
trip it's been.

When H. came to me early last fall and said she was ready to move on,
that she had gotten what she needed from high school and was ready to join
the world of adults, I was brought to tears. For you see, H. was at one
time, a disabled child. She was diagnosed with both Absences Epilepsy and
Autism. Until a few years ago the idea that she would be ready for the world
let alone taking care of herself or having a job was inconceivable. Her
disability made it so that she could not learn. From an early age we used
tutors, therapists, full-time aides in the classroom, private and public
school, and all of the special Ed that the public schools provide.

Until about 5th grade H. was a very happy, tough kid, with a spark and
gleam in her eyes. Unfortunately she still could not read, spell, write, or
do any math. She could not tell time nor understand what a certain time
meant, although she was able to speak and understand, and had language
skills above grade level. On first meeting H., she appeared normal. One
would only notice that she seemed a little different, but she still had
great trouble learning.

After a very traumatic 7th grade in public school, with all of the
associated teasing, bullying, and hopelessness that comes with a disability,
she was done. She was depressed, angry, temperamental, and hopeless. I could
go on and on. She hadn't smiled in a year. She told us that she was not
going to go to school anymore. Seriously, running away or worse were her
options if we did not believe her. We had looked at all school options in
Utah and even were looking at moving out of state to find her a place to go.
Home schooling seemed like the only option. An article in the Salt Lake
Tribune mentioned that a new school with a different philosophy was starting
in Salt Lake. I was on the phone with Jen that day. After speaking with her
I was very impressed. Her vision, expertise, and love of kids and their
learning swayed me. We took H. to see Sego Lily as we had done with many
other schools. She would not even get out of the car. After hearing about
the school and philosophy and meeting Jen she agreed to try it for 8th
grade. The first few weeks were hard. She spent most of her time curled up
on the couch, but she went to school every day. Within a few months, she had
gotten into the swing of things. She started talking about her day at
school. H. didn't come home in tears every day and actually looked
forward to school some mornings. She started to smile!!! The old wonderful
H. was starting to reappear.

Over the next few years H. started to really assert herself. She was
gaining self-confidence, joking and kidding with kids and staff. She was
happy, healthy, and was starting to learn. I was now going into parent mode.
Was this the right school for her? No classes? No curriculum? How will this
be for her as she gets older? I started flipping out. Was this just teenage
daycare? H. seemed to spend all day watching TV. I had many meetings with
the staff and they told me to have faith. H. was making much more
progress then I thought. I almost pulled her out many times. This was so
foreign. Thank goodness I didn't.

This is the important part. H. came home one day and started to talk
about ancient Egypt. She had seen a DVD on Egypt and was exited. I asked her
if she wanted me to get some more DVDs and she lit up. I started buying her
videos on many subjects and she ate them up. H. had found a way to learn.
Textbooks and lectures did not work for her but visual audio and hands on
did. Wow. H.'s learning exploded. She now started using the computer.
Every day and most nights were spent looking for info on her Mac book or
watching TV. The Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, and National Geographic
were her new best friends.

Sego Lily allowed H. to figure out for herself how to learn. She took it
and ran. Sego Lily gave her the tools that will serve her well for a
lifetime. She no longer considers herself to be disabled. She has discovered
her ability to adapt and adjust to outside influences. SHE HAS LEARNED TO
READ. I don't know how. She did not spend her days in English class. H.
can handle basic math, balance her checkbook, tell time, and keep schedules.
If there is something she wants to know she can go out and find it on her
own. I sometimes call her Google Girl. Her ability to research is amazing.
There is no way she would have progressed to this level of independence and
maturity at a regular school. I am not sure she would even have survived.
Sego Lily gave her the tools for life and maybe even saved it. During her
first year at Sego Lily Her Mom and I used to say, "Well, she won't be a
rocket scientist but at least she will survive". We were only right about
the rocket part. Today you will find H. working in the Paleontology Lab
at the Natural History Museum at the University of Utah. After finishing her
training she is now a full-fledged member of the team. She is living her
passion and is looking at going on and getting a degree in Paleontology. I
am more proud of her then anything else in my life. For H. to have made
it this far took tenacity and her unique outlook on life. But most of all,
it took Jen, Kyle, Craig, Tara, Katee, Hollie, and all the other staff,
parents, and kids at Sego Lily. The school and family that is Sego Lily gave
her the gift of success and for that I will be forever deeply grateful.

Introducing...

2009-03-01T21:58:00.000-08:00

My friend Jen will be sharing her thoughts on the Sudbury experience here now too. I have graciously bestowed this honor, made possible by her clever navigation of Blogger's many and mysterious menus. This blog was actually her idea in the first place.

Jen's elder son attends a smaller Sudbury school part time. This is his first year. We met at a La Leche meeting, back when we still loved our kids more than knitting.

I hope you enjoy getting another parent's perspective.

Why haven't I been posting lately?

2009-02-27T18:59:00.000-08:00

Well, the egghead is going through some stuff. all of it positive but time consuming. First of all I started doing weight watchers because my high school reunion(which should have been last year) is in May and I would at least like to get back to my pre-pregnancy weight. I really only started in earnest the past week or two but have spent the past couple of months examining my eating behaviors and really figured out why nothing worked. So that's taken up some time. My other big project has been the idea of buying a used bookstore. I've been talking to the owner for about six weeks and I'm actually going to go work there for a few weeks to see howit will be with the kids. I'm very excited. I've also been doing a major purge and reorganization in my house. It is much easier to be neat when you don't have that much stuff.

I'm most excited about the bookstore. Even if the book business is on the decline and the advent of Kindle and all of that. I walk in there and get tingly. Obstacle after obstacle keeps coming up and I find a solution to it. That's how badly I want to make this happen. I should talk more about it but time for BSG!

Cady

2009-02-12T09:08:00.000-08:00

Cady is at the stage where no detail is too small for sharing. "My pants are wet because I peed all over them. I'm cold." "I'm going to read this book now because it is good. I don't read bad books." "This puzzle is funcusing me. It's so funcusing."

Cady will be turning four next month but she could care less. Four is just a stepping stone. On our way to school today she counted on her fingers-
"Right now I'm three." Holds up four fingers. "At my birthday party I be four." Hides her hand. "You know what comes after that?" Wiggles all 5. "5. And then I go to Sudbury School."

It's going to be so interesting to see what it's like for her and what her relationship with Des and Amelia will be by then or how it will change. It was so important to me that my kids grow up together. Even if it means they bicker more. With the age based segregation of public schools they could lead whole separate lives.

I wonder if Des and Amelia ever fight at school the way they do at home. Probably not. Kids are always better in public than they are at home.

Asking questions is a good way to find things out

2009-02-08T19:22:00.000-08:00

So I decided to ask the staff about the attendance policy. I really only wanted three people's opinion on it but I felt that everyone should be given a chance to answer if they wanted. It seemed to be more democratic that way. I sent an email privately rather than the Assembly list because I was afraid my questions would be misunderstood and there is always someone who goes off on a tangent and the original point gets loss in the ensuing evolution of the conversation. I sent an email even though I prefer to have these conversations face to face although email does offer some nice advantages. I can be more thoughtful and measured in my responses in an email or a letter, although I'm not always, and I think sometimes it's easier to say things that you might not face to face. On the other hand, without the visual cues of body language it is so easy to misinterpret tone. I reread my original email and while I was trying to be succinct I think, because I tend to be jokey and cheerful by nature in person, it could be read as hostile or challenging but I was trying to keep it all business.

Why did I even feel the need to do this? Like any human being I brought my own bagage and assumptions when I read the policy and I was feeling really negative about it. I'm invested in this school. I'm not a founder or a staff member but this is where my kids will spend a large part of their childhood. I simply will not have them in an environment that generates more negative feelings for me than positive ones. I used to work in a nursing home and when I would tell people what I did they would say "Oh my mother was in a nursing home. It was horrible. It was the worst place in the world." And I would think, "Then why did you leave her there?" That's how I feel about schools. No place is perfect but when I have more bad things to say than good, they're out of there.

So I felt if I understood it better I would be more accepting of it and I was right. The reason for mandatory attendance is that the school is only as "vibrant as it's students". If there aren't enough people there it's like a poorly attended party-everyone milling around wondering where everyone else is. I also came to realize that there is a difference between policy and procedure. Policy is what you want done. Procedure is how you do it. As a parent I really only need to know the policy and maybe the reasons behind it, reading the endless list of details and stuff made it feel burdensome. I'm glad I was able to sort that out too.

Here is a funny thing about human communication. I first noticed it in the second Matrix movie. Too often we answer questions that nobody asked or present something that will generate all sorts of questions and then never answer them.

Smells like teen spirit

2009-02-06T07:17:00.000-08:00

The kids were telling me about some activity in the blackboard room and Amelia said "We can play there now that the teenagers go to the music room. It smells much better." Des said "Yeah and now the music room stinks." I said "Really? What does it smell like?" Amelia scrunched her nose and said "Hot."

In other news, the kids made a motion for a valentine's day party which was approved but with stricter conditions than Des had anticipated. After his 20 minute meltdown I was able to deduce that his vision for the party was something on the scale of the Halloween fair not "some dumb thing where you're stuck in the kitchen and have to do every single bit of cleaning. Who thinks that is fun? It isn't fun to just be stuck in a kitchen." I hear that! If an idea isn't abandoned before it starts Sudbury is very good at teaching the amount of effort and work needed to achieve something.

Attendance

2009-02-05T22:13:00.000-08:00

There's a new attendance policy. I'm not really sure why it had to be changed. Attendance is one of those things where I recognize that School Meeting has authority but I think as a courtesy they should seek parental input. I think if you are going to make changes with the potential to affect home life you should involve the larger community. The new policy sounds a little too much like a regular school with all sorts of threats built into it. (I'm being dramatic-we're talking about write ups and fines but still!)

Let me backtrack here. I'm philosophically opposed to mandatory attendance. There is always a distinction drawn between alternative models of education and "compulsory education" but if you are forcing a child to be in school when you say so, isn't that compulsory? I think the merits of attending any school should be obvious enough that there is no need for a separate consequence simply for not being there. I've heard the argument 'well, when they grow up and get a job they have to show up for work or they'll be fired'. Then so be it. Again, do you need 12 years to teach this lesson and is that the point of going to school? I've had jobs where it was the work that I actually accomplished that was key and not when or where I did it.

Here's another little sticking point with me(winter makes me so cranky). If we want to do something outside of school on a school day the kids have to make a motion for school meeting approval. I think the policy should be that school meeting has to be notified. I neither want nor care about school meeting's approval. They are my kids. I pay for them to attend this school. And one of the reasons that I sent them to this school was for flexibility so that if I want to take the day off and take them to the city I can without having to answer to anyone. The idea of school meeting having to make a decision about whether an outside activity is comparable to a day at Sudbury seems silly to me because there is no typical day at Sudbury. What would school meeting disapprove of? Illegal activity I suppose. Excessive absences where the kid was out of school more than they were there? I don't know. I should ask.

