Me + school = love

I'm doing the SITS Girls Fall Back Into Blogging event, with daily prompts and ideas for getting your blogging mojo back. Boy do I need it! So here goes. The first prompt is writing about your best school memory.

Unlike some other parts of the country where school starts in August (What the heck?! That's still prime summertime.),  in the Pacific Northwest it kicks off in September with a frenzy of activity around our house. 

There's back to (pre-)school for the kids, and also for me too in a way, since I serve on two schools' boards: my alma mater's and the kids' preschool. Ava's birthday is mid-month, followed by our anniversary. It's a bit crazy-making, but also exciting because my best school memory is...school itself!

Narrow it down to one memory?! That's like asking a chocolate lover what's their favorite chocolate memory. Or a parent which kid they love best. It. Can't. Be. Done. I have ALWAYS loved school. LOVED I tell ya!

The books, the assignments ("Is it okay if I read ahead?" Yeah: I was THAT kid.), my teachers, the schedule, the lockers, my friends, and even trying to decipher the intrigues of the popular cliques.

Unlike some folks, who found their school years to be something to be endured, I couldn't wait to get there every day, despite the two hour bus ride each way during middle and high school. I also had no angst about my place in the class or school hierarchy because I had my own "peeps," my own places to excel, and because there was so much that I loved about being at school that I really didn't dwell on the vagaries of the affections I elicited (or didn't) from my fellow hormone-addled classmates.

It probably helped that I was a happy, confident, and self-directed kid. Also, I was (and am) a realist. I knew there was no way to change my family's income or name, or the fact that we didn't use the word "summer" as a verb. Things were what they were, so I had to get on with my life and revel in the parts where I had some control. Like studying and doing my best in class.

From a social standpoint, in the bell curve of class popularity, I probably fell squarely in the middle of the hump: not popular, but far from an outcast. I was a nerd who played sports, I was smart, I fit in (at least with my friends) and I was among fellow school-loving, athletic, and nerdy kids and had a tribe to call my own. It was a school that was very classically academically rigorous but that also gave students a bit of latitude in identifying and working on non-traditional academic pursuits too. Like helping Bill Gates to work on early computers during his time there. And look where that got us all: right here with me blogging and you reading, here on the interwebs, that's where. 

But there is one memory that sticks out in my mind as pretty great about my school years. In high school, I took Graphics (or art as it was called in most schools) with a great teacher who was renown for his unconventional approach that drew on his experience in a number of disciplines, including being a Unitarian minister. Students were allowed to draw on the walls of the studio, which were painted over every year to allow the new class to leave their marks. We learned to draw live nude models, which I drew with a discrete black bar over the naughty bits, enacting my own self-censoring.

I was no artistic standout, but he made each student feel like they were. And he taught us techniques that enabled us to strengthen whatever artistic abilities we had.

One winter, he gave us an assignment to draw a interesting Santa Claus. I decided to do a funky Santa. Not funky like smelly: funky like platforms, bell bottoms, gold chains (it was the mid-1980s and hip hop was just getting big, after all), and an afro, complete with the afro pick in the shape of a Black Power fist. The next day, he called me in to his office.

As one of the few kids of color at the school, I was scared. Was he mad that my Santa didn't match the other rosy-cheeked, white-haired specimens turned in by my classmates? Had I (horrors!) misunderstood the assignment?!

No. He got teary as he told me that my goofy picture, done on a whim to amuse myself and complete my homework, had moved him deeply. It turned out that he had an adopted daughter who was African American. Seeing my Santa, in all its funky glory and all my obvious joy at creating an image that reflected my reality and worldview and that didn't fit the cookie cutter mold of what was expected, gave him hope that his daughter would also someday be comfortable creating art that reflected her reality and complexity as an African American girl with a white dad. And he thanked me for sharing my vision of what could be, not just what we were used to. How's that for making a nerdy little girl feel that she had something amazing to contribute to the world?

Now that I'm shepherding Ava and Dylan into their school age years, I want them to have similarly powerful experiences and mentors; to have grownups in their lives - besides their mom and dad and grandparents - who let them know that they have something unique to contribute to the world, but that they have to work hard to hone whatever talents they have.

I want to facilitate their love for learning, nurture their natural interests and provide an outlet for - and celebration of - their own wacky funky-Santa-like ideas. I want to model for them the need to push their personal boundaries and be lifelong learners in a way that is not dependent upon being in a classroom. After all, I have to prepare them for a world I may never see, but in which I want them to excel. Hopefully, they will also come to love - LOVE! - school the way I did.

Hair as a biological weapon

Given yesterday's post about all the hair goings on at our house, I was reminded of some hair hullabaloo earlier this year here in Seattle. Charles Mudede, a writer for The Stranger newspaper, wrote a column about a situation involving his bi-racial daughter, her hair products and a teacher's alleged physical sensitivity to the smell of it.

As I wrote about the debacle at the time in a Facebook comment:

Jay-zuss. So. Poorly. Handled. By the teacher and the parents. Why isn't anyone thinking about the child, her feelings, and her classmates and what they're learning from this? About how deal with difference? (They've learned to push it away. In a really distracting and obtrusive way.)
About how to handle an uncomfortable situation without making someone feel bad? (They've learned a child's feelings don't matter. Only the adult's/teacher's.)

