more creeping normalcy

(maya's photo of trees at potrero rec center)

i was at my kids' school this morning. we seem to spend quite a few weekend hours up there. it is a beautiful spot, and walking distance away. the school is perched on top of a hill with views all the way across the bay on one side, and across the city to twin peaks on the other. some days we go up there to water trees, or weed the garden. there are monthly work days where parents clean, scrape, paint, and build shelves. this morning a bunch of dads were working on a project with ladders and tools and extension cords and a few of us moms were up there to talk to the principal. the moms were there to brainstorm with the principal about the best way to find and hire a new kindergarten teacher because it is VERY hard to find teachers for the mandarin program. miles and the other kids rode bikes around the playground and hit balls against the wall in the fresh november air.

after the meeting i went to office depot. i am being moved from the school site and program i have loved and helped develop for five years. i am being moved due to the bottom line. the district needs the same number of speech and language pathologists to serve an increasing number of kids for the same amount of money. i just threw down quite a bit of cash at amazon for materials for my new site. at office depot i paid for color copies of all the picture communication boards and visual supports i have made for my classes over the years. i have to leave the materials i have made behind and my last day is tuesday. i am going to have to buy a laminator for my house as i don't feel comfortable going to a new site and asking them for funds for copying and laminating when i will be serving walk-in preschool kids from the community who don't even attend the school. basically i am being placed at a site and asked to provide therapy and materials for students with a budget of $0 to do so.

so, this is the new deal for me. less money to work with more students. kids at a school which is increasingly dependent on parent resources and support. everything is trickling down and interrelated in my little microcosm. i am identifying more and more with the talk about aftershocks and the 99%.

i really do believe there is enough to go around, and i have no problem having a little less money and spending time and cash nurturing my kids' school and my students. it just won't work unless we can all do the same, though.

cuddled in the bed in the dark with my two kids. we are watching movies with the excuse that one of them is sick. it's quite nice. i love these little people and will do everything i can for them.

insider's visual representation of mandarin immersion kindergarten math

it has something to do with the number concept "10". not sure what else to say about this one!

3 birthday parties

life here is almost too full and varied. just popping at the seams with interactions with all kinds of nouns.

saturday after dance class the kids and and i went to a birthday celebration and memorial for the brother of one of miles' classmates. he was shot and killed five years ago, and part of the idea behind the celebration was that we need to heal and love ourselves first in order to become a more peaceful community. the other big part was about creating unity. we arrived at the park in the bayview and people were milling around the rec center, but soon there was a call for everyone to hold hands in a circle. brother clint poured libations and said the word "ashay" each time he poured the water and mentioned brave people who had died. he asked us all to think of people who had died. then a young boy poured the water into some earth under big trees. a healer came and led us all in an exercise where we repeated her words about loving and taking care of ourselves. then the family released balloons and shouted happy birthday to their child who had been killed. much food was cooked and there was a storyteller as well, telling african folktales. it was a pretty amazing display of positivity. later maya joined in painting a mural with miles' classmate. this event has been held every year since the murder.

this morning miles went to a birthday party in the marina and maya and i waited while he celebrated his friend's birthday by bouncing on trampolines and playing dodgeball. as we watched all the tourists and kids riding expensive bikes and adults walking briskly with purebred dogs i felt a million miles away from where we had been the day before. we sat in the sand and watched a blimp move surprisingly quickly across the sky as we made a little sand and stone village. later we went to yet another birthday party in brisbane for an old friend's little boy, just a normal kind of park and a mix of brisbanians hitting pinatas and jumping in jumpy castles.

living here is sometimes not very grounding. time seems to pass so quickly when we can move worlds away by driving across the city.