I think, I hope, the reason for the policy is because it's a state mandate. I think NY even makes homeschoolers keep attendance. Beauracrats. Humph. They are my sworn enemies.

Oh, so that's what they do

2009-02-02T17:52:00.000-08:00

We were visiting some friends and of course the subject of school came up. Des was surprised to hear that their 8 year old daughter was reading. Amelia said "Of course she is, she's in 3rd grade! She's 8." Our friend's 5 year old boy said "I go to her school too but I'm not in a grade yet." Des said "We don't go to a grade school." The other boy said "You should come to my school. Math is fun." Des said and he looked at me kind of slyly,"Well, at my school we can do math all day if we want." My friend asked him "Do you?" Amelia said "No, he plays video games all day."

They missed the bus today so I drove them to school. Amelia had a fit that I was dropping Cady off first "That is so unfair. I don't want to get there all late!" i pointed out that Cady's school was only 10 minutes away so that's why she went first. Later on I said to them "I know it's important for you guys to get to school as soon as possible but it isn't that important to me because I don't really see you doing anything there." Amelia said "We love our school! We love it so much so we always want to be there. Sudbury is like a giant playdate." and then Des added, "But not at anyone's house."

Lately I've been very cynical and thinking it's all BS. I know I've said this before but do they really need 12 years of hanging around? Just like I ask if the regular schools really need 12 years of total control. Is there no middle way?!

Lacunae in The Philosophy

2009-01-27T01:57:00.000-08:00

When Sudbury Valley first started people got away with all kinds of discrimination, including but not limited to, the disabled.

I think there is a big gaping hole in the Sudbury philosophy when it comes to special needs kids. I know a couple of people with kids with special needs who would love to send their kids to the school but feel like they would get lost there. I've also had discussions about the possibility of children with disabilities enrolling and having an aide and was kind of shot down and told that it wouldn't work. My issue is that this is not 1968 where you can tell people I'm sorry but this school won't work for you because your child can't get up the stairs. Nowadays the schools need to make reasonable accomodations for the child. I think with proper training an aide could be present if they made it possible for the child to attend. A sticky wicket would be if the child had therapies also. what happens if the kid refuses treatment? Now that I think about it that's their right as a patient no matter where they are.

There would be questions about whether or not the aide could vote in school meeting or write people up or what have you but in my mind it is not an accomodation that would compromise the mission of the school. And it's true that a developmentally disabled child might not particpate fully in things like JC or school meeting but who knows. I think another aspect of democratic society, any society, is that you learn to make provisions for or help in the care of or be a voice for the voiceless. I think to be as inclusive as possible .

Another weird issue that I have, and is that not with Sudbury schools in general but in our school in particular is that people are not very friendly. From the staff down. They aren't mean, but it's hard if you are a new parent in the school. A common complaint of parents is that they walk in and nobody acknowledges their presence. Same with the students. I have a problem with behavior that I think of as indifferent, if not downright rude to be modelled for my kids. Also, if someone they don't know comes into the building the first person who encounters them needs to find out who they are and what they are doing there. I remember saying hi to a mom last year and she said "You know, my son has been here two weeks and you're the first person who has spoken to me." What's up with that?

I always say hello to staff when I encounter them and I don't wait for them to acknowledge me but I haven't been doing that with the students. When you first start at the school they tell you not to interfere or engage or interrupt the students unless they invite you to but I don't think saying hello is so very intrusive. I'm also scared of teenagers so I kind of avoided some of the older students if I was coming into the school. I'm changing because I don't think that I should act in an artificial manner and I think the kids need to learn some common courtesy. When someone comes into your space, your home, your school, your business, the polite thing to do is to greet them.

Hi again

2009-01-24T20:27:00.000-08:00

Well I made it back from Texas in one piece. We had a good time. Here's some odds and ends stuff before I get back to "regular" posts.

BSG spoiler- ellen as the fifth? gaeta leading a mutiny? what the frak?!

I finally finished Democracy in America. wow. I'm thinking I want to read parts of it again. I also read The World Without Us. It's made me amp up my green living. It's not preachy but you can't read the whole book and not come away with a sense that we need to change the way we do things. It also appeals to the curious geek in me.

Speaking of the world withou me, my house without me had a leak from the washing machine and I now have a giant hole in my basement ceiling and a smallish hole in my kitchen ceiling. I'm getting a new carpet for the hall and stairs though.

Some funny "you just don't get sudbury, do ya?" moments with my in laws:
Ray's step mom would say after different activities "You can go back and talk about it at school. That was educational." After 4 or 5 times of this the kids told her "Nobody cares. Our school is fun!" She looked at me and I said "It's true. That's not what's most important about the school."
My father in law would give them these little pop quizzes. One time he asked Des how many states there were and Des said something like "You don't know? You're supposed to be a grown up!"

I never noticed how much strangers like to test children until my kids couldn't pass their tests anymore. They don't know how many states there are. They can't read yet. They don't know how to multiply. In fact they can barely add. Sometimes I worry about this. Mostly I don't.

Hmm, what else is new? I guess nothing else. The Alamo is much prettier than I expected. Texans are very tiresome with their love of ugly ass Texas though. I don't even think New Yorkers go on and on about New York the way Texans do. We really don't need to. :)

I'm off to Texas!

2009-01-05T18:16:00.000-08:00

Yes, we are off to San Antonio to visit Ray's Dad and Step Mother. I expect at least one or two lively debates between me and my brother in law when I try to explain the merits of a Sudbury style education. They switched their oldest, he's two months younger than Des and Amelia, to a catholic school this year because "he needed more control and discipline". Yep, I'm sure that's what he needed.

I also expect at least one or two shouting matches between me and my father in law because he can be something of a blockhead. Also, we are both just loud talkers so our spirited conversations are sometimes mistaken for arguments. But we'll make up so we can gang up on Ray for being a republican.

I hope I don't come home with any bald spots after a 7 hour trip with one plane change, four kids and no hubby. (Ray is flying home a week earlier.)

R.I.F.

2009-01-02T20:41:00.000-08:00

These are some of the topics that come up again with Sudbury parents, including yours truly:
Screens/video games/computers
will they get into college
reading

Des and Amelia are sort of starting to read. Amelia makes a project out of it about once a week. She sits down with Frog and Toad and slogs through it. Des spells out signs to me and asks what they say. He also reads signs and menus when we're out, or he tries to sound them out.

English a tricky language. It's a cluster fuck of borrowed words and latin grammar superimposed(arbitrarily) on a germanic language. It's also extremely difficult to learn to read english because it is not purely phonetic in its spelling like most languages. That being said it's mutability is ultimately a strength because it is so expressive and allows for a great deal of nuance in communication.

Back to reading, when it comes to learning or teaching someone to read I am strictly on the side of phonics. The greeks came up with such an elegant solution to recording speech by transcribing sounds instead of whole words or ideas. The flexibility is amazing. One of the first things linguists do when they discover a new language is assign it an alphabet. Not a set of pictograms but phonemes. Why? Because all languages have a finite number of sounds that they form but a much larger set of words, ideas, etc. that are conveyed by these sounds in different combinations.

So that's my biased view. I had to rethink reading when the kids were first interested in it because I have read thousands of books. I don't read the same way they do. I am a fluent reader in English. I don't have to sound out the word "can" every time I see it because I have probably seen it a hundred thousand times. I recognize it and I only have to focus on its context. So the first part of reading is decoding, matching the letters with the sounds and the second part is context, understanding the place and definition of a word in relation to other words. It takes some serious thinking at the beginning. Many of us, without realizing it, read on autopilot. The way you drive to the grocery store and have no recollection of how you got there because you've gone so many times you don't really have to think about. You can focus on yelling at your kids to cut it out already.

So here's an experiment inspired by a set of christmas ornaments I have.
Read this word:
POSTOB
What does it mean? How do you pronounce it? POST-ob? Wrong! Po-STOB? Guess again.
Here's a hint: It's the name of a city.
Still can't get it? Well, I'm being a jerk here, I'm using the Cyrillic alphabet.
In the Cyrillic alphabet P makes the sound of the latin R and B makes the sound of the latin V.
Now try-
Yay! You did it!
A small city on the Don river in southern Russia. The word is at the bottom.

The ornaments are painted to look like Matrushka's with the name of a different russian city inscribed at the bottom of each. My dad brought them back for me from Russia. I studied Russian for about two years. I actually went there about ten years ago. Can't speak a word of it but I sort of remembered the alphabet so I was able to sound out, slowly, the names of the cities( Yaroslava was by far the toughest). You had to figure it out with no background info. What assumptions did you make? That it was an English word or an american city? Why did you do that? Because this is a blog written in English by an American. When I was trying to read it I had a different set of facts but it still took me some time because the material is so unfamiliar. New readers are reading with much more of a blank slate than us. That's one of the reasons why they struggle.

Hmm, what's my point here. I guess my point is that reading is difficult for anybody if it is unfamiliar material. We all go through the same process but our experience let's us move faster.
So I don't worry about my kids learning to read or being fluent readers eventually. I respect their process. People worry so much about the decoding part of it when they could help their kids ultimately more by just talking to them more and introducing them to as many unfamiliar words and ideas as possible. This way when they come across something in their own reading they won't be flying blind.

Rostov.

Happy New Year!

2009-01-01T19:15:00.001-08:00

I know it's just another day but doesn't the idea of starting over seem so promising? Clean slate and all that. I wish I lived in a warmer climate though. I think the New Year would have more oomf in a warmer climate.

The kids were exhausted and strung out today. Too many late nights and parties. Back to school on monday. I hate the morning rush but I love the bus!

jeopardy

2008-12-30T07:51:00.000-08:00

someone I knew was on jeopardy last week, a woman I went to high school with and am in FB contact with only.

Anyway, it reminded me of the time I tried out for Jeopardy and I thought I would share it.

It was 1994. I was 23 and recuperating from a bad illness. i couldn't do much but lie in bed or watch TV and I watched Jeopardy religiously. One night we saw that they were having tryouts in Atlantic City. My mother in law(or my boyfriend's mom at the time) loves AC. So we decided to take a trip down with her and I would try out.

I forget which casino the first test was in but we had to go through a maze of slot machines to a small conference room. Some guy explained that we would have, I think five minutes to take a ten question quiz. You had to get 7 of the ten right to move on. I sat down and got 6 almost right away. I didn't know the name of the "famous milanese opera house" (what is La Scala?) and I had another iffy answer, time was running out but at the last minute I looked at "rocky island" and for some reason 'bikini atoll' popped into my head. I almost shouted "Atoll! Atoll!" but wrote it down. They said to wait and listen if our name was announced and come back if it was in ten minutes or something like that.

