Parenting

On the last afternoon of my son’s spring vacation, right when his annoyance with me had reached its apex and his blood sugar had bottomed out, I suggested that it might be a good time for him to get a jump-start on his next book report. The one that isn’t due until mid-May.

“Only 18 days to work on it!” I joked.

Except I wasn’t really joking.

Monkey agreed, if reluctantly, to work on his first paragraph. He disappeared for twenty minutes and then returned. I asked him if he would read his paper. He groaned, but he obliged. I suggested that his thesis could use a little tweaking and asked him to go and work on the paragraph a little bit more. He declined. Adamantly. I persevered. We locked horns.

I should have predicted what was going to happen next, but I didn’t.

He shouted.

I shouted louder.

Eventually, he screamed, got a little teary-eyed, and stomped off to his bedroom – ostensibly to revise.

After fifteen minutes, when he did not materialize, I decided I would check on his progress. That’s when I found Monkey. Under his bed. He had gone there to hide.

From the world.

From the work.

But, mostly, from me.

The next thing I knew, I was lying on my son’s rug. My cheek brushing against the carpet, I remembered how – as a child – I tried to cajole an escaped gerbil into coming out from its hiding place.

At first he wouldn’t even talk to me. After a while, though, he let me have it.

“I just don’t understand why it had to be perfect!” Monkey sniffed. “It’s just a friggin’ first draft! I have over two weeks to work on it.”

It was my “Oh shit!” moment.

And he was 100% right.

Which meant I had to apologize.

And so I apologized to Monkey for getting all up in his grill about his school work. Truth is, he is about the most organized person I know when it comes to time management. And I told him so. I also told him that sometimes it’s hard for me – especially when it comes to writing – to just let things be. I told him how “imperfect” is hard for me when it comes to English.

“Also,” I confessed, “I didn’t know that you actually revise.”

“Of course I do,” he said. “Geez! Give me some credit!”

I felt I had to offer Monkey something more than an apology. (More than the snack that he, also, clearly needed.) After all, I felt I had really underestimated him.

And then I got an idea.

“I would like to extend an offer to you,” I said. “Are you interested?”

“Maybe,” said Monkey, still facing the wall.

“The next time I say, ‘You just lost your iPod Touch,’ you have a free ‘Gimmee-Back-My-Touch’ card,” I said. “You know like those ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ cards in Monopoly? Like that.”

Monkey rolled over to face me. The slats of his bed hovered a half an inch above his ear.

“Make me a card!” he demanded. “And decorate it insanely with icons from all the apps I like. And add lots of stickers and stuff. And put it in a cool font.”

Suddenly, I felt that I’d been duped. Somehow I went from apologizing to my son to negotiating with a terrorist.

“And no expiration date!” he said smugly. “That’s your homework,” said Monkey, smiling, letting me know everything was okay with us.

He grunted as he slithered out from under his bed.

He isn’t going to be able to fit under there much longer.

“Also, there’s a friggin’ huge, hairy-dust ball under there,” said Monkey, trying to see if I’d let him get away with his second friggin’ of the day.

I did.

“Yeah,” I said. “I kind of noticed it rolling around while I was talking to the back of your head.”

We both burst out laughing.

Thank goodness for hairy-dust balls.

“May I please go and ride my bike before vacation ends?” Monkey asked.

“Dismissed,” I said.

“Thanks,” yelled Monkey and, as he ran out the door he added, “I’ll expect your homework by dinner!”

Anybody have any good stories about apologizing to your kids? 

A few months ago, I wrote a tirade about the Alabama publisher who took The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and “sanitized” it because school teachers confessed they felt uncomfortable teaching it in their classes due to the  use of the “n-word.”

I ranted and raved about how wrong it is to alter books and how it sets a dangerous precedent.

I never posted it.

I realize that not everyone will agree with me, but I think much (but certainly not all) of the power in Huckleberry Finn is in Twain’s brilliant use of language and how the plot morphs from a story of one, young, rather selfish boy on a journey to a story about a boy and a man, together, against the world.

There is an incredible irony that engaged readers will pick up on that Jim, the slave, referred to as a “nigger” 219 times during the course of the novel, is the most moral, loving, genuine, forgiving, character in the entire book. He is probably one of the greatest father-figures in American Literature. And, if read correctly Huckleberry Finn stands as one of the strongest condemnations of racism in American literature as Huck recognizes Jim’s humanity and says he would rather go to hell than send Jim back into slavery.

I had written much more – about how it is important to discuss the power of the “n-word,” its origins, and its different contexts in different communities; how it is necessary to challenge students about the casual use of the “n-word,” to get them to consider if it is ever okay to use this word and if so, who can say it, when and under what circumstances.