i guess i should mention that adding the this feeling of being in many worlds last night was the monthly mom's night and we were out pretty late at el rio, watching bands rock hard until way after bedtime. the bands felt close to my age, one all ladies with a stripper who was almost bare, one a mexican punk rock band with close to a cult following shouting along, and another a devo-type band, the phenomenauts, super silly and awesome. at the end of the night i found myself talking to a young guy who had just come back from the military, where he had been for five years since he turned 17. he seemed pretty lost.

tonight at story time maya picked a book about two friends who are separated into different classes when they go to first grade, and a book about martin luther king. after we read both she got the first grade book and found a picture of the two friends holding hands and said "it's like in this book, she is white, and she is black, and they are like BEST FRIENDS!" which may sound trite as you read it but which seemed perfect coming out of my five-year-old's mouth tonight.

more feathered friends, please excuse the rant

it really must mean something, how many of these posts end up related to birds. hmm, any ideas?

this has been a hard week as the reality has sunk in that i am being moved from a school site i have actually looked forward to most mornings for the last five years to a big unknown. not only will i miss specific kids, parents, and staff, i will miss the lovely location of the EES where i have been working, and i will REALLY miss the service delivery model, which was pretty much just playing with kids, singing and reading to kids, and helping them communicate along the way. waah, i will miss it. i will be going into a more clinical model, but i will wait to write more about that when i have more of an idea of what it will be like.

i do know this is an excuse to spend money i absolutely do not have on fun new preschool games and activities. hello, credit card.

i guess what is unsettling is the fact that i have worked in a field in one school district for eleven years and no one who is in charge of my fate (assigning me to kids and schools) has any idea what, if anything, i am good at. i admit, i have started to feel like i know what i am doing with a pretty specific population and service delivery model, but poof, i am being placed elsewhere, a little tiny part of a big machine which is basically just responsible for shifting people around so that there are enough therapists at enough schools to cover enough minutes of time and enough assessments with enough kids. so, i might have felt pleased with my work as i watched good things happen with my students, but the district does not look at my experience as meaningful, in the sense that it should be added to the district's supposed goal of improving outcomes for kids. no one is evaluating the work that is being done. sure, i have had evaluations but they don't go anywhere or mean anything. since things have been going well for the kids at my site it seems i would be continuing on or developing/helping improve upon the model within which i have been working (i had some fantasies about doing this kind of "bigger picture" work), but this does not even get considered. by anyone. except me.

teachers out there, you know what i am talking about, right? i will see how the new assignment goes, but deep down i am becoming more disassociated and less caring about the big picture. i still care about my students, and always will. but what can all my ideas about best practice come to when there is a bottom line so much more powerful that any person's experience or expertise? i think maybe hearing so much news about moving backward in so many ways in the bigger world due to money woes (republicans, i am talking about you) is making this seem harder. can't we be moving forward and enlightened anywhere?

sorry about that rant. i am sure it will be all right. at least i have a job, and maybe change will keep me on my toes. the world will be fine and occupy sf will rise up and we will all become happy socialists and there will be peace. the kids will start behaving themselves and brush their teeth vigorously twice a day without reminders. little caterpillars will stop eating all my backyard vegetables.

we visited a new friend of maya's from kindergarten today. they live high on a hill overlooking the green swoops of mclaren park, with a backyard that included "the back 40"--trees for climbing, two swings, a chicken coop with a little chimney, and honey bee boxes. ok, i am incredibly jealous, but we do have lots of wonderful culture and food around here, which you can check out while you scrape the garbage off your shoe. it was a sweet visit and miles and i even got in exactly 40 minutes of mommy vs. son soccer time on a big drizzly field.

here are the kids with the adorable chicks, and maya's lovely rendition of a girl turkey.

my saturday, i mean sunday

hi,my name is miles millman and i am guest blogging on my mom's email for my first time ever ! i had just gotten into a cool comic called ''the prince of tennis'' because i had just started playing tennis again because i had found my old tennis racket in an old box in my mom and dad's room . for some reason i thought that i should start playing tennis.