We were playing slots when what do you know- they called my name. It was very exciting. They gave me a sheet of paper and told me to come back in a month for round two.

For round two my future mother in law drove me down. I was actually still pretty weak and couldn't handle a long drive. I crocheted the whole down, working on what became a queen sized blanket. I still think of it as my sick blanket. I just sat and watched tv and crocheted that blanket over me the whole winter.

At the start of Round Two there were about 80 people. We sat at long conference tables, 6 footers, two or three to a table. One woman came in late and seemed really fussy about where she would sit. This time there were 50 questions. They came up on a TV screen and we were told that they were all 800 or 1000 questions from previous shows. You would only have 30 seconds to answer before the next question came up. It didn't have to be in the form of a question. It was hard. Again, I remember the answers I knew I didn't know- a sphygnomanometer measures this( what is blood pressure?) and he composed Peer Gynt (who is Grieg?). I was sure I bombed.

They vanished for a bit and when they came back they said "If we say your name, congratulations, you passed." they start reading names, I'm getting ready to tell my mother in law i failed and not feeling too terribly disappointed when I hear my name. I was so surprised I said "Really?" Somebody laughed and the guy reading the names said "Yes, really." After they finished reading the list they said, "If we haven't said your name, I'm sorry but you won't be advancing. We don't share the scores of the tests so if your friends ask how you did you can tell them you just missed by a point." I'd say half to maybe two thirds of the people in the room didn't pass the test. Those of us who were left had to move to the front and fill in the empty seats.

I wound up sitting next to the woman who had come in late. We had a few minutes and she starts chatting with me about her doggie day care business and how she thinks this will get her on the show and she motions for me to come closer so she can show me some article she brought and I realize that she has been drinking. Now this thing started at 10 in the morning and she reeked. I'm looking around the room wondering "does anyone else know?" and also, "how the hell did she get through this test" I also noticed that I was the youngest person in the room by at least 15 years(I thought at the time, 15 years ago, HA). We had to introduce ourselves, say what we did, why we were hear. As the people were talking the list of occupations sounded like this "teacher, lawyer, lawyer, doctor, teacher, librarian, lawyer, teacher, teacher.." you get it. maybe with the occasional engineer. Then they get to me and I say "Hi, I'm a 23 year old waitress but not actually working right now. maybe I'll go back to college some day. I just thought it would be fun to see how well i could do." Oh, I forgot to mention that I had been on prednisone for about six months at this point so a lot of my hair had fallen out and my face was really puffy, so I can't even imagine what some people were thinking as I got up to give my spiel.

Then dog lady gets up and she was not exaclty incoherent but the guy asked her to repeat something she said and she started, I don't know how to explain it, speaking as loudly as someone could without shouting. and she was sort of waving her article around as she did it. I'm trying not to laugh, not because of what she was saying but because she was drunk and nobody knew it. and at the absurdity of the two of us among all the doctorlawyerteacher's there. I started thinking of us as the token fuck ups and because I was also nervous and excited I spent the rest of the introduction time trying not to laugh.

Now, it's time for the practice round and they explain that on real Jeopardy if you ring in before Alex finishes reading the question your buzzer is frozen for 10 seconds. The guy said some other stuff but I was still trying not to lose it. Especially when I realize that my new friend and I are going to be in the same group of three for mock jeopardy.

Let me tell you, playing for real instead of just on TV is really hard. Especially with two other people who you know are just as smart and probably smarter than you are. My group goes up to play and dog lady is clicking like crazy and arguing with the guy about not calling on her. I'm trying not to laugh. She answers a question "Texas" and he says "I'm sorry but..." and she says "It's texas. I know the answer is Texas. I was there last summer" and he says 'Remeber this is jeopardy.." she argues for another minute and finally he says 'it has to be in the form of a question." I knew I was out of it at this point and was fine with it. When the group before me came back from their turn, the lawyer had said "That was fun" but he didn't look like he meant it. I didn't think it was fun at all.

so, needless to say, I didn't make it on to Jeopardy which was fine. I know if I tried out again I could make it to the practice round again but the idea of being on TV and trying to keep my cool freaks me out. and I don't look good on camera. I think it was the knowing I was smart enough part that interested me, not the winning or TV part.

Busy Bee

2008-12-27T21:42:00.000-08:00

How was your holiday everyone? The egghead has been up to all sorts of shenanigans in the past few weeks. School is on break. The kids go back on Jan. 5th but then we are leaving for Texas for two weeks on the 7th. I almost feel like January is over before it started.

I don't have much to say. Merry Christmas. Happy New Year. and all that. I have made my new Year's Resolution. Last year's was to live a more inconvenient life. I think I was fairly successful in making some changes. I reduced my paper towel use to about 5% of what it once was. We began composting food. We doubled to tripled what we put in our recycling bin. I became more efficient in planning my daily trips to save gas. Overall I tried to be more thoughtful about how I do things. I'm going to give myself a solid B. Maybe a C+.

This year's resolution is to focus my meditation practice on the Buddhist principle of Right Speech. Right Speech means no lying, gossip or slander. It means not hurting people with your words. It also means your intent must be pure when you speak. I've read that Right Speech also means that your every word should be meaningful and help promote dharma so that even chitchat would be out but I'm not there yet.

There are a lot of reasons why I decided to focus on this. Some of it is that I find the news to be so relentlessly negative and depressing without any instruction to make the information they share useful. a man in california dressed up like Santa and killed 9 people. this is a tragedy to be sure but what benefit is it to those not living in his immediate vicinity to know about this. And the relentlessness of celebrity coverage has finally gotten to me. It adds nothing to the betterment of humanity. It's just a distraction. so I don't want to support that kind of speech anymore.

I will also work on my terrible habit of gossiping. I'm so bad. And again, do I really add anything to the people's lives that I gossip with. I would hate to know that people are talking about me. So why do i do it?

these are the changes I plan on making in the coming year.

I plan to be true to my values without trying to police the behavior of others. I want to be considerate of the effect of my words on my children, not just strangers.

I would like to stop using profanity. But I'm going to try and stop gossiping first.

Here's some follow up on things that I may or may not have followed up on:
Remember when i thought i was going deaf. Well it turns out I'm not. My hearing is borderline impaired. (Low enough to notice but good enough to not do anything about it). According to the audiologist my main problem is that I have four kids and live in a noisy environment.

That friend that I was mean to but then reunited with on facebook and I have a had a few very enjoyable lunches and may even go out to dinner with our fellas.Oh goodness it's 1 am and finn is up and that's why this post is so rambling. Well, I'll see you soon.

Facebook gripe again

2008-12-14T18:49:00.000-08:00

A few students from Sudbury have friended me on facebook. They have recommended other friends to me but I choose to wait for students to friend me because I don't want to be weird mom trying to be in their little crew.

The problem is that now I have to monitor myself more closely because its like having kids around all the time. I've used profanity once or twice and today is my birthday and I posted a silly thing about having a drink to celebrate and now feel like it may not be appropriate since there are students from the school on my friends list. It's kind of annoying.

I also want to create a separate account to have my real friends on that list and then have an account for people that I want no more than sporadic contact with at best. Unfriending seems so dramatic.

Sorry I haven't been blogging much. I know the world is just a little bit paler, a little bit grayer without regular infusions of my wit and wisdom.

Fun Fact

2008-12-09T10:11:00.000-08:00

Molotov Cocktails were not invented by Molotov or Russians for that matter. They were devised by the Finns during The Winter War and named for a Russian official who got the mess started in the first place.

Isn't that interesting?

My boyfriend's back

2008-12-06T21:53:00.000-08:00

I had taken a break from Democracy in America. For starters, the library wouldn't let me renew Volume I again. So I got behind on my read along. Plus, fooling around on the internet takes up a lot of time that might be spent in nobler pursuits. Plus we were all sick.

Instead of trying to catch up I decided to just pick up where my group is and start reading again. We have moved on to Volume II. Here's an interesting tidbit-vol. I was better received in America than Europe but Vol. II (published about 7 years later) was more popular in Europe than America.

Volume II is more sociological in nature. It looks at the effect of equality on everyday life and relationships, not just politics. My guess as to why it was not as well received in America is that Chapter 3 probably rubbed people the wrong way. It's hilarious and feels like it was written after an exhausting party but I think that what he ascribes to American character is really the universal tendency of the boor to glom onto someone.

Vol I is written so admiringly of American political institutions but Vol II takes all sorts of little jabs at the american character. I think it's funny and still see a lot of truth to some of them but many of his comments must have stung. No time to share any of those. Facebook scrabble doesn't play itself you know.

more thoughts

2008-12-03T21:01:00.000-08:00

I love analogies and metaphors and pretty much any way you can describe something as being like something else. Similes too. I love a good simile.

It was pointed out to me that my definition of curriculum was too narrow. I had already arrived at that conclusion but lacked the language to describe what a sudbury curriculum is. Here is a link that discusses the idea of curricula and learning experiences in a much more thorough, eloquent and better researched way than you will ever see on this site: The Moral Path of Curriculum: Fulfillment or Judgment

What I was really searching for was a way to crystallize the differences between a sudbury experience and one in a traditional school, especially the role of staff/teacher.

the first thought I had was "You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink." the Sudbury experience focuses on the leading part. They provide the conditions for all sorts of amazing things to happen and it's up to the students to participate or not. Traditional schools focus on the drinking. They don't have to lead the horses anywhere because of our compulsory education laws so they are free to get a big funnel and pour all sorts of stuff down their horse's throat.

I thought of the water as being the great big world and all the interesting stuff that is out there to see. Then I thought about rivers and how knowledge and experience are not static, they aren't this big puddle to drink from, one thing flows to another, so I was thinking how Sudbury schools are like this big whitewater rafting trip. The staff is on the boat and they know more about sailing the boat than the kids do but they can't control the direction or speed or forsee every rock any more than the kids can so they're sort of all in it together. The SS Sudbury. Ha!

I think it takes a special sort of person willing to cede that much control.

The staff is also really busy. They just have a ton of stuff to do so even if you had someone who had an agenda it would be hard to implement it because there isn't a lot of time.

I should not be up at 1 am blogging. This is ridiculous.

Rambling again

2008-12-03T10:59:00.000-08:00

As a new sudbury parent you think you know what The Philosophy is all about and sure you have your reservations but you think you can handle it. Then, one day, you come to a realization about the staff.

They are not teachers. They are not there to teach your kids. They are not even going to try.

If your kids asks them a question, they'll answer it to the best of their ability. If your kid wants help, they'll help. But they really truly have no interest in teaching your kid anything.