I caught this bit on Huckleberry Finn and the N-word debate on 60 Minutes and about 7 minutes in, I just knew that this report was saying it better than I ever could. If you ever read Twain’s novel or have kids who read it or might read it, it is worth the next 12 minutes of your time. And if you are an educator, I recommend you see it – first, to think about your methods. Because this is a book where one has to be mindful. But this piece of journalism would be great to show in one’s class to get a real discussion on race relations going.

If you were an English teacher, would you use the version with the original text? Or would you choose the new version where the “n-word” is replaced by the word “slave”? Or would you avoid the discussion on race altogether?

Sometimes I’d really like to flip Granville Stanley Hall the bird.

Problem is, the dude is dead.

About 120 years ago, Hall established one of the first American psychology-research labs and supervised the 1896 study “Of Peculiar and Exceptional Children,” which described a series of only-child oddballs as permanent misfits. Hall concluded only children could not be expected to go through life with the same capacity for adjustment that children with siblings possessed. “Being an only child is a disease in itself,” he claimed.

Thanks, Granville.

You, like, totally rock.

And by rock, I mean suck.

While much work has been done to debunk the myth of the weirdo only child, most people still think one is the loneliest number. And, shockingly, strangers continue to ask me, over 10 years after my son was born, when I plan to have another. As if having just one is the worst, most unthinkable thing I could ever do.

You’re hearing it here first, folks: I’m not having any more kids.

The womb is closed.

Meanwhile, Hubby and I are doing our best to raise our singleton son, now 11 & 1/2 years old, and we think we are doing a pretty good job of it. I was recently thumbing through a journal that I kept when Monkey was very small, and I stumbled across an anecdote that seemed apropos to share here.

When Monkey was about 3 years old, he won three identical goldfish at a carnival. Actually, he didn’t win them so much as acquire them; the man at the booth said it was late in the day, that it was the last day of whatever festival we were attending, and he basically wanted to unload the fish. So when Monkey’s dart popped one balloon he became the “big winner” of the day and we came home with a plastic baggie o’fish.

Monkey promptly named the trio the best names he could think of: “Mommy,” “Daddy” and “Monkey.” And he fed them (sometimes). And he watched them swim (sometimes). And he disappeared when I cleaned the bowl (always). And for a while, things went along swimmingly. The fish were nice to have, but he didn’t seem very invested in them.

One morning, hubby and I awoke to the sound of Monkey screaming, “Mommy! Daddy! Mommy! Daddy!”

Husband and I jumped out of our bed and ran down the hall to find our son standing on top of his bed staring into the fishbowl.

“Mommy and Daddy are dead,” he announced.

Now these were three completely identical goldfish. There was absolutely nothing to tell them apart. no telltale spots, no interesting marks, no places where anyone had been chomped, so I had to ask.

“Monkey, how can you tell that it’s Mommy and Daddy that didn’t make it?”

My son looked at me like I was an alien. “Well, because as you can see,” he said, pointing into the tiny little bowl, “Monkey is right there. He’s fine.”

Duh.

Hubby and I looked at each other. Our child didn’t seem to be traumatized. In fact, when we asked him what we ought to do with the two fish that had gone belly-up, he replied pragmatically, “Probably flush ’em.”

Like most only children, Monkey has hung out with his cousins and turned his closest friends into pseudo-siblings, knowing it’s not the same as having real brothers or a sisters but not necessarily missing what he doesn’t have. For him, siblings are kind of like the floating goldfish we flushed away so long ago: they were nice while they lasted, but he prefers having the bowl to himself. He has seen siblings who get along beautifully, and he has watched siblings claw at each other like cats. He realizes that just because a person has a brother or a sister doesn’t mean that relationship will be a close one. These days, he also knows that being an only has its perks: No one will mess with his many collections, or go in his room to snoop around, or kick him unexpectedly in the twigs and berries. But he couldn’t have known this back then.

The day the fish died, my husband explained the bowl had been too small, that there had been too much urea in the water and not enough oxygen. He asked our son if he wanted to get a bigger tank, more fish.

“No. One is good.”

Recent studies show that only children are no more messed up than anybody else’s kids. In fact, only children tend to do better in school and get more education — college, medical or law degrees — than other kids. Source Material

So everybody can stop worrying.

The only kid is all right.

Where do you fall in the birth order? Has birth order impacted you? Do you think birth order matters at all? Or is it all a bunch of hogwash?

The other day Monkey came home wanting to know how old I was when I learned about HIV/AIDS.  (He’s learning a lot in his 6th grade Health class.)

I told him I learned about HIV/AIDS at the end of high school, that I vividly remembered the Surgeon General at the time, the white-bearded C. Everett Koop, coming on television in 1985 to talk to the American people and explain how scientists believed the disease was being transmitted.

“It was a scary time,” I said. “People were getting AIDS from blood transfusions and worrying you could get if from kissing.”

