Category Archives: Education

Children, Education

The First Day of First Grade

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Lexi's First Day of First GradeSo yesterday was the big first day of school. If summer wasn’t already done and gone, now it’s officially over. Gone are the lazy days of summer and now we’re back to a routine. Hopefully. It’s kind of odd. By 7:15 a.m. both Lexi and Abby are gone, we’ve already had breakfast and Milo and are looking at each other asking, “Now what?”

Yesterday Milo literally asked when we could have lunch. At 7:30 in the morning.

Milo starts “three school” next week, two days a week for two and a half hours, our attempt to give him something fun to do now that his playmate is in school all day. And to save my sanity. So far both of our mornings have involved me trying to be productive while Milo lies around. Today we went to the library, which would be a great routine for me. Though when I asked Milo if he wanted to look for books? “Nah.” He was too busy making friends and playing games with the magnetic triangle and circle. Which I guess is good.

It’s kind of hard getting into a new routine. I guess I haven’t thought about it much before, but I’m pretty big on routine. I do certain things in a certain order, whether it’s letting the dogs out or getting breakfast. I like my routine. If I don’t follow my routine or have a good one, things tend to skipped, like brushing your teeth. And that’s not cool. So far I’m floundering, desperately trying to find a routine. Yesterday I let the dogs out at 6:15 only to put them back in their crates when we walked to the bus stop. Today I left them in their crates until we got back from the bus stop. I guess all you can do is try and see what works.

Oddly enough, the routine seemed much more self-evident when there were two kids running amok. Now that there’s only one, it seems too open-ended. I guess I should be enjoying it. I’m just trying to find the rhythm, like a drummer that’s not quite on beat. It feels off.

 

Children, Education, Family

Lexi’s Last Day of Kindergarten

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168th Day of School - Last DayIt seems like only yesterday Lexi was heading off to her first day of kindergarten. She was over-the-top excited and Milo burst into tears.

Today was her last day of kindergarten. She’s older, wiser and taller.

The last day celebration included a cookout with Pete the naturalist at the Dodge Nature Center, featuring mini hot dogs (Milo ate half the pack) and pizza. Then we headed back to school to hear about some of her favorite things from throughout the year and every student received an award for following one of the school’s five overall rules.

Lexi was recognized for “safety,” because she always brought the right gear. I think that means I should get an award for sending my kid to school prepared (which usually meant stopping her on the way out the door and insist she wear something more appropriate). She also got the award for making sure everyone else was being safe too, which I’m pretty sure means she’s just bossy. She practices all day long on Milo, so it’s good to see it’s paying off.

It’s been a fun year watching Lexi grow. I think the social aspect of kindergarten—learning how to interact with other kids, following the rules, being prepared—has probably been the most important, though it’s also been cool to see her learning the academics. She’s learning how to read, slowly and with more and more confidence. Having a kindergarten teacher for a mom, some people expect reading to be a serious and early milestone in our house. But it’s actually counter-productive to teach kids to read too early (Abby could give you all sorts of reasons why—I’ll leave that blog post to her). It’s important to let them go at their own pace. And it’s been fun to see that with Lexi, to see her start to read signs in stores and read stuff over our shoulder. She’s still gaining confidence with reading books, but she’s getting there.

I’m also trying not to be too proud that one of her favorite things in school was writing.

Finally, the end of the school year means the end of a little project of mine, the Days of School. It started with me taking pictures on the first day of school (I have an addiction to feed). Then as we waited for the bus on the second and third days of school Lexi kept asking me to take pictures. So we started taking a picture every day. I think we only missed one or two days when Lexi actually went to school, and of course we missed all the days she was absent (and since she had mono in the fall, there were a lot of those). But in the end we have 151 pictures of Lexi going to kindergarten.

As we went outside to take her picture today I told her  we were taking her last picture. She told me, “Nope, you’re taking pictures in first grade too!” So we’ll see how long this thing continues.

Check out the Days of School:

Education

Lexi’s First Day of School

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Lexi's First Day of SchoolYesterday was Lexi’s first day of Kindergarten. Thankfully, she had a much less traumatic first day of school than I did.