Sudbury schools are not curriculum based. They have no great wisdom to impart. They do not make learning "fun". And most importantly this is not even their organizing principle.

When you get this, as a parent, it's a little scary. You might feel cheated, hoodwinked. Hey, you think, what the hell kind of school is this anyway?

It's exactly the kind of school that they said it was. The organizing principle of a sudbury school is to prepare children to be active engaged citizens in a democracy. To be responsibile adults. I think they throw in the life long learner crap because people can't handle the idea of a school that doesn't have the word "learn" in its manifesto somewhere. No, it's just that people have a very rigid idea of what learning means and "life long learner" fits that better.

The learning that happens at a Sudbury School is like a slow cooker. It's like aging a fine wine. Or letting a cheese ripen. You create the optimum conditions to get the desired product and then you just let it go. Check on it from time to time and wait for the magic to happen.

It isn't that simple, there is a lot of tinkering but the point is that it is a subtle and long process and you wonder if it is ever going to work and then one day it does.

Curriculum based education is like a vintner who keeps tasting his wine too early and every time he doesn't like the taste he adds something else. And keeps adding and adding and sometimes at the end he gets wine and sometimes vinegar and sometimes grape juice. And when you criticize him he says "my equipment sucks" or "I didn't have enough money to do it the way I wanted to" but he never questions his method in the first place.

This is an imperfect analogy but I'm sure you see what I'm getting at. Traditional schools suck and sudbury schools rock. Case closed!!

sick

2008-11-30T20:44:00.000-08:00

we are sick, sick, sick here thus the dearth of posts.

we did have a great thanksgiving though, hope you did too!

words that I sort of know the meaning of but not well enough to use in a sentence

2008-11-23T20:21:00.000-08:00

apostate
apotheosis
factotum (good book though, love the Buk)
praxis

word that I do know the meaning of but would feel pretentious using
amanuensis

words that I love that also start with the letter "l"
lethargy
logorithim
libretto
lothario
and of course.......list.

this would be even funnier if it was someone else

2008-11-20T20:05:00.000-08:00

We're riding home from the bus stop and Amelia asks "Mom, what's sex?"
sigh, why is it always in the car?
"Well, it's how you make babies." I hear some whispering and i told you's and Amelia says "Des says that it's naked people rolling around hugging and kissing."
double sigh
"Well, that's part of it sometimes."
"Is that real?" Des asks, "Because we want to know the right answer. All the little kids want to know the right answer, Mom."
"do you have to do sex to make babies?" "yes"
Amelia then deduces that her cousin and his girlfriend who are expecting a baby "do sex"
"Why do you have to have your clothes off?"
"Well, sometimes it's more comfortable that way."
"You did it four times. I mean three because we're twins."
'Well, you don't have a baby every time you have sex."
"Oh we know that. so how many times did you do it?" Amelia hazards a guess "5, 6 times?"
Then Des asks "when you were making Finn, where was Cady? I mean, she wasn't just standing there right.'
I say "we found a private place and had some time to ourselves. Sex is a private thing and so mommy and daddy do that privately in privacy."
Amelia says "I bet we were all fast asleep."
I tell them that these are personal questions but I'm answering them so that they have the right information but they can't ask other people. I said that even adults don't discuss this with each other, it's that private.
Des asks "Do all animals do sex?"
"Yes."
"How do reindeer do it?"
I say "Honestly, Des, I have never seen that."
He says "Well they have those pointy things on their heads. Don't they hurt each other?"
"I really don't know."
Then he says "I heard people roll around all over the place." He looks at me and says "I know you didn't do that, mom."
It was the most exhausting conversation I've had with them in a while.

don't laugh

2008-11-17T21:05:00.000-08:00

I was on the phone with someone and had to give them a phone number. They said "can you text it to me?"
I said "well, I'm on my house phone." which was true.
but also,
I don't know how

a quick note on sentences

2008-11-17T08:27:00.000-08:00

The other day Des had a sentence in school for running in the halls-he had to do the Wedding March(walk very slowly) and wear a sign that said "Don't run in the halls". At first the sign bothered me because it seemed like a shaming sort of punishment but then the kids explained that it's to help them remember not to run. There are also little signs that say "I have a cleaning job today" because forgetting to do your cleaning job is quite common. As is just flat out not doing it.

The sentences generally fit the infraction. The kids say littering, running, rowdy or dangerous activity, not doing cleaning jobs and being noisy in the quiet area are the most common charges. The sentences are usually a cleaning job or an extra cleaning job for littering and being restricted from certain areas or restricted to certain areas for noisy or rowdy behavior. Not putting toys or art supplies away usually results in being decertified for those items. Most of the stuff is pretty basic: if you make a mess, clean it up. Don't want to clean it up? Then you don't get to use that stuff anymore.

Repeat offenders will have longer sentences and then eventually suspension. People have been suspended for not doing cleaning jobs. Mostly suspension/expulsion is for more serious, I would say, anti social infractions-fighting, bullying, stealing stuff like that. JC recommends suspension but school meeting has to vote on it. And if it is an indefinite suspension they have to vote to let you back in too. It's pretty intense. That doesn't happen very often though.

I love smart people.

2008-11-16T16:57:00.000-08:00

I really do. Not everybody does, you know, but I do. I used to feel threatened by smart people, truly smart people, because I would always compare myself to them and get very edgy if I thought I was coming up short. A lot of that is because I did so well in school that I let my whole identity get wrapped up in being smart. It was the only thing I was good at. And if I did poorly on a test or got a bad grade on a paper I took that as a judgment on me as a human being. It never occurred to me that I could improve. I had a very rigid- you either get it or you don't method of learning and if I didn't get something the first time I assumed it was because I was stupid. Pretty twisted. Towards the end of high school, when I was really bottoming out, teachers just kept saying to me over and over again "but you're so smart, why aren't you ________(doing your work, studying, working up to your potential bla bla bla)." Sometimes smart just isn't enough. It helps but it doesn't always overcome a dysfunctional family or lack of direction or a bunch of other stuff that can hold people back. and it isn't even respected by your peers in many academic settings. so I've had a love/hate relationship with smarties for a while.

But now I love smart people and I feel like I'm coming across more of them than ever before. I feel challenged and intrigued and I have even come across some ideas that are so hard for me to understand that I actually feel my brain stretching around them, trying to comprehend. It's great to be a grown up and feel comfortable with who you are and your own talents and abilities so that you can also enjoy what other people have to offer. Huzzah!

More about Lying

2008-11-15T19:47:00.000-08:00

"morality and ethical values are not mere decorative frills of personal opinion, not subjective superstructure, but intrinsic laws of the cosmos built into the heart of reality" Bhikkiu Bodhi

I take the sentiments of the above to heart when I talk to my kids about ethics. I understand the arguments of moral relativism but they seem instinctively wrong to me. From a practical standpoint a society built upon the idea of moral relativism is going to get into trouble. I think that there are some parents out there that consciously or not convey a sense of moral relativism to their children and parent in a morally relativistic way that I cannot go along with.

My approach with a lot of things has been to get the habit down first and then explore the reasons for it later. So I've explained what lying is and told them not to do it and punished them when they do. Then I tell them why it's wrong.

Yesterday when we were talking about JC with them I explained why I thought it was so bad to lie to JC. I explained that it's all about trust. The kids are entrusted with a tremendous amount of freedom and JC is the way to correct behavior that jeopardizes those freedoms. If the students cannot be trusted to be honest about their activities then the school couldn't function. This is the problem with lying in general. Trust and cooperation go hand in hand and lying jeopardizes those relationships.

They were ready for this discussion but Cady certainly isn't. Right now I'm just trying to teach Cady the difference between a lie and the truth.
oh I just had the most interesting thought!! so I was thinking how many parents worry about being "too authoritarian" so they give their kids these moral choices before the kids can handle them. Then there are those hyper commanding parents who have to be in control of every aspect of their child's behavior and brook no dissent. The problem isn't between being authoritarian or permissive, I think the problem is between being arbitrary or rational.

If parents aren't clear about their own ethical or moral reasons for living a certain way this confusion is going to be transmitted to their kids no matter how they parent. "Because I said so" and "what do you think is the answer" can both be useful or damaging depending on the follow up conversations.

Obstruction of Justice

2008-11-14T20:14:00.000-08:00

The kids were talking about lying to JC tonight. Of course I'm such an idealist that the idea that they would try to subvert it was deeply offensive to me. Then I got a grip and remembered that they are 6. They had told me about times where other kids have lied to JC but this was the first time that they had admitted it to me. Amelia said that she has never lied but she has occasionally left out "the part that I did". Des said that he has tried lying but "they still catch me." There are rules that he breaks regularly even though he knows it's wrong. Running in the halls is one. He has having a really hard time with that one this year. It's crazy because he is usually Mr. Slowpoke. He eats slowly, walks slowly, takes twice as long as Amelia to do anything. So what is the big rush at Sudbury, I wonder?

The conversation started because they read the chapter "Veritas Serum" in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. I said "Imagine if JC had truth serum." They went nuts. Des said "I bet I would be expelled." Amelia said "That would be horrible and great. At the same time." They also didn't want me to ever give them that potion because they have some huge secret that they are sure I would punish them for. My guess is they broke something and I haven't found it yet.

Another exercise in expressing your disapproval without losing their trust or turning them off from confiding in you.

Back to JC though. I've noticed that people don't take perjury or lying to authorities or lying in general that seriously. I strive to always be as honest as possible but occasionally I will slip one in and the kids will call me on it. Why is it so wrong? Why are people so inured to it?

Well, our leaders have shone themselves to be liars time and again and that filters down. Leaders set the tone. Even in a country that worships at the altar of individualism and free thinking like ours.

Why is lying wrong? Because it erodes trust. Because it can lead people into making the wrong decision if they don't get the correct facts to base it on. I'll have to finish this tomorrow. My eyes are burning with tiredness.

Nothing is ever easy.

2008-11-14T12:12:00.000-08:00

Including today's post. am I running out of interesting stuff to say about my marvelous children?

No, we're just having a tough time with Des and we've found that right now he seems to be craving more one on one time and that is hard to do. Ray works full time plus and I've got the kids and Cady and Finn need a lot of minding. that's just how it is.

He is so happy though when it is just him and me. He asks question after question and is more relaxed and we can really talk about things and get to the level of detail that satisfies him. Especially if we're home and have more resources at our disposal. I don't know why, but my kids invariably ask me for a math lesson in the car and I can't explain that stuff without a pen and paper.
He will also get up early when Ray gets up with finn and hang out and talk to him. I know he's searching for something. The talk about activities, the way he talks about community service(loves it because he likes what he gets to do with it), the complaints of being bored at sudbury all let me know that he is struggling and I don't know how far to go in making suggestions without possibly compromising The Philosophy. I also wonder if he has time or inclination to explore these conversations at school too.
There is also the little educational devil whispering in my ear that hints at signing him up for some after school stuff. Which I don't think is a necessarily bad idea if I'm doing it for the right reasons(he'sinterested) rather than the wrong one(solving his problem for him.)