Monkey started schooling me about how HIV/AIDS was a virus that attacked the immune system, that it was not passed via “kiss-spit,” but by blood and urine and other bodily fluids, like sperm. Frankly, I was pretty impressed by what he had learned in school.

“You know,” I said, “HIV/AIDS is still a huge problem in Africa and in other communities. It hasn’t been cured.”

But Monkey didn’t want to talk about the world’s AIDS crisis. He had other designs. Squinting at me from the opposite side of our kitchen island, he turned on me.

Monkey: So when you met daddy you both knew about AIDS?

Me: Yeah, it was pretty big news back then.

Monkey: And you met in what year?

Me: We met in 1990 and started dating in 1993.

Monkey: And when did you get married?

Me: In 1997.

Monkey? So you were together for 4 years before you got married?

Me: Yup.

I could feel his wheels turning. He was going to ask me something big. I held onto to kitchen counter trying to steady myself. Was I going to have to confess that his father and I lived together in New Orleans, that we shared an apartment before we married? And where would that take us? Would he assume we had separate bedrooms? The questioning continued.

Monkey: Did you get AIDS tested?

Me: Can we talk about this when daddy gets home?

Monkey: Answer zee kveschun!

(Actually, he didn’t say it like that. It only felt like I was being interrogated by the Gestapo.)

Me: Yes, we both got tested.

Monkey: Before you got married.

This came out of his mouth as a statement, not as a question, so I didn’t feel the need to tell him that his father and I were AIDS tested about 3 months after we started dating –  waaaaay back in 1993.

But Monkey was satisfied and announced we had acted responsibly and added he planned to wait to have sex until he’d married, too.

I smiled at my 11 year-old son who had grabbed a plum and wandered off to do his science homework. Here, I thought he was about to grill me about safe sex practices and demand to know if his father and I had remained chaste until our wedding night.

I am not ready for that talk.

That same night, I saw an episode of Glee where the father, Burt Hummel talks to his gay son, Kurt, about sex. His monologue was short and sweet and brilliant.

Frankly, I think all parents should be required to memorize this speech before leaving the hospital on the day their child is born so they can use it later.

Here is what Burt Hummel said to his son (with a few gender changes):

For many people, sex is a thing we want to do because it’s fun and it feels good, but we’re not thinking about how it feels on the inside or how the other person feels about it. But it’s more than just the physical. When you’re intimate with someone in that way, you gotta know that you’re exposing yourself … You gotta know that it means something. It’s doing something to you, to your heart, to your self-esteem, even though it feels like you’re just having fun.

When you’re ready, I want you to be able to do everything. But when you’re ready, I want you to use it as a way to connect to another person. Don’t throw yourself around like you don’t matter, because you matter.

Here’s a link to the whole video, if you care to see it.

Watch: Kurt and His Dad Have a Gay Sex Talk on ‘Glee’ Video.

At some point, probably sooner than I think, Monkey might ask me to clarify the status of my virginity prior to marriage. Lord knows, that boy can ask me answer any question that might be roiling around in his brain.

I think I just bought myself a little time.

And next time, we are definitely waiting until his father gets home.

Nearly every parent I know has wrestled with deciding how important it is to have their children take Advanced Placement (AP) courses. Parents want their children to have all the opportunities they can get so that they can succeed and be happy in life. (If only happiness could be achieved that easily!) Meanwhile, kids feel the pressure and report feeling exhausted, unhappy and anxious.

People often ask me, as a person who has spent nearly twenty years in the classroom, what I think about AP classes. Should their child take this AP or that AP. And they are often surprised when I respond with a question: “Does your child love French? Because if he doesn’t love it, why would you want him to take the AP which is going to require so much of his time and energy?”

What people (and by people, I mean parents) do not seem to understand is that the demand of an AP class is designed to be similar to a 100-level college class. The difference is that, in high school, that class will likely meet every day – while in college, there is usually an “off-day” where students have time to read and generally better manage coursework.

In RACE TO NOWHERE, filmmakers Vicki Abeles and Jessica Congdon speak to educators, parents, tweens, and teens about the pressures they face academically and emotionally, and the physical toll these expectations exact. What results is a picture of a fractured educational system that pushes kids to become successful — but at a cost.

During the Post World War II Advanced Placement pilot program, AP courses were designed to draw the top students into a small class of other students who LOVED the material. In 1952, AP classes were designed to be small so teachers could move at an accelerated pace because of the students’ voracious love of the subject matter. The idea was excellent.

Of course, what has happened over time, is that parents have demanded that their children be allowed entry into AP classes because, these days, there is a warped race to create the best college application. (Believe me, parents want those AP’s on their college applications.) So AP class sizes have ballooned, and there is less one-on-one with teachers. And kids who had no business being in an AP in the first place struggle. Because AP classes are hard. Really hard. When the idea was created, I don’t think anyone from the Ford Foundation would have recommended that any one student take five AP courses.