Last week we went to the open house and met her teacher and got to go on a school bus ride. She was shy and nervous and I had to push her on to the bus. Made me a little worried for the first day of school, but when she came bounding up the stairs at 7 a.m., fully dressed and shouting, “Happytuesdayitsthefirstdayofschool!”, I knew it was going to be OK.

When the school bus came to pick her up she jumped and down and shouted, “There’s my bus!” Then Milo erupted in tears.

In the afternoon she hopped off the bus with a big smile and gave me a high five. School was great.

“Did you learn anything?”

“Nope.”

Awesome. The days of my children telling me nothing happened at school have already begun.

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Children, Education

Half Day Kindergarten

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Tour of My Childhood: Scotch SchoolI’m a work-at-home dad. With a 2-year-old and an almost 5-year-old. That means I don’t get much work done.

In the past few months I’ve gone from one child napping in the morning and both children napping in the afternoon to only one child napping in the afternoon.

Work happens during that lone naptime, in the evenings and when I’m otherwise neglecting my children. In other words, not much work happens. And I have no social life.

I’ve been holding out hope for kindergarten. The Tuesday after Labor Day couldn’t come soon enough.

Until I learned our district only offers half day kindergarten. All day kindergarten, it turns out, is not mandated by the state. So if you want it, in our district at least, you pay for it. To the tune of nearly $3,000.

I wanted to cry when I heard the news.

I love my kids and it’s pretty great that I get to stay home with them. But the whining, complaining, fighting and general disorder are not my cup of tea. Unlike some people, this is not my calling.

I’m trying to console myself with the fact that half day kindergarten is better for kids, that it’s a more gradual introduction to school, that all day kindergarten is mostly filler and babysitting, that naptime may even resume when kindergarten starts.

But I was really counting on that babysitting.

Now I’ve got my sights set on 2014.

(As much as I dislike the district’s policy, in a time of budget cuts, salary freezes and rejected levies, it’s a pretty smart fiscal policy.)

Children, Education

First Day of School

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Today is Yeshumnesh’s first day of school. She’s nervous. It’s the first day in a new school, in a new state, in a new grade, in a new everything. She’s very nervous.

I’m pretty anxious as well. As parents we haven’t done the whole first day of school thing before, and now we’re jumping straight into middle school. We’ve met teachers and toured the school and found lockers and all the rest, but we can’t help feeling like we’re forgetting something or we haven’t done everything we can to prepare Yeshumnesh. And I hate to keep asking about things and just bring up more to worry about: When is lunch? Do you want to bring a snack? Do you have a house key? Do you remember our address? Should you bring gym clothes?

It all gives me flashbacks to my own first days of school… (cue nostalgic rambling)

The Pillar: Kindergarten & 2nd GradeIt starts with my first day of kindergarten. I rode the school bus to Scotch Elementary School with my older brother, then an experienced second grader. I remember watching out the window as our bus picked up the other children.

When we got to school I stepped off the bus and had no idea where to go. So I followed my brother. My older, smarter, more confident brother. He knew everything. And I knew him. So I followed him.

He told me to go to my class. Then he turned around and walked away.

And I was alone.

I cried.

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Education

Teacher Appreciation Week

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Teachers have a hard job. Somehow everything is their fault. We rarely blame the parents or the administration or the kids themselves. We like to blame those lazy teachers, who clearly went into the job for the money.

It’s easy to dump on teachers and education in general. Marketing guru Seth Godin has given education a beating, especially with the release of his latest book, Linchpin. I haven’t read it, but much of they hype and talk surrounding the book’s release related to education. It centered on the idea that schools churn out similar students who are factory automatons and don’t know how to think differently or be remarkable—resulting in failure in the real world. I constantly hear people go on much like Godin does about how horrible schools are.

I think that’s a bunch of garbage.

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Education

School Loans & Audio Adrenaline

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I just received a statement from Wells Fargo showing a breakdown of interest, principal and total paid on our school loans over the past 8+ years. And the current balance, of course. Horribly depressing. Even more depressing when I consider that’s only one of our student loans (and let’s not talk about a mortgage).