Struggles

2008-11-09T19:57:00.000-08:00

Des was complaining about his most recent sentence for running in the halls. He has to do the Wedding March for two days and wear a sign that says don't run in the halls. While we talked about whether or not this particular sentence was "really stupid and mean" he said "How harsh a punishment would I get if I got suspended?" After 6 years with Des I have learned that the best way to answer this kind of question is with another question. "Why do you ask?"
"Well, they said that if I have any more write ups for dangerous behavior I'm going to get suspended and when I got restricted from the bus for just one day you gave me a really harsh punishment." (I disagree, I just refused to drive him to school and made it clear that if he were to be permanently restricted from the bus he would not go to that school anymore. Which looks very harsh when I read it now and does seem to violate our "let sudbury take care of sudbury" rule but it is just not fair to me Cady or Finn to have to spend an extra hour and a half in the car each day because he can't behave on the bus.) I asked him what kind of dangerous behavior he had been engaging in and he said "I don't know." I said "What do you mean you don't know?" he said "I don't remember."
Then came the flood of complaints that if there was more fun stuff and "activities" to do at school then he wouldn't be doing the dangerous behavior, which he can't remember what it is but he wouldn't do it if there was something else to do.

I guess this might be an example of a kid hitting the wall. It's hard to watch him struggle. I made some suggestions of things to try or people to talk to and he shot them down as being either too hard or too embarrassing. so what else can I do but let him work it our for himself. Which I know is the right thing but then he asks to homeschool and I know how much better he does one on one and I'm tempted to let him try it. I won't because it isn't practical for us right now and I know after a day he would want to go back to school. It's just hard. It's just hard to watch your kid struggle. and he's only 6. Yipes!

Wow

2008-11-05T21:22:00.000-08:00

I've started and discarded many posts this past week because I was so consumed by the election. It still seems a bit unreal that Obama won. I think I just got used to evil triumphing all the time with the Bush administration.

I have so many feelings right now. I'm happy that the democrats won although I can't stand that Nancy Pelosi and am sure she's going to fuck things up for Obama. I'm happy for black people. I hope they feel more welcome in their own country now.

I want to be a citizen of the world. I don't need America to be number one all the time. I like the idea of us working with other countries instead of trying to shove our ideas down their throat. Plus, they might have some good ideas too.

I don't see how he's going to get out of Iraq in 16 months. Not without a civil war taking place. but please please close guantanamo and for heaven's sake let's make it clear-NO TORTURE!!!!! that includes waterboarding. Assholes.

Good luck with healthcare. I can't wait to see what kind of frankenstien monster you guys come up with. Please force the pharmaceutical companies to negotiate. My medicine is really really expensive. Even with generics.

Can we finally agree that our way of life is going to make life more and more difficult? I don't worry about saving the planet. The planet will swat us off like a horse swats a fly with the flick of its tail. save the humans!

Appoint the youngest, most left leaning judges you can find.

Encourage a "One Nation, One Book" month-my first pick: DIA, duh!

The guy is inheriting one big mess on top of another. I wish him a nice soft landing when the honeymoon is over and the media comes back down to earth.

A Paradox

2008-11-03T20:29:00.000-08:00

All during the campaign, and for most of my life, I've heard a lot of talk about liberals and conservatives. I always considered myself a liberal but because of my alignment on certain issues. Pro-choice,pacifistic , green in thought if not in deed. I tended to disagree with conservatives on more things than not. But this year I tried to think a little more deeply. What did it really mean to be liberal? conservative?

Political liberalism strives for reform through laws and policies. Political conservatism prefers slow change and respect for tradition. Economic liberalism is market driven, there should be no or little government intervention. Liberalism got it's name in the first place that individual liberty is paramount. So, in this country we are really all liberals. But we are also all conservatives because our tradition is one that places high value on personal liberty. There was a bigger difference at the time of the revolution obviously. The liberals were the people who wanted self rule and the conservatives were the royalists.

In more recent history conservatives were supposed to be the people who wanted less government and as much individual freedom as a community could tolerate. Liberals were the people who stove to redress historical and economic inequites through government intervention. Now let's apply these ideas to Sudbury.
Individual freedom is paramount in a sudbury school (liberal) and the laws should be as few as possible(conservative). Rules change in response to situations and the needs of the students there at any one time but their purpose is to maintian a community where people are free to pursue their interests unmolested. The laws are not in place to improve the circumstances of any one group.

I don't know where I'm going with this. My original idea was to show that the Sudbury philosophy is more conservative in nature but seems to have been founded by a bunch of liberals but now I can't tell the difference. It's liberal in the fact that it's a radical departure from conventional forms of education but conservative in maintaining its own traditions.

The problem is differentiating between political and philosophical definitions of liberalism and conservatism. That is a job far beyond this little egghead.

guest blogger: Des

2008-10-31T10:34:00.000-07:00

Since he is home from school today(the lesson is not being learned:he's having a great time) Des is expressing some opinions for your edification:

Des:I really want Sudbury to have a gym. I think it would be a way funner activity and I think the school should have some construction work done to it so it can be bigger and put more stuff in it to have more activities.

Mom:What do you mean by activities?

Des:Regular fun activities like going somewhere. do you know what I mean?

Mom: No I don't because if you want to go someplace you can just make a trip.

Des: some stuff fun activities means to me well playing freeze tag, you know, doing stuff

Mom: so do you want other ideas for things for you to do?

Des: no

Mom: but you want there to be more things to do? do you want someone to come to you and say hey Des, why don't you come and do this with me like making goop or doing projects?

Des: No I don't want somebody to ask that to me.

Mom: I don't think I know what it is that you want from the school.

I don't want anything to borrow.

Mom: I know that. I mean I don't know what you want the school to be like.

I think the tower in the playroom should be bigger and the tunnel should lead out of the playroom. the playroom should be bigger with a bigger tower thing to play on. A bigger playground, I want a better playground with a tunnel that goes outside of the building. I went the giant red thing to lead into the hallways and outdoors and you could look at everything really high. That would be so great.

Mom: So that's the kind of activity that you want?

Yup! But I don't think it's gonna happen.

someone's in trouble

2008-10-30T20:48:00.000-07:00

Des berated me for a full 40 minutes today about the deficiencies in his halloween costume. His tirade came to an abrupt halt. He said in a subdued voice, "Oh yeah, I'm restricted from riding the bus for one day."

I'm keeping him home tomorrow. This was a controversial decision with many no votes from Des and one parent abstaining. However, if he keeps it up that means I'm stuck driving him again because he can't control himself on the bus. He says nobody asked him to be quiet or gave him a warning. We're going to check with the bus driver so that he knows we listen to his side and take him seriously but there has also been many a time when I have asked him something repeatedly and he'll say he didn't hear me.

the time machine

2008-10-29T20:34:00.000-07:00

The kids had a friend over the other day and after dinner they decided to build a time machine. After about an hour they had rigged something up with two lamps, a broom and dustpan, a pirate flag, some cardboard, some toilet paper rolls, these vinyl wall coverings from Amelia's room and a lot of scotch tape. When it didn't work in the living room they decided to bring it to the kitchen. They started to discuss which time they would travel to first and I said "if it works" and Ray snickered. Des went off! "Oh it WILL work. It WON'T work for you because you don't believe in it. People who don't believe in magic can't do magic. People who do believe in magic, DO MAGIC!"

He stormed back over to the time machine and turned to us and shouted "And you ARE NOT taking this down when I go to bed tonight." We found ourselves in that terrible position of wanting to laugh but knowing it would set him off again.

The funny thing is that part of me really agrees with him. I often get choked up at the end of the Polar Express. Because I still hope for Christmas miracles or strange doings on Halloween. I know we benefit from living in the age of science and rationality but I miss the hope and promise of magic.

Rambling(started the post with one thing in mind and ended up somewhere else altogether)

2008-10-26T19:20:00.000-07:00

I was at school a lot last week doing prep for the fair and one thing I noticed is that periodically a kid would come through saying "Freeze tag, freeze tag" or "Capture the flag, we're playing Capture the Flag" to get a game going. amelia told me that Freeze Tag is usually boys vs. girls "but I don't like that so sometimes I just tell them what side I'm going to play on and that's that."
I asked Des to explain Capture the Flag to me and this was his response "It is so fun but it's really hard to explain and to learn. You just have to play it and get the rules while you play. there are these different people and they have to run to the sides and they can be prisoners but I think you can get rescued and then if you don't get caught you have to take this thing from the guards and get it back to your side." I said "That sounds pretty hard Des." He said, pretty cheerfully, "Oh it is. I've lost every single time I played."

Anyway, I watched a big game of Capture the Flag play out and later on I saw a two boys, a six year old and a 16 or 17 year old pass each other in the hall. The teenager said "Hey,good game, man" as he reached down and tousled the younger boy's hair. It was just so nice. And so unexpected. Especially because this teenager is taller than I am, has a couple of piercings and a beard that makes him look like he's 26.

And speaking of expectations, I was talking to another girl and she just blew my mind. I've chatted with this girl a couple of times and she seems really nice and I know my kids like her so I asked her about her other school experiences besides Sudbury. She told me how she had a lot of problems in other schools and was getting kicked out of class because of her attitude and that she was considered a trouble maker. It was so hard for me to reconcile that image with the interesting friendly intelligent young woman that I was talking to. I don't share this as a testamonial to the idea that sudbury cured her or fixed her in some way, I say it as evidence that traditional schools fail to adapt their methods or respond positively to a student that challenges them. so that student finds a way out; they follow this girl's route and get themselves kicked out or they check out which is what I did(I'll have to devote a post to my legendary truancy some day). Or find another way to endure the endless hours of the school day. What a waste.

Halloween Fair

2008-10-25T18:02:00.000-07:00

We had a great time but I am wiped out. Attendance was poor and we didn't cover our expenses but everyone who did come had an awesome time.

so what did I learn? Next time I will delegate even more work than I did this time. I didn't have enough time to work on things that I would have enjoyed because I was doing stuff that I wasn't good at and didn't like.

Better advertising. Paid advertising. Actually I should have asked for more money in the first place. the people who did come spent money so I think it could be profitable.

I'll ask for more donations from the community. I'll get started earlier. We'll also have pictures from this year so maybe we can do a press release. I'm thinking aloud hear.

I know that it was successful in the sense of being a pretty fun party but I'm really really disappointed that I didn't get more people in. At one point it really was like my worst fear came to life when we just sort of standing around looking at each other. Oh well. this was the first year, I think it's worth doing again.