I always tell parents that AP courses are not the be all/end all. When I say this, they look at me like I have five heads. Then they ignore me completely. (I’m telling you, parents don’t like to hear this.)

I truly believe that the point of education is for children to love to learn. When students are getting sick, when they arrive at college unprepared and unmotivated, there is a problem. Students who feel too much pressure to perform, burn out. Feeling the pressure to achieve, students self-medicate, turn to drugs and alcohol as an escape, and sometimes cheat to complete the ever mounting pile of assignments which need to finished – now! From my vantage point, I see kids who are over-scheduled and overtired.

School should be the place where our teens learn about balance. Schools that allow students to skip lunch periods so they can take five Advanced Placement courses have bought into the hype (or caved into parental pressure). And that is sad. Lunch should not be optional. Humans need to stop and eat healthy food (not a bag of chips) to provide their bodies with energy. I don’t care how many times a parent calls and says, “I want my son to take 5 APs.” Administrators need to grow a set and say, “I’m sorry, but we just don’t think that is beneficial to your child.” Students need help learning how to make healthy choices. Sometimes that means they need the school to shield them from demanding parents. And anyway, kids don’t have to be enrolled in a course to take AP tests: a really self-motivated kid who loves to learn should be able to access all the material he needs to prepare him/herself for any AP test.

For the love of Pete, I’m a Tiger Momma. I believe our children need to pick the things they do and do them well. But we need to help guide them to understand they cannot do everything. Our kids need to study hard – absolutely – but they also need to eat. They need to be able to go to the bathroom without worrying they are missing crucial information. And they need to be allowed to tune school out for a while so they can exercise and nurture friendships. They should not be running from this practice to that recital just be sitting on their asses in front of their computers every night.

When I was in high school, I had the opportunity to take regular English, AP English, or  Syracuse University Project Advance (SUPA English). At the time, SUPA was a college curriculum class taught by our own high school instructors who had been trained to teach the course. I worked my butt off in that class, and I did not always excel. I remember getting one paper back with a big fat “D” on it. (Maybe it was a “C,” but in my mind, I remember it as a “D.”) I also remember taking that paper to the library and weeping next to a huge potted plant. I had worked so hard on that paper. And English was the subject in which I was supposed to excel. I did not understand how I could have failed. My ego was battered, but my love for the subject matter made me want to figure things out. I busted my hump in that class. It was truly an amazing experience, and I believe it was the course that best prepared me for college.

When I think back on it, I cannot imagine how grueling it must put in that kind of work into every subject, every day. To me, taking all those APs seems utterly unnecessary. No one has ever asked me: “How many AP courses did you take in high school?” (Well, one pretentious fuck did, but it was after he had polished off an entire bottle of red wine himself.) In fact, many colleges don’t even accept AP credit anymore. It’s true.

So, my recommendation is this: If you’ve got a kid who is interested in some accelerated academic experience, have him/her enroll in a summer course at a real college. That looks good on college applications, too. And the credit might actually transfer somewhere, and it might help transition him or her to the realities of actual college life. Help your child live a balanced life. Have your kid go to summer camp, get a job, plant a garden, try something he/she has never done before. Not for the college application, just because.

In the United States, success has long meant making a lot of money. And the way to do this has traditionally meant attending a great college. But we need to redefine success for children. We have gotten caught up in this “race to nowhere,” as described by Abeles and Congdon. We need to teach our kids to do what they love – not pressure them into taking five AP classes because it will make them look good on paper.

In 2010, over 1.8 million students took over 3.2 million AP tests at about $87 bucks a pop. I’m no mathematician, but even I can tell that some people are taking more than one test. And I’d like to know five years down the line, where those kids are, and if they feel all that pain was worth it.

Check out this clip from the film below. Tell me you don’t want to see it!

It all started when I found a gray hair in my ski helmet.

My response was completely rational.

“Who has been wearing my ski helmet?” I asked my husband who responded by laughing at me and telling me that the one in the helmet had some friends. On my head.

So I made an appointment to get my hair colored. I would have to wait eight weeks for my appointment. Okay, fine. Whatever. Make me suffer. Fine.

On the day of my appointment, Monkey was barfing. I mean power-puking. It was crazy.

I had a twenty minute drive to make it to the salon on-time. I couldn’t believe it. In the almost twelve years he has lived on this planet, my child has probably missed two days of school due to illness, total.

Monkey laid on the couch with a blue bucket at his side.

I looked at my watch. I thought about what I should do.

I sighed, realizing I had to do it.

I had to go to the salon.

(For God’s sakes, I had eight weeks of roots! Don’t judge me!)

“Monkey, I said. “I have to go out.”

He nodded and gripped the toilet.

“Here’s the phone,” I said, putting the cordless at his feet. “You know my number, right?”

He nodded.