About 10 years ago I interviewed Bob Herdman, keyboardist and guitar player for the Christian band Audio Adrenaline. At the time I was an intern, working my first real writing job and doing one of my first real interviews. I had no idea what I was doing and the fact that a “rock star” would just call me up like that for a phone interview was incredible. Little did I realize how mundane that is.

Anyway, the article would cover Audio Adrenaline’s college years and what Herdman learned from college, a fairly interesting piece for the Christian college guide it would appear in. (Reality check: It never appeared. The college guide was never published, due to all sorts of insanity I didn’t understand at the time, nor will I get into here.)

At one point in the interview Herdman mentioned that he still had school loans he hadn’t paid off. He said something about paying $50 a month for 10 years now. He could have been exaggerating, I have no idea, but I remember being horrified at the thought. Imagine it, a successful rock star with outstanding college loans. Granted Audio Adrenaline was never a mainstream success. But they had plenty of success in the Christian market, at that time were releasing their fifth album (Underdog) and were still riding high from their 1996 hit album Bloom (certified Gold).

I knew Christian rock band wasn’t exactly a lucrative career path. I knew Herdman may have had other spending priorities (my own financial advisor talks about student loans as “good debt,” a concept I understand but still bristle at). But still. I couldn’t fathom the concept of a successful rock star not having paid off their college loans yet.

And here I sit, 10 years later, looking at a loan statement and beginning to feel sympathy instead of bewilderment. I wonder if Herdman finished paying off his school loans?

Education

Off to College

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With school starting up again a number of the kids in youth group are off to college. It makes me remember the many changes that happen in college. You can make lifetime friends in college (I certainly did, much more so than in high school), but it’s also a time of tremendous change. While I was in college I broke up with my girlfriend of several years, my parents separated, my home church fell apart, I stepped away from a longtime ministry and subsequently became distanced from a good friend. I also learned how to live on my own for the first time, I got married, I made some tremendous friends, I discovered that I just might be able to make a living at this writing thing, and my faith took a giant leap (though I’m not sure I could describe in which direction–forward in progress, backwards away from fundamentalism, an increase in depth–I don’t know).

It’s a time in your life marked by incredible change. Some wonderful, but some painful.

I still remember during the first week of school when I was still a wide-eyed freshman, someone recognized that look in my eyes and said, “Just give it a couple of weeks. It’ll be OK.” Not that anything changed in a few weeks. If anything the changes just kept coming. But somehow I was a little better prepared for them.

Education

Finals Week

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Finals week. Stress pours out in strange forms. Five friends spent three hours sitting around talking about eunuchs and Unix, trying to knock decks of cards over with their noses. They sit in the dining center making balloons screech and trying to fashion a sling shot from plastic knives and popped balloon pieces. Suddenly time has no meaning. All that matters is what you have left to do before the moment of glorious freedom.

What a strange breed.

Education

Get Out of School Early

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A profound and disturbing notion occurred to me the other day. We received our registration materials at school this week, and while planning for next semester I determined that it’s possible for me to graduate a semester early. Thus saving a semester’s worth of tuition and entering the real world a full four or five months earlier. Entering the real world. A real job. A real apartment. A real paycheck. Real bills. Real life. Whoa. I found the concept a little staggering as it settled into my head. It draws a million questions of what I want to do and where I want to go. It draws more properly phrased questions of what God wants to do with me and where he wants me to go. I’m in my third year of college and the reality of school being over and employment beginning has always been a safely distant thought. Now the idea is slightly more than a calendar year away. The thought frightens me.

Where am I going to get a job? What exactly do I want to do? Where do I want to live? Who do I want to live with? Whoa, easy. Here, take a seat for a minute. I’m swimming in questions and all I can do is look up for the Lifeguard. I know he has the plan and he has the answers. I understand that. But I don’t yet see the plan and I don’t yet see the answers and the apprehension fills me. It’s my human reaction and somehow I have to let it go. Otherwise I’ll be kicking and screaming and the Lifeguard will never be able to show me that I’m drowning in the kiddie end of the pool.