Making goop

2008-10-23T18:07:00.000-07:00

I had the idea of making goop for the fair. We'll stick it in a cauldron and call it goblin's blood and let kids stick their hands in it and then we would give them a little easter egg of the stuff as a souvenir. I thought this would be a fun in school activity and it was, just not the way I expected it to be.

For starters,goop is best made in small batches, especially if you are using borax which needs to dissolve before you mix it with white glue. I tried to quintuple the recipe. Also, glue is messy and if you decide to be fair and let each child present pour a container of glue into a mixing bowl and you have more than three kids participating, well, there's going to be a mess. Oh yeah, putting a gigantic mixing bowl filled with 40 ounces of glue and 5 cups of water in front of 8 kids and then telling them not to touch it. That doesn't work. Luckily though Cady had been messing around with the borax water and then she plunged her hand into the glue mixture and came up with a hand covered in goop so we realized that the amounts didn't have to be exact. thanks Cady! From there two staff members and I mixed it and the kids played with it. At one point Cady had no shirt on, finn was fooling around with a broom, the kids at the table were slapping goop around and I was measuring out borax as fast as I could while talking to Amelia, or somebody. A staff turned to me and said "This is pretty much what your house is like all the time isn't it?"

After a while I noticed that a few of the little kids had been replaced by some bigger kids. they hung out and played with the goop for a good 20 minutes. again, you've actually got to resist those teachable moments because you know what most of the time it sounds so artificail and pedantic. It was so tempting to get into the chemistry of making goop but I kept my mouth shut. You know why? Because nobody asked me, that's why.

Speaking of ask, a girl asked me to be on her thesis committee. I was very surprised because I don't know this girl very well. But I said yes. I was so surprised and yes, flattered, that every time I ran into her the rest of the day I kept giving her this big smile. Like she had asked me to the prom. Ha! I'm such a geek.

What do they really need to know?

2008-10-21T20:55:00.000-07:00

There was a philosophy discussion on saturday and we started to talk about how what the schools teach is always behind the times. Actually we started to talk about learning to tell time and was it necessary to learn on an analog clock since most clocks are digital anyway. This led to the discussion of how fast our world changes and that what we think is important to know today probably won't apply in 20 years. I, of course, still think kids should learn how to tell time on an analog clock because even though there are many digital clocks there are also still many analogs. We have one. Analog wristwatches still sell. I'm straying from the point, sorry. someone said something along the lines of "What gives me the right to say what is important to know?", something like that. But I think that there are core skills that are useful even if we use a more sophisticated technology now.

For me the deifning criteria of a core skill is probably something that can be done without electicity. Here are my set of core skills: reading and writing, basic mathematical operations plus fractions and percentages, public speaking, basic navigation(left from right, compass points),and the scientific method. a smattering of logic would help too. since analog clocks theoretically don't require a battery I'll say learning how to tell time is also important, better yet-learning how to approzimate the time based on the position of the sun. All this stuff can be taught by anybody to anybody. I would tack on hygiene, etiquette and a moral code but that should come from the family first and foremost and then be supported by school. I think if you have this stuff down you can probably make it through any situation. I'm thinking about what can get you through a trip to the grocery store.

I'm not saying that there aren't other topics that aren't also valuable to know but not knowing them doesn't make you a less successful human being. If the schools focused on the core skills and then let the students study more advanced subjects at their leisure everyone would probably be a lot happier. And I don't think Sudbury schools would be worse off if they agreed that there is a minimum skill set they want their students to learn.

The problem is that once you start making a list people want to add, subtract, and usually expand to the point that it becomes unwieldy, incomprehensible or impossible to achieve.

how far do you take it?

2008-10-20T20:43:00.000-07:00

I've been spending a lot of time at school these past few weeks, working on stuff for the Halloween fair. I noticed a sign in the Art Room that they have "Sewing Machine" on their wish list. I have a half decent sewing machine gathering dust in my basement because I cannot do any sewing with Cady and Finn around right now. I've been thinking about letting them use it for a year but have hesitated because when you loan something you run the risk of it being damaged. It just seems selfish to keep it to myself when I have no idea when, if ever, I'm going to use it.

I was talking to a staff about it and she said that if they wanted it they needed to do more than just put it on a wish list. Even if they just sent an email out asking if anyone had a sewing machine. This is when I mentioned that I did have one. we talked about if it was a good idea for me to even loan it and she said she was going to encourage them to send an email out now, knowing there was a machine out there.

I thought about it. If this wasn't Sudbury and I knew that some people were looking for a sewing machine and I had one to loan I would just give it to them. But I've got The Philosophy in the back of my mind and I've been thinking that I'll wait for them to ask before I offer. It feels artificial though. Like I'm making it harder for them than it needs to be and not giving them an experience closer to real life, where serendipity often plays a role. I wonder, will they be more or less likely to use the machine if the step of asking for it is eliminated. In a way they did ask. they asked the universe, they put it on a piece of paper and in a very limited way put it out there. What is the crucial step to appreciate the relationship between effort and success? Would the appreciate the dumb luck that I just happenned to notice that they wanted a sewing machine? Is the fact that I'm even considering this to be a lesson a violation of The Philosophy? am I overthinking again? I think so!

On another note, there were some kids in the office getting prices on chemicals, I think for developing film. One of them noticed me walking by and said "We're building a bomb." I started to say "Well, as long as you're learning something" but checked myself and said "Well at least you're keeping busy." A girl said "At least we're learning something!" and we all laughed.

ethical dilemma

2008-10-18T19:31:00.000-07:00

There was an article in the paper about HVSS and it was really positive. It was wonderful. My problem is that there are a couple of quotes from me but I didn't really say them. This makes me feel so uncomfortable. One of them was on the front page of the paper as a "Quote of the Week". Am I being naiive? Is this something that is just standard practice with newspapers? I wouldn't mind being misquoted but straight up fabrication just feels so wrong. and I never actually spoke to the person with the byline. why don't they give the guy who did the interview a little credit? I feel like I'm part of a hoax. Maybe I'm making too big a deal of it but I guess I think that newspapers have a responsibility to be truthful. The phrase public trust keeps coming to mind. Now I don't feel like I can trust anything I read in that paper.

I considered writing a note thanking them for the article but objecting to the quotes. I don't really know what I want them to do though- print a correction? Never write about the school again? I think it's just best that I not be involved in this sort of thing in the future. Being dishonest, even passively, for the benefit of the school does not sit well with me.

Is it OK to do the right thing for the wrong reason or to do the wrong thing for the right reason? (If this was an episode of Sex and the city there would now be a scene that involved me discussing this while buying shoes) (I have shoes on the brain because I just had to get rid of 7 or 8 pairs of some really cute ones because my foot is suddenly a 1/2 size bigger than it used to be-another side effect of having kids!) (but I digress)

I just explained my feelings to Ray and he said no one would believe me. Now I'm thinking about all the trash mags I read and he's right, even when you know something is preposterous, seeing it in print does give it this mystical air of veracity(there's an awkward phrase). Well, there's nothing mystical about it, there's an assumption that the person writing the article has taken the time to make sure that what they are saying is true, but why do we assume that anymore? How frustrating it must be for people to read distorted or untrue accounts of events involving them.

the bottom line is that I'm going to let it go, it's not that big a deal(even though it really is!) and hopefully more merit will be generated by generating more interest and hopefully more students for our wonderful school than damage will be done by letting people get away with sloppy reporting. But don't quote me on that.

Busy little bees

2008-10-15T22:14:00.000-07:00

The art room is the new hot spot at the school. They changed the way you can be certified for things so that now there are three levels of certification. apparently level two has some really cool stuff because even Des got certified for it.

amelia has brought home lots of paintings and creations with a bunch of buttons glued to them. She is also in love with Mod Podge. Des makes "turretts". They are clothespins and other bits of wood glued together and painted and they are some kind of weapon. At home the kids are into making books. We have tons and tons of scrap paper so they sit and draw for hours and then punch holes in the drawings and tie them altogether with string.

I'm going in this friday to make stuff for the halloween fair. I know it would be easier to do it myself but I like kids and I like working with them so I don't mind the inconvenience of having a few helpers.

Talking to the press is not my strong suit

2008-10-12T21:54:00.000-07:00

So I had emailed a local reporter about the school and suggested that they do a story on HVSS. Actually I was trying to get a calender listing about the Halloween fair but figured I might as well ask for a story about the school too.

So last week, I was taking a nap while Finn slept when the phone rang and it was someone from the paper who wanted to talk to me about the school. I was a little groggy and should have asked them to call back but I wasn't thinking. I don't think I said anything dumb but after I got off the phone with him I thought of a few more points and started replaying whatever it was I had said and wished I had just given him the number of another parent to talk to.

The story will be in this week's edition of the paper and I'm dreading it. Irrational fear? Maybe. But I think I like being behind the scenes better. I think I'm an extroverted introvert. Like, I know there are people reading this blog but when they have told me they read it I get so embarrassed, like they've seen me in my unmentionables. And I'm not really confessing any deep dark secrets here. And yet I do like to share my opinion. I mean it can't bother me that much because I do still have a blog.

I don't know. I just don't want to sound like an idiot or make the school look bad.

In other news, I have been sick and in quite a bit of pain thus the drop of in posts. Still plugging away at DIA. Tomorrow I'm going to enter this great passage about the election of the president. Can you stand the suspense? :)

Lastly, today is my 13th anniversary. we were married on a friday the 13th and it has worked out quite well for us. People kept saying "Oh you musn't be superstitious if you picked that date" but I'm actually really superstitious. I have all kinds of "lucky" objects and weird little rituals. You know why? Because it makes life that much more fun! But this is a topic for another post.

I'm not gonna lie

2008-10-06T20:23:00.000-07:00

It's been a tough week here at Casa de Yaya.

But we made it through and now we're on to bigger and better things. The playground co op is selling Apple Crisps tomorrow. Amelia is very excited to bring our apple slicer to school tomorrow.
It's nice to have a sense of purpose. Des is really struggling with this right now. He has been since the second week of school. I don't know how to help him. In a meaningful way. I guess it's all in the listening. I try to let him talk about what's going on hoping that he will come to his own conclusion but quite often he just goes around in circles. He basically has two problems 1) figuring out what he would like to do and 2) separating from his friends when he wants to do something that they aren't interested in.

He also said he would like to go to school meeting more often but he doesn't always understand what they are talking about. I suggested that he have someone that he already feels comfortable with explain it to him. I got his usual response "But that's so embarrassing!" The Sudbury Road is a long and windy one.

Losing my touch

2008-10-03T17:05:00.000-07:00

I've always loved kids and spending time with them. I never found it hard to find something to talk about. Since I actually had kids though I guess I look at them differently. I don't know. I feel so artificial when I talk to kids sometimes. Two recent experiences made me think about this.