The wintry roads were slippery, but still I zoomed off to Isobel. Pulling into the parking lot, I heard my phone ring. I checked to be sure it wasn’t Monkey. (It wasn’t.) I ran into the salon where Michael, the owner, welcomed me with a firm, “You’re five minutes late. Did you see I called you?”

I explained to Michael that I was the worst mother in the world. That I had left my barfing, sick child at home to get my highlights done. And Michael agreed, I was a pretty bad mom. But seventy-five minutes later, my hair was perfect. I paid for a job well-done and zoomed home.

While sitting at a stoplight approximately one minute from my house, my phone rang. “You left your wallet wide-open on the desk at the salon,” said Stephanie, a stylist at Isobel.

“Are you serious?” I asked, knowing, of course, she was serious.

I turned my car around and headed downtown. Again. Somehow, I got lost. I don’t know how I got lost, but I did. Maybe it’s because the entire city was cloaked in white so I took a wrong exit. Then, there were no discernible signs only lumpy shapes. Whatever. I finally made it to the salon and pulled my car right up to the door. It wasn’t really a parking space, per se – but I figured I was running in for two seconds and running back out. I had to get home to Monkey.

I turned off the ignition, opened my door, swung my clunky boots around, when – suddenly and simultaneously – the entire car shook and I heard a loud thunk-crunch. Turning my head, I saw another vehicle had smashed up against my rear bumper. (This was soooo not my day.)

And that’s when I noticed him. Looking to be about twenty years old, and wearing sagging jeans and a hoodie, he shuffled around to survey the wreck. “Ohhhhh mannnnn.” The guuy who had just plowed into my car spoke very slowly, like the way Spicoli spoke in the movie Fast Times at Ridgemont High. (For you young’uns out there, Spicoli was a major stoner.)

I drive a Honda Pilot. My vehicle is tall and black (and currently filthy). It’s not fancy, but it is tough. I looked closely at my bumper, which had absolutely no evidence of damage. Spicoli drove a kind of small, purplish (and might I add uber feminine) Hyundai which now had a dimple in it. And by “dimple,” I mean, his car was crushed like a paper fan.

“Thiiiiiis suuuucks,” Spicoli said, pulling the flaps of his Guatemalan hat down over his ears. He looked distressed. “Man,” says Spicoli. “I’ve had like… two other accidents in the last six months… I don’t want my insurance to go up any higher.”

“Well,” I said, trying not to sound too impatient, “there is no damage to my car, so we don’t have to report it.”

Spicoli looked confused.

I told him I was going into the salon for a minute and that when I came out, he could tell me what he wanted to do. At last, I dashed into the salon and grabbed my wallet. Michael made some pithy joke at my expense, but I was already gone.

“So…um…” Spicoli stuttered, “if you are okay with it, can we not report this?” Spicoli asked. “I mean, my car is totally drivable.”

I nodded in agreement. Then Spicoli apologized, shook my hand, and told me I seemed like a nice lady.

Meanwhile I thought guiltily: Nice ladies don’t leave their sick children at home while they have their hair done.

I drove home carefully, certain that every police officer was out, ready to give me a ticket. And when I was pulled over, I would have to confess that my 11 year old was at home, alone and sick. And then Monkey would be hauled off to Child Protective Services. I visualized my husband screaming at me and then getting a really hot divorce lawyer.

Except none of that happened. After the garage door opened, I parked the car and hurried into the house to find Monkey, still resting on the couch. I pulled off my mittens and puffy black coat while I cooed, “Hey, Monkey… how are you feeling?”

“Okay,” he said.

I touched my son’s forehead. Cool as a cucumber. (Thank goodness.)

Tugging the hat from my head, I grabbed an extra blanket and covered Monkey from chin to toe. Then, I sat down beside him on the couch. Glancing at the clock, I saw it had been over three hours since I had left him alone.

“Do you need anything, buddy?” I asked, trying hard to make up for my hours of neglect. “Some tea?”

Monkey shook his head and kind of closed his eyes.

In that moment, I thought about what I had done. I had left my sick child when he needed me. Sure, I wanted my hair highlighted, but clearly some cosmic power seemed to be punishing me in a major way for my actions that morning, and I silently promised that if my li’l dude ever got sick again, I would put him first absolutely. Yes. Because he is that important to me. And I want him to know that he is loved and be the one to comfort him when he is feeling down and out.

“Mom,” Monkey said quietly, interrupting my thoughts. “Your hair looks really pretty.”

And you know what? It did. It really did.

Care to share any low parenting moments? Or just judge me in mine? It’s cool. I can take it.

As a self-admitted, ridiculously competitive parent who wants her child to know how good it can feel to work hard and win, it is my duty to report that my son competed in a fencing competition last weekend. On the strip, he fenced his butt off and did not lose a single match. As parents, my husband and I were internally beyond psyched, but externally we tried to contain ourselves.