Why didn't the teacher just say "I'm feeling a little warm/dizzy. Let's open a window and the door and create a cross-breeze." Then she could broach the subject - delicately and discretely - with the parents later.

All kinds of teachable moments being missed in all this.

At the time, reading about that girl left me totally worried about my little brown girl and her gorgeous hair and attendant hair products as we prepared to send her off to play school.

Play school!

After months of buildup, bigger than a Friends finale (Ava: "What's 'Friends'?" Me: "A show you'll watch on the Vintage TV channel some day."), Ava started school part time in September.

I spent months checking places out, researching online, creating a hyperlinked Excel spreadsheet of possible schools with comparisons of learning approaches, teacher/child ratios, distance from home, and cost per hour. It was, in a word, insane. Or two words: insanely stressful. Mainly because it felt like the choice of where she ended up would decide whether or not she loved school (as I had) or hated it from the start.

It's play-based, which didn't seem rigorous enough in comparison to places that are practically guranteeing that your toddler will be doing algebra, right after using play-doh to make 1/5 scale models of regional architectural treasures.

But I did some searches online, talked with friends who teach little kids, and they raised some good points about play-based programs. Finally, as J. pointed out, Ava really engaged on the tour there, jumping right in with her age-mates in the play area and she told us how sad she was to leave.

Ultimately, I think I liked the Montessori school we initially found more for myself. But since my stuff can't fit in a cubby anymore, we chose and were chosen by the school that worked best for Ava.

Over the past year, because of Ava's excitement about going to school, we used it as a carrot in her potty training efforts. Which is why periodically on the weekends when we used a family bathroom stall while running errands, the folks in other stalls were treated to Ava applauding me and yelling, "Yay Mommy! You did it! You're going to school!" In the end, she potty trained months ago and the school she's attending doesn't have a "must be potty trained" rule, but she has a change of clothes there just in case.

When the first day of school rolled around, I took a couple days off work to be able to fully revel in the experience. First up: a hearty oatmeal breakfast. A friend with two little boys pointed out that it was quite the accomplishment to be able to have that meal in the same clothes she wore to school. It hadn't even occured to me because we're used to her being so neat. With Dylan, we may need a drop cloth and hose.

Half the fun of back to (or start of) school is the accessories. For my pink-loving play schooler, I found an insulated lunch sack and cute stacking bento containers, ice packs and napkin at the local Daiso Japanese dollar store. Packing a tasty, visually appealing lunch (often with a little post-it love note/drawing) is one way of showing her that I care about her, even when I'm not there for school dropoffs and pickups. I got the bento idea and the Daiso tip from the super smart blogger/Bay Area mom behind http://www.lunchinabox.net/.

J. giving the kids a lift before we headed for the first day of school.

See Ava: that's the school where a chunk of our disposable income is going.

My mom joined us, making for a three-generation start of school shot.

Money shot: whole family in one picture finally. Usually I'm missing because I'm taking pictures.

Ava's 3rd birthday fell on the second day of school so we took balloons and mini cupcakes for her class for lunch. Thankfully, she figured out that every day wouldn't entail such hullaballoo. Like, "It's Tuesday. Where's the marching band?"

Me and my smiley boy, who hung out in my trusty, much-loved Ergo through it all and was his usual good-natured self. As long as he's in the carrier - whether front or back - he doesn't make a peep. Hopefully, in a couple years, it'll be his turn to don a new back pack and head off to playschool.

All in all, Ava loved school from the start and since J. does drop offs and pick ups, I have to be content with hearing second-hand all the scoop on her new friends when I pick her and Dylan up after work ("So-and-so put sand in my hair so he had to go to time out!").

After years of thinking we might just be the childless aunt and uncle, I'm once again pleasantly surprised at how much enjoyment I'm getting out all of this kid-related minutiae. I'm absolutely loving being a mom to these two and sharing in all the tears, tantrums, tenderness and triumphs of their young lives.

Future student

I don't think I'll have to worry about Ava's school readiness. Not only is she already sitting flipping through books with a knowing look as if she's assessing the narrative arc and plot development (Ava on Pat the Bunny: nice!), her vocabulary is growing almost daily and she's starting to be bored with some of the shorter books in her collection.

She also loves this backpack my parents bought her when she was literally about 14 months old. She had barely started walking and would bop around the house with it on.

Note the scary-ish happy monster on the back. Yes, that is a matching coin purse.

I hope she loves school as much as I did. I loved it so much, I once ran six blocks, crying, chasing a school bus I'd missed. Only to catch it, out of breathe and sweaty and discover... it wasn't my bus. I trudged back home, dejected and had my dad call the late bus for pickup.

Needless to say, I was not a kid who my parents had to harangue to get going in the morning. In fact, since I was bussed to the other side of the city for many of my school years, including a two hour public bus ride from middle school on, part of my morning routine was to wake my parents up for work before I went to catch the bus and to let them know I was leaving. Fun times.
I don't know what Ava's school years will look like but I hope she has this same smile on her face when she heads off to school in less than 4 years.