I'm going to HVSS on friday mornings for Halloween Committee meetings. At the first meeting a couple of students strolled in and sat down. Of course I was delighted, especially because they were older kids and I was hoping some of them would get into this so in my enthusiasm I totally put one of them on the spot asking him if he had any ideas. Not the social crime of the century, I know, but at the same time I should have been happy that someone even wanted to see what was going on.

The next week I decided to play it cool. One girl came in and started talking and wanted to share ideas but I got kind of distracted and ended up practically ignoring her. Oof! In my own defense she did ramble on a bit.

Really, I think I just need to brush up on my social skills in general. It's so tempting to look for those "teachable moments" but then I think about my cousin who always had a piece of advice. If you said you liked to read she told you to major in English and become a teacher. She never asked what you liked to read. Ray and I were talking about this, how hard it is to just listen. And to respond in a way that keeps the conversation going.

Thoughts on the Bailout

2008-10-01T11:39:00.000-07:00

This is another example of how messy democracy can be. There has been a lot of yammering about the failure of leadership because the bailout bill didn't pass in the house on Monday. First of all I say good because it was crap law that was going to saddle us with a lot of debt and may not even help. Maybe this country needs a credit crunch. If you have to borrow money to pay for anything besides a house or college, well, maybe you can't afford it!

Anyway, I don't think it was a failure of leadership on the part of the House becaue a lot of those who voted no were listening to their constituents which is what they are supposed to do!

We live in a representative republic and if the people you represent don't want something maybe you should listen to them. Maybe those of us who didn't think the bill should pass were wrong and if we were then congress should do a better job of explaining why it's right. Actually the Paulson should explain why he should be allowed to violate the constitution and all the principles of an honest, transparent govt. with the taxpayers money.

I'm glad it happened. It's like the American people are finally waking up and taking control of their government again.

PS I can't believe I am on the same side of an issue as Rush Limbaugh. That is some freaky shit.

Are you sick of deTocqueville yet? I'm not!

2008-09-29T19:55:00.000-07:00

I love the Judicial Committee(JC). I've said before that I didn't think the school could work without it and last week I read chap. 6, Judicial Power in the US and Its influence on American Society. I've decided to apply some of his thoughts to JC and see if holds up as a legitimate judicial power.

First he describes three characteristics of of the ordinary functions of judicial power:
1)Arbitration
2)It pronounces on special cases and not upon general principles
3)It can act only when it is called upon

So let's look at how JC functions.
Arbitration-definitely and I think effectively JC is really both a criminal and a civil court rolled up into one. I mean technically people are written up for violating a rule but some of the rules are written in a way to find a neutral way to tell someone that they are making you unhappy. Bullying behavior for example. If a third party observes bullying and writes it up then it feels more like a criminal charge with guilt or innocence to be determined but if a kid writes up another kid for bullying then JC is definitely the arbitrator between the two parties.

It pronounces on special cases and not upon general principles.- This is also true for JC. DeT also talks about how if a judge happens to make a decision that involve ruling on a general principle as a result he is still within his powers. I don't know if that happens in JC. I'm going to have to ask a staff if JC has ever recommended that a law be changed based on a case that they encountered. However, I'm pretty sure nobody has ever written up a law and asked JC to rule whether or not it is valid.

It can act only when called upon to do so.-Des will complain about people and I suggest writing them up which he doesn't do and I explain that if you can't solve it yourself JC is there to help you but they can't help you if they don't know about it. (It's funny,Amelia has had to learn moderation in the opposite direction, she was like the sheriff for a while. ) So JC can not go looking for problems to solve and even the people serving on it cannot sentence someone or refer something to school meeting just because they know it has occurred, they would still have to formally write it up.

So I think JC passes. The only thing that would make it more European(of the 1830's anyway) than American depends on whether or not it has the power to declare a rule invalid based on a larger law(American Judges hold everything up to the constitiution as the first law of the land, if a law contradicts the constitution it is invalid). I think the political power of JC is more European, it's scope is more limited.

But what's the point of all this?

2008-09-28T20:06:00.000-07:00

So re-reading my last post I wondered, will people get how this is beneficial to a student? In a set up like Sudbury nothing is handed to you. You have to work to get it-you have to work with people, you have to work within a certain framework and you need to understand the mechanics of that framework. You have to prioritize, not just to accomplish your goal but the goals themselves. You have to be able to speak up and sometimes you have to be able to sit still. this can't be taught with a textbook or as an abstract what-if situation. It has to be a habit.

How do you learn to be a self starter when your whole day is mapped out for you, year after year? I hate to harp on the inadequacies of traditional schools(not true! I love to harp on them!) but while they may pay a lot of lip service to encouraging students to be self motivated and learning critical thinking, the habits they teach are quite the opposite. The lack of freedom and autonomy(even down to the control of bodily functions like eating and using the bathroom) become so ingrained that they start to look to others to always tell them what to do. And when you do that you never have to take ownership of your failures and may feel insecure about the validity of your successes.

boring but necessary

2008-09-26T20:45:00.000-07:00

We had our first Halloween Fair Planning Committee meeting today. I believe it may be a sub-committee of the Fund Raising Committee which falls under the authority of the Assembly. As we talked about what needed to be done one of the things on the to-do list was to have a motion made for parents to come in during school hours to work on the fair. There was also discussion once again about the co ops working the fair but apparently they are a little dysfunctional right now.

At the end of the meeting talk turned to re writing the by laws of the committee and what, if any authority it should have over fund raising activities held by other groups. I guess there was discussion, at a meeting that I did not attend, about the possibility of all fund raising activities having to go through the fund raising committee, whether they were open to the public or not.

What the discussion was really about, and I had to be clued into this, was power. Yes, it would be nice if there was a coordinated effort among everyone so activities aren't duplicated etc. but how do you decide which group gets to veto another's ideas. One word or two in the by laws would make a world of difference, in this case the difference is between using the word notification vs. permission. It's the difference between being informed and being in control.

the whole point of the school is to empower the students as much as possible so making the co ops go to fund raising to get permission to have an event when the committee often has to go to school meeting for permission and the co ops are formed exclusively by school meeting members doesn't make a lot of sense. After a few minutes of this I said I wanted to be a dictator, one of the staff members turned to me and said "We talk about this stuff every day. This is all we do."
Another staff said that the way the school functions is a testament to the messiness of democracy. It is messy. It's messy and it's hard, really hard to get things accomplished when everyone can have a say.

The limits of freedom

2008-09-22T03:44:00.000-07:00

From DIA:
"It was never assumed in the United States that the citizen of a free country has a right to do whatever he pleases; on the contrary, more social obligations were there imposed upon him than anywhere else."

It is a common misconception about Sudbury schools that the children simply run wild, Lord of the Flies like, without any attempt to curb or guide their behavior. One visit to the school should dispel this notion immediately. It is hard not to notice the sheets of paper up everywhere defining what can and cannot be done and who can and cannot do it. There are a number of lists of privileges and who has been granted them- how far out in the woods a student can go, the criteria for being allowed to use the pool table, which student can use which art supplies, who is allowed to use certain toys. There are also public agreements about snow ball or water fights and only people who have signed their name to this are allowed to participate.

When I try to explain this some people say "well, that seems a bit excessive. They're only kids." And yet they wonder how I can send my kids off to a school where they spend most of their day unsupervised and around much older kids. "Aren't you worried about safety?" I probably don't explain it well enough because these very explicit rules and regulations are what makes it possible for a school to run with 70 kids who can be in charge of themselves. There isn't the level of supervision at sudbury schools that you find in traditional school settings because there doesn't need to be. The expectations are so clear and there is also a clear cut way of dealing with rule-breakers(see my other post about the Judicial Committee).

Reading DeT's quote at the top of the page immediately brought HVSS to mind and now I'm realizing that at it's inception America must have appeared to be one gigantic Sudbury School. The idea that regular people could govern themselves from the bottom up without some prefect or other mandarin standing over them all the time making sure they didn't step out of line was an incredible concept to Europeans of the 19th century.

What is a co op?

2008-09-21T16:38:00.000-07:00

First of all, am I supposed to hyphenate it? Probably or people will think I'm talking about coops, and by people I mean you, Jen.

At Sudbury Valley they are called corporations. Basically they are organizations of staff and students based on a similar interest or goal. They make the rules and certification procedures for areas under their purview, they maintain and purchase supplies/areas and they fundraise to buy stuff that they want or need.

Here are the co ops that I know of at HVSS:
Computer
Library
Playroom
Playground
Sports
Art
Kitchen
Photography/Multi Media

There may be others. Co ops arise when there is a need or desire and disband when either the need is met and doesn't need to be maintained or the interest has waned. I'll give you the story of two as an example.

The Playroom co op was formed last year because the playroom was constantly being trashed and sometimes it would be closed for days because nobody would clean up their mess or help with anyone else's. It was also getting junked up with all the generous but perhaps superfluous donations of toys from families. So the co op was formed, officers were elected, certification procedures were put in place as well as a mechanism for periodically weeding through the stuff. Now the playroom is much neater and I think it is because there is that next level of accountability, beyond "put it away when you're done with it". Writing about this has just given me the idea to do a post on the merits of certification. Yeh!

The Playground co op(I think its a co op, it may be a committee formed within the playroom co op-you can go crazy trying to keep up with this stuff) was formed because some of the younger kids wanted a sandbox and a playground. They began to fundraise and a sandbox was actually built this past weekend. I'm not sure if the co op will stay in existence after the playground is built because I think its maintenance would fall under the auspice of the physical plant clerk.
The clerkships are a whole other story too. I guess I'll be busy this week.

Opportunity knocks

2008-09-20T17:36:00.000-07:00

Went to a fundraising committee meeting today. Somehow I was able to squelch my volunteer urge and made it out without becoming an officer. The issue came up of setting aside certain areas of fundraising events for the coops and this guy, well the founder of HVSS actually, said he had an issue with things being just given to the coops. I'm telling the story backwards.

The co ops are responsible for raising their own funds and the fundraising committee will match them. They do different things, the playground co op let people make stepping stones, the art co op sold milk shakes, etc. So the question came up about letting the art co op have the proceeds from the penny social at the craft fair or run it or something like that. This is when the discussion began about why they should get anything special just because there would be a bunch of art there. He brought up the point, why aren't they here and why don't we offer something to every co op. What was suggested by another staff member was that an announcement would be made that the co ops could run their own fundraising activities with ours but they would have to come and present it to us and be a part of the process. It is such a good idea. There's incentive without coercion. There is a view on the outside world and an introduction to the larger processes involved in planning an event or capital campaign or what have you. And it's totally voluntary.

That's so sudbury. Provide the opportunity and let them run with it. I wonder if it gets frustrating when they don't. I would imagine that staff is better at not romanticizing or getting too invested in plans that don't come to fruition. I know, in my own evolution as a parent, this is something that I've had to learn. Or unlearn.