After two hours, Monkey came over to the area where we were standing and said, “Explain how I have won every bout but I am now ranked #7?” Husband and I looked at each other and said (practically in unison), “Don’t ask us! Ask the guy with the clipboard.” So Monkey did. He marched right up to his coach who is like nine feet tall and tattooed and has a goatee and sometimes yells at kids or bonks them on their helmets for not paying attention. (It should be said, this treatment is always deserved. Elliott is an amazing coach, but he can be intimidating.)

Several adults were standing in a small cluster when Monkey barged in. From my vantage point (wedged against husband and the cola machine), I could see Monkey say something and point at the clipboard. Then I saw everyone look at the clipboard. And then I saw four horrified adult faces. I watched people erasing and nodding. Eventually, words were exchanged and Monkey came back over to us.

Apparently, an error had been made. One of the refs accidentally wrote down the wrong last name in the brackets and so Monkey’s competitor, the kid he had beaten, moved ahead of him.

When the error was brought to his attention, my son was composed. He stayed for the remainder of the competition and watched other fencers compete. He even congratulated the winners afterward.

Later in the car, Monkey was mad. It’s the first time I’d ever seen anything close to a kind of fire in my son. He said he was frustrated – really frustrated. That he had wanted to go as far as he could, and he was mad to have been prematurely stopped in his tracks. He did not have a hissy fit or cry. He understood an error had been made. He knew it was not intentional. He knew that by the time the error had been caught, it was too late, as fencers were already fencing in the semi-finals. He just kind of wished he had known about the mistake earlier.

So there were lots of lessons that day. Lessons we take through life. Monkey kept his head about him and kept his cool, despite the fact that he got a bum rap. He understood his disappointment wasn’t so much about the losing so much as it was losing the opportunity to do his best. That was the frustrating thing for him. (And I’m guessing next time, he’ll be the kid hovering around whomever is holding the clipboard.)

There were lessons for this trophy-seeking momma, too. I have to admit, my first instinct was to feel anger. I felt Monkey had been gypped. Privately, I wanted the coaches to go all the way back in the seeding to where the error was made and start over. I didn’t care if it meant another grueling two hours for the fencers; I wanted justice! I was surprised by how quickly my inner Tiger Momma wanted to pounce: claws bared, teeth clenched. I wanted apologies and a free year of private lessons. I wanted someone to publicly acknowledge my child’s amazing composure. For the love of Pete, I wanted to scream, Someone mention that you guys screwed up and my kid did not really come in 7th place!

Of course, I didn’t.

I squished these urges down, but it wasn’t easy. But I took my cue from Monkey, and I rode the tide. And just so we’re all clear, I’m not a great tide-rider. But on that day, I had to be. We all did. Because sometimes life really does just happen and — even if you have a sword — sometimes you just have to put it away and prepare to battle another day.

It’s happening.

My son is reading a piece of literature that I used to teach.

He is reading Lois Lowry’s The Giver, the story of a young boy named Jonas living in a highly controlled community some time in the future. The novel fits into a larger genre of cautionary tales called “dystopian literature.” If a utopia is a society in which everything is perfect, a dystopia is the opposite: everything has gone wrong. The novel explores Jonas’s encounter with memories of “the past,” a time when people still had the freedom of choice.

When I first taught The Giver, the book had just come out, and it was controversial. In fact, it was banned in many schools for its disturbing content and ambiguous ending, but I taught The Giver to 9th graders in an independent school, so I had a lot of freedom. The Giver explores an age-old debate: Should government let people have freedom or seek to “protect them”? Should we value individuality or the greater good? Are emotional highs and lows better than the steady middle ground?

Fast forward. My son is now in 6th grade. Oh, he can handle the language and the concepts just fine. He is a voracious reader, and he seems to understand the book thus far. I have struggled over the last weeks because, really, I want him to discover the book himself. I want him to be stunned when he learns that the main character’s father has lied to him, that it is his father’s job to kill babies. To nurture them, yes, but also to decide which one’s live and which one’s die. Jonas watches his father administer a lethal injection to an otherwise healthy infant twin because the community has decided there can be no twins. And he learns that his father will have to “release” a baby that has been living with the family because he simply cannot sleep through the night without crying.

So I will be waiting for his response.

Because right now, he thinks The Community is a pretty good place to live.

No one has to worry about money, he insists. The climate is controlled. The birth-rate is controlled. Jobs are determined by Committee Members based on careful scrutiny of children and their personality traits. Kids who like to build become engineers and kids who like to play with children become Nurturers. There are Laborers and Birth Mothers. All kinds of jobs. My Monkey likes this kind of order. It seems logical, and it appeals to him.

“Sameness eliminated fighting and wars,” Monkey said matter-of-factly. “There is no more racism.”

“True, but people can’t see or appreciate colors. Everything is kind of beige, so they can’t appreciate hot pink flowers or the blue of an ocean,” I said. “And they don’t know snow or sunshine because of climate control,” I suggest.