and for the whole day i was basically playing tennis. at first i went to a birthday party and i thought it was so boring that i was going to die because the only reason i came there was to eat pizza and cake. it turned out there was only cupcakes and we also had to wait an hour to get the pizza.

and then later on i had to wait at home and do nothing except read the prince of tennis while waiting for my dad to come and take me to the park to play tennis with my friend named jed who also played tennis like me. then it turned out that we played my dad and jed's dad instead of me playing my friend jed. the rest of the day i have been typing this email for half an hour and right now i am saying the words you are reading right now and my sister and mother are laying in the bed and are trying to go to sleep but they cannot because i am talking to them right now for them to give me ideas. that is the end of my day so far, so bye i will talk to you on my mother's blog some other day. bye.

p.s. i am not spoiled rotton i just sound like i am

inclusion drama group

i was asked for permission to have my son participate in a inclusion drama group run by a mental health specialist at his school. my first question was--is miles having problems at school that i don't know about? less than a year ago he was having anxiety problems and near panic attacks about not getting picked up on time from his after school program. remember that? i sure do. no, he was chosen as an open-minded peer model for a group that will have a few kids from general education/mandarin immersion and a few kids from the special day class.

yes! interesting that my son and i will be doing some of the same work/play--getting kids with and without autism or related disabilities together at school to play. i asked him about it and he just said he got picked to be a "good role model". if only he could be one of those for his sister at home...

i am all for a curriculum of creativity, peace,tolerance and inclusion at school--if this generation of school-kids doesn't start to get it right then we really are in big trouble, all too-many-billion of us...

2011 day of the dead

my camera battery died for day of the dead (right?!), so i only have these two to offer from halloween.

halloween was halloween. i felt proud of my son because he wanted to be a "big fat chicken" and was comfortable in his very homemade costume. the yellow rubber gloves pulled over his shoes for chicken feet were my favorite, but he was most pleased with the fat aspect of his costume, a pillow stuffed in front and back which got a lot of friendly punches and attention. maya had the brilliant idea to be a toilet with a remote control skunk popping out, but we just couldn't put it together over the weekend, so she was a witch. we met our friends on potrero hill, saw some great decorations, and scored lots of candy. the kids were ready to go home after an hour--it has been a busy few weeks.

tonight i went out alone to garfield park to check out the day of the dead celebration and altars. once again i fell into a peaceful and somewhat awed state. every year the altars are more beautiful and elaborate. some are pure family, with grandmas and cousins, missed fathers and mothers. some are for the community, with various places to write messages to and thoughts about dead friends and family. people with beautifully painted skeleton faces walk throughout the crowd. there was a heavy metal altar. a skateboard altar. probably my favorite was an altar with information about the tribes of what is now called california--how most are gone, but some members live on. there was a tree in the middle of four converging paths. each path (north, south, east, west) represented something different, such as illumination of the mind, facing the darkness. you took a handful of cornmeal and walked to the center from the direction you chose, placed the cornmeal under the tree. incense is in the air. most people are talking and some are laughing, a few look sad. lots of marigolds and the smell of weed too. many little candles. all kinds of san francisco people are here, definitely many folks younger than me. a sorrowful sounding brass band walks by. a man is breaking the rules and selling ice cold beer from his cooler on wheels but that's ok.

halloween was a little unsettling because i can't help but notice every year how my kids are getting bigger and bigger. each halloween reminds me that this holiday will be limited--that all too soon my babies will not want me with them on halloween night. day of the dead feels more calming and grounding to me. somehow knowing that there will be people out celebrating us when we are gone, with a photo, a scrawled message on a piece of paper hanging in the air, or an elaborate altar with candles and art and sculpture is comforting. i can hear the sounds right now from my house, a bunch of drums playing together, over the waves of traffic noise, people pounding on their drums. i know there is a throng of people still out there, one man playing kool and the gang through a speaker, others holding hands and missing someone, most just enjoying being alive.