My last list:
Dream Jobs:

Writer
Sociologist(field work)
Pilot(dream hobby really)
Campaign Strategist
Interpreter/Translator
Own an Art Gallery
Corporate Subverter(I go in and tell management why their policies are stupid and how their employees are going to get around them)

No More Playday

2008-09-19T19:13:00.001-07:00

The enrollment committee met on wednesday and voted to cancel playday. Tuesday was a little nutty but I didn't realize how stressful it was for staff to keep playday going. I'm glad that I happened to be planning my own exit strategy for other reasons because if I hadn't I would have been pissed. I came home wed night to a message that basically said playday is cancelled and I hope you get over it. It didn't bother me at first but then I thought about it and realised that it was not the way to handle things. I suppose I'm not handling it well by posting it on my blog but nobody really reads this so no harm no foul. Anyway I talked to staff and it was brought up that a staff had to play an authoritarian role because Playday is not democratic. Which is true because preschoolers are not ready for that. It was an interesting way of looking at it that I hadn't thought of. I was under the impression that one of the goals of playday, in addition to introducing new families to the school, was to get younger siblings of students accustomed to sudbury. I don't know how the democratic aspect could be introduced. I mean Cady would happily vote on stuff, as long as what she voted for always won! Ha. I tried to think of a happy medium. Maybe a group that met once a month or something like that but really, I should be grateful that I was able to take advantage of it last year and now we will move on to other things. I haven't told Cady and I'm not going to. She will be disappointed but I don't want other people to be unhappy to indulge her. I'm just going to try and fill up our tuesdays until she forgets about it. There are some pluses to having a three year old!

Today's list:
Occupations that Fascinate Me

sandhogs
demolition experts
forensic accountants
composers
lighting

oops I forgot the list

2008-09-16T18:46:00.000-07:00

Places I Would Love To Visit But Probably Never Will:

Petra(the city carved in rock that is in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade)
India
Jerusalem
Lake Victoria
Tuva
Lhasa
Nepal
Angor Wat
Galapagos
Mt. Rushmore/Crazy Horse

More DIA

2008-09-16T18:20:00.000-07:00

Here are some more thoughts from Tocqueville-

On the spirit of religion and the spirit of liberty:
"Religion perceives that civil liberty affords a noble exercise to the faculties of man and that the political world is a field prepared by the creator for the efforts of mind. Free and powerful in its own sphere, satisfied with the place reserved for it, religion never more surely establishes its empire than when it reigns in the hearts of men unsupported by aught beside its native strength.
Liberty regards religion as its companion in all its battles and its triumphs, as the cradle of its infancy and the divine source of its claims. It considers religion as the safeguard of morality, and morality as the best security of law and the surest pledge of the duration of freedom."
O that we would heed these words today!

An interesting observation about the remnants of laws and customs from the old country:
"The picture of American society has, if I may so speak, a surface covering of democracy, beneath which the old aristocratic colors sometimes peep out."

Something I had never thought about before:
"But the law of inheritance was the last step to equality. I am surprised that ancient and modern jurists have not attributed to this law a greater influence on human affairs. It is true that these laws belong to civil affairs; but they ought, nevertheless, to be placed at the head of all political institutions; for they exercise an incredible influence upon the social state of a people"

On the mediocrity of our intellectual pursuits:
"In America most of the rich men were formerly poor; most of those who now enjoy leisure were absorbed in business during their youth; the consequence of this is that when they moght have had a taste for study, they had no taste for it, and when the time is at their disposal, they have no longer the inclination.
There is no class then in America, in which the taste for intellectual pleasures is transmitted with hereditary fortune and leisure and by which the labors of the intellect are held in honor. Accordingly, there is an equal want of the desire and the power of application to these objects."

Plus the guy could wield a semicolon!

Crackdown!

2008-09-15T17:35:00.000-07:00

JC is cracking down this year. I know I've mentioned this before but it bears repeating. I don't know what she did but Amelia is restricted from going outside for 5 days. Two kids have been suspended and were restricted to different rooms for 3 and 4 days respectively.

Maybe they felt like they just had to be tough from the get go to decrease recidivism. I wonder how the indefinite suspension/expulsion sentences will play. I thought it was ridiculous myself when I found out that someone could come back in the same school year after being expelled. That just seemed like a long term suspension to me. I wonder if that rule will be amended.

Amelia is serving on JC now but there hasn't been anything too juicy or she is just getting better at resisting my interrogation. :)

Here's my list for today:
Religions You May or May Not Have Heard Of

Tenrikyo
Ahmadi
Vodoun
The Cult of Scarro
Jainism
Juche
Cao Dai
Rastafarianism (Rastas!)
Yoruba
Candomble

the real difference between us and animals

2008-09-14T20:31:00.000-07:00

We make lists.

I love to make lists. I have a list of lists I intend to make someday. I have 3 or 4 different types of to-do lists. Lists make me feel like I have things under control. Lists can classify, they can bring order, they can help you focus on your true objective in any undertaking. Lists are great.

I don't like popularity contest type of lists like "top fives" or "all-time best..." They are too subjective.

I also don't like the term "bucket list". Lame to begin with, made worse by the movie.

I don't usually do themes but I think this week I will end each post with a list. If I remember.

For today:
Some Famous Men I Have Encountered And It Had No Discernible Impact On My Life Or Theirs

Richard Nixon
Bill Cosby
Larry Hankin(maybe I'll save him for the sort of famous list)
Kevin Bacon
Mike Meyers
Some people at a Soap Opera softball game(again, may be better on the sort of famous list)
Stanley Tucci
Arthur Ashe
Robert Urich
Mark Messier

The Wall

2008-09-13T01:10:00.000-07:00

Des called me from school today because he was having "a bad day." His friends weren't there and he was a bit at odds. "Nothing here is fun."

"Hitting the wall" is a phrase that is used when a kid is bored or is struggling to find out what it is that interests them. Staff members can probably recognize the condition faster than I can but take a hands off approach as a student works through it. This is another aspect of the school where the value of the process is not readily discernible or easily explained.

When our kids seem unhappy our first instinct is to help them. It's natural but at times wrongheaded. Boredom is a challenge not a problem. We all need to struggle to find our way because when we struggle with boredom or dissatisfaction we are also thinking about what is important to us, what we want, what we need to do to change the situation. If a kid complains about being bored a staff member might make a suggestion but they are not going to direct the student. It is a subtle but important distinction. Saying "have you been to the art room today?" is different from plopping them down with paper, supplies and a model for a project to complete. The first is a suggestion, a bit of advice, the second is a distraction from the real problem. Yes, the child now has something to do but it hasn't addressed the real problem of figuring out what it was they wanted to do in the first place.

I'm just a mom again

2008-09-11T21:14:00.000-07:00

School Meeting decided that a staff member should be in charge of playday. Yeh! The system works! Well, it worked for me, not the staff member that may have been trying to get out of playday. I did have a twinge for a moment,you know, thinking, maybe it isn't that they don't want an outsider they just don't want me. But you know what? That's ok too. And I have a confession to make. I'm feeling very overwhelmed by the Hallowween fair enterprise and that motion is going to be discussed tomorrow. There is a small part of me that hopes I get a phone call saying school meeting doesn't want a Hallowween fair either. I know it could be really fun I just keep making lists of things I need to do or buy or make and they just keep getting longer and longer and longer...

I think there should have been a motion put before SM in the first place about whether or not to hold one although I can't imagine why they wouldn't. SM is a strange and mysterious entity to me. It's both a people and a place in my mind. Right now in Democracy in America I'm reading about the first New England Towns and Town Meetings and also came across a very interesting quote about religion and liberty which I will have to share with you at another point because the book is out of reach at the moment. anyway, School Meeting is based on the idea of governance through a Town meeting.

There is also a movie called Dogville that features a town meeting but in a very ugly way. The power of the meeting is abused to the point of absurdity. (somehow a character played by Nicole Kidman ends up wearing this odd iron collar attached to a an anvil that she has to drag around) The town is destroyed by violent criminals(in every endeavor people would do well to remember that there is always a bigger fish) and then during the credits there is just image after image of all sorts of nasty stuff that has happened in our country. I think the director, Lars Von Trier, was trying to say, you think this is a fable but look at the violence you yourself are capable of. He could have taken images from around the world and all of history to highlight that aspect of man's nature but he specifically chose to use only american images. I'm not sure why. I think europeans think we're deluded. I have veered way off topic here. Sorry. From sudbury to dogville. See if you can find those two in the same sentence anywhere else on the internet. :)

I'm not an applicant...I'm a candidate!

2008-09-11T00:08:00.000-07:00

I have to be elected to the Playday position. So a motion is in for hmm I don't know how they worded it. I guess a motion is in to hold an election to approve of me as director of playday. You can get bogged down in the procedural shit at this school. I understand that it is necessary but its tricky. I had three phone calls about how to word a motion so I can be at school when I need to be to plan for the Halloween fair.

Oh yes! Did I forget to mention that I had the fantastic idea to hold a Halloween fair and now I'm in charge of it. I must have been on crack when I opened my mouth. No, I kid. It's going to be fun.

In other news, JC is cracking the whip this year! Desmond has already had a tough sentence for being rowdy. He said "It's hard to get used to all these rules again after being away the whole summer." I said "You should bring that up in JC." He looked at me, rolled his eyes and said "But that's so embarrassing!" Two of his friends were written up for being rowdy...while they were in JC on a charge! I thought it was a first but my friend, who used to be on staff and coincidentally is their mom, said it happens more often than you would think.

Director of Playday

2008-09-07T19:44:00.000-07:00

I've volunteered for this position. A promotion from Asst. or was it Backup Playday Director. there isn't a lot to it. Some paperwork and bringing a snack. Getting there on time. Playing.

The staffing committee is going to meet tomorrow to discuss it. I brought it up at dinner tonight, thinking the kids would be ok with it-I come to playday with Cady and Finn almost every week as it is. The kids said "So you're going to be a staff?" and they did not look happy about it. They asked if I could write people up and I said I didn't think so. I started to get nervous. Not so much about me being in charge of playday but what if they didn't like playday at all. So Amelia asked if there was anyone else who could do it. I said I didn't think so. I told them if they really didn't want me there they could go to the staffing committee and say so. I was very very tempted to tack on a lot of passive-aggressive manipulative comments to keep them from doing that but I didn't. I said to myself this is their school and their deal, let them have it. I did remind them how important playday is to Cady and asked that they not do anything to end it for her.

Of course Amelia forgot to say anything the next day. I wasn't going to remind her. I haven't heard anything. Maybe there is someone else who wants to do it. I don't care, as long as they have it. Cady loves going to sudbury.