He shrugged his shoulders at this. He isn’t far into the book yet to know what is coming.

While he was out today, I re-read The Giver from beginning to end. And I am struck by how Orwellian Lowry’s vision is. And I am amazed by all the ways the government has slowly intruded into our lives since 1993. Post September 11, 2001, video cameras are everywhere. Everywhere we go, we are being filmed. If we purchase something, our credit card transactions are tracked in a way they weren’t before. When we go to the airport, we are made to practically strip down – and we agree to do so, in the name of the greater good; we take off our belts and shoes and put our liquid products into baggies to be searched. We have caller identification so we no longer have to answer the phone. And every prank phone call can be traced back to the place of origin. The government is more involved in public education than ever, practically dictating to teachers the curriculum that needs to be taught. Textbooks, which have been approved and distributed throughout our country to our children, are filled with hundreds of factual and grammatical errors and people do not seem to be outraged. The latest version of Huckleberry Finn has had the “n” word removed. (Sure, you can still get the alternate version, but tens of thousands of students will never even know that another version exists because it is easier to edit the language of difference.) Journalism has become entertainment, and few people read primary sources. Most people just pop onto Blackberries and iPhones and read commentary (read: secondary sources or the ideas from “specialists” telling us what to think) about everything from the food we eat to the latest shooting. I see people forgetting how to think critically. I know people who do not know much about our Constitution. They could Google United States Constitution and read about it, but most folks would rather read Status Updates on Facebook or download the latest App designed to make us forget that our country is engaged in a war.

“There is no war in Jonas’s world,” Monkey said, his chin angled up defensively.

“True,” I said, thinking to myself but there is no love either.

And I wonder how many civil liberties my child might be willing to give up if the Government told him it was for the greater good.

Not too long ago, I attended a meeting where a lot of teachers were expressing frustration about assessment. A few people were saying they felt uncomfortable giving low grades to college students, especially those who had claimed to be “A” students in high school.

What?

I am not sure how a student’s high school report card should impact his or her grades in a college level course. Twenty-five years ago, teachers worried a lot less about students’ feelings. They just read the papers they received and doled out the grades. They didn’t worry about crushing self-esteem or how a low grade would impact students’ grade point averages.

Teachers need to have a solid understanding of how to assess student work. In any class, assessment can be based on writing an individual paper, preparing a group presentation, class participation, attendance, homework problem sets, exams (essay, short answer, multiple choice, true/false), and so on. Alternatively, when a student performs a task rather than taking a test, it is called performance assessment. There are a zillion different types of performance based assessment.

To me, it’s actually really, really simple:

A range = Amazing work. And let’s be clear, amazing work is very rare. It means the reader can sit back and appreciate the writing because the author really understands how to play with language. The grader should only have to pick up a pen to draw little stars in the margins. When I read an “A” paper, I sometimes gasp audibly because “A” papers are that good. Parents may not like to hear it, but in reality, amazing work is very rare. For me, an “A” range paper earns anything above 90%.
B range = Very good: A “B” means I can tell the student has some solid skill in the subject area. There may be a few grammar errors or awkwardly phrased sentences, but — in general — the paper reads smoothly. Perhaps the meaning wasn’t as conveyed as fully as it might have been. But a “B” paper still shows evidence of a real understanding of the assignment and the material, as well as very good writing and thinking skills. For me, a B paper earns a grade somewhere between 80%-89%.

C range = Common. Back when I was in graduate school, we learned that C meant “Average” — and guess what? Most students are average. (Not your kids, of course. Your kids are gifted and talented.) But the reality is that students have to put in some kind of effort to move up from average. Students in “C” range often struggle generating a solid thesis. Their organization is hard to follow. Their grammar is choppy. They don’t spell-check their papers, or their confuse homonyms (words that sound the same but are spelled differently). Lots of people who are currently earning B’s should be getting C’s! There are other ways in which students reveal their average-ness. (That is not a word, but I think it should be.) Let’s face it, some folks are 100% silent participants: they just sit there taking in valuable oxygen, but they don’t really add to the dialogue. Now, that doesn’t mean the shy kid is going to get a “C,” but someone better make sure he participates aloud once in a blue moon. Because you simply cannot earn an “A” if you have never opened your mouth. It ain’t happenin’. People can earn C’s when they earn a low grade on a paper, are given an opportunity to revise, but they opt not to do so. That is, of course, a student’s prerogative.  A “C” basically means the student was average in the course or made average effort. It’s okay. Not everyone has to be stellar in every subject. To me, a “C” grade ranges between 70%-79%.
D range = Deficient. It is not impossible to get a “D” in college. A student may elect to skip an assignment or two. And it’s kinda hard to recover when you have a zero averaged in with very few other grades. (Just sayin’!) Students who earn D’s often have some major deficiencies in the subject matter. In English, they may not know how to structure an essay; how to generate a thesis; how to support their thesis with quotes; how to cite their quotes properly. They usually dislike (read: hate) the subject matter and engage in a lot of avoidance behaviors. They don’t read or take notes on the assigned material. They are not interested in meeting with the instructor outside of class. They do the exact minimum amount of work necessary for them to pass with the course with a D. Students who earn D’s are not struggling to complete their papers on Saturday nights. Reading “D” papers is like stumbling around in the woods at midnight without a flashlight. Slow going. The reader has to constantly stop, as errors abound. Usually dozens. Reading a “D” range paper is toe-curling. It takes forever, so these days I have set a time limit. I can get through any 3-4 page paper in under 10 minutes, if it is written well.  If I am still bumbling around after 10 minutes, I simply draw a line at the place I’ve stopped and write “D” at the top of the paper — along with the ole “See Me.” I just can’t kill myself spending 45 minutes over a paper that a student is probably just going to stuff in his bag and never look at again — even if given the opportunity to revise. Below average no matter how you slice it, either in effort or ability, a D paper ranges between a 65% and a 69%.

F = Failing. There are a lot of reasons why students fail a class at the college level (or any level, really). Sometimes a student doesn’t have the basic skills required to pass the course: plain and simple. Sometimes, a failing student has solid skills but is trying to make a statement to his or her parents: “I don’t want to be here, but you made me enroll anyway, so now I’ll just fail at everything and waste your money.” Given a little bit of freedom for the first time, sometimes students blow it. Instead of studying, they party. They come to class hungover. They sleep in class. They miss classes (so they can catch up on their sleep). While living away from parents for the first time allows the vast majority of students the freedom to thrive, some don’t.

Sometimes students have some serious interference going on in their lives. Some people are wrestling with sexual orientation; some get involved with drugs and alcohol; some good-girls go wild, some bad boys get worse. Some people experience horrible depression — they face that void which taunts them, tells them to give up on everything. Some students bring their demons to campus. Some have been sexually, emotionally or physically abused and don’t know where to turn. Some have eating disorders. Some cut themselves. It is very hard to focus on comma rules when you just found out you tested HIV positive. So real life gets in the way, yes.

I tell failing students that their failure in a course, in any given semester, at any given time does not mean that they could not succeed at another time. It just means that, at that moment in their lives, for whatever reason, it didn’t work.

For the record: It is just as hard to fail my class as it is to get an A. But I will fail people. And I will also award A’s when they are earned.

Grading is not personal.

Why do some teachers have to make it so hard?

 

Monkey has been writing a helluva a lot of book reports this year.

In an English class, a student can — of course — write a formal essay in response to a piece of literature. And they must know how to do this competently. But let’s face it: Writing five paragraph (or two paragraph or three paragraph) essays after every book, can be a real drag. And there is no reason for this when there are a skillion (yes, a skillion) other ways to evaluate a student’s comprehension that are about 100 times more engaging than any book report.

Students could create a piece of art in any medium that represents a character, situation or theme from the story; they might compose a poem or a monologue which explores a situation or character or which develops a theme from the literature; they could write a script for a scene in the story and perform it before the class, or imagine a scene that could have been in the story/play but wasn’t; they could offer an alternate ending or imagine the characters in the future. A musical student could write a song that explores a situation or a theme from the literature and sing/play it for the class. A dancer might choreograph a piece that represents a situation, character, or theme from the literature. Someone could create a diary for a character, not just chronicling the facts of plot, but the character’s emotions regarding his/her experiences. A budding historian might want to research a historical reference he or she noticed in the literature and was intrigued by. Hell, a student could bake something symbolic which links to the literature. I’ve had students bake highly symbolic (and very delicious) cookies!

With any performance based assessment, there always has to be a written explication that accompanies the more creative project in which the student explains his or her intention and explores how the project helps his or her peers understand something important about the literature. Ideally, the assessment process informs the teacher and the learner about student progress and, simultaneously, contributes to the student’s learning process.

I could go on about some student projects that I have received over the years. One of my favorites involves a student who upon completing Lord of the Flies, made a trip to the local farmer’s market and bought a whole pig’s head and recreated the scene where the terrified boys, beat and unintentionally kill their classmate, Simon, and then put a pig’s head on the stick.

I still have the video (which I’ve had switched over to DVD) and I still watch it. And that kid makes movies now.

I know that No Child Left Behind supports “standards-based education”and is based on the belief that setting high standards and establishing measurable goals can improve individual outcomes in education. The Act requires states to develop assessments in basic skills to be given to all students in certain grades, if those states are to receive federal funding for schools.

So I get it. My school district clearly wants our kids to pass the standardized test.

They want a slice of the pie.

But our kids are dying of boredom.

So please, for this mother.

No. More. Book. Reports.