voices for children

i am listening to the president of a national children's advocacy group, voices for america's children, on npr. check out the website if you have a minute. in all the national debates about the future--the economy, employment, climate change, abortion, taxes, very little time is being spent talking about children. why? the cynical answer is that kids don't have lobbyists. so sad. more people need to get angry about what is happening on the backs of kids, especially poor kids.

more whining, actually ranting

all right, since i just whined in that last post i will do it again.

rats are ruining my little urban garden! neighbors are saying that when they started the huge hospital rebuild next door a lot of rats lost their homes and moved to the surrounding blocks. it may not be much but tending to my garden is something i really enjoy. lately seeds have not been growing,and then we saw a rat, and then another, and then i realized the rats were taking the seeds. on another gardener's advice i planted some seeds up on my deck in egg cartons and the first night the seeds were taken and the egg carton ripped up. then last night something chewed all the leaves off my prize collard greens tree (grown from a clipping a gardener in the richmond community garden gave me two years ago). i know they are just little creatures trying to survive but BOO ON RATS. now everything i pick will feel just a little less fresh and healthy and a little more contaminated by rat feet. it just makes me want to go have a drink and listen to some metal music in a loud bar. AAAAHHHHHHH!!!! how dare those rats mess with my little vegetable paradise? and how are we going to get rid of them??

Off Balance

I need an administrative assistant. I really do. Because I am paid for 18 hours per week of work. And I spend exactly 18 hours per week providing direct therapy for my students. That leaves another 4-5 hours minimum per week of unpaid work--this is called caseload management. Some of it is good stuff--writing progress reports and new goals, sharing strategies and education with caregivers, coordinating with other members of the student's IEP team. Oh yeah, and planning lessons and therapy. And taking data on progress. And creating therapy materials. And cleaning play dough off the rug.

Some of it is not so good stuff, like completing time surveys and submitting them online. Completing a very lengthy developmental profile for each student twice a year which goes into some central repository and the parent never reads. Right now we have switched to a new online IEP system. To get started ( and yes I am doing this at home in bed because I only have zero paid minutes per week to do this stuff at my actual work site) "all students need to be verified and SEIS records need to be initiated. All service providers need to verify their student caseloads and confirm their students' services, and case managers need to Affirm and Attest each student in SEIS to validate this information." THERE IS A 27 PAGE MANUAL EXPLAINING THIS PROCESS. Excited yet? This is work--entering all this information is work, but it is not really the work I am being paid to do. Why am I doing it? Because the state and federal governments are asking educators to provide more and more and more documentation that progress is being made, and there is no one to provide the documentation except the people providing the services. Kind of crazy.

I am sure you have heard this rant from folks working in the schools before, but it is just feeling so crystal clear to me lately. Next week I have a small space in the morning when I would love to go observe one of my students at his other preschool. This would be the best use of my time and I could brainstorm with his teachers there about intervention strategies. It would be a good bang for the buck for our poor strapped education system. Instead I will be feverishly affirming and attesting the pile of IEPS I have.

The world of private speech and language therapists looks mighty attractive during stretches like this, when I am just exhausted by the hurricane of kids and families and PAPERWORK. I just have to keep remembering that I like the real work that I do...but I like it a lot better when I have time to do it.

I know there is a reason for documentation and measurable goals and online data systems, but there is a point when the pros outweigh the cons. I see it at my work, I see it at my kids school where testing and standards are not always the road to best practices and deep learning. We need some balance in this system.

pitchfork

maya's plan after reading crictor:

if a burglar comes in our house i will just grab my pitchfork and run down the hall right at him and stick him and then i will carry the pitchfork down the stairs with the burglar on it like a flag and then go outside and call 911. and i'll tell the police to give me back the pitchfork for the other ones (burglars).

i feel safer now.

all i ever needed to know i learned in a percy jackson book

home again. it is a day of sudden weather changes, gusts of wind, hard rain, bright sun in a cloudy sky. miles seemed really sick this morning, coughing and hacking after a weekend of marching in the chinese new year parade, playing soccer, playing futsal, but is now dancing around singing "it's a hard butt life" to the tune of hard knock life. now he is surfing on a little rocking chair eating chocolate pudding and grinning ear to ear lip syncing to dynamite and singing "i stick my hands up in the poo sometimes." oh, ho ho, the potty jokes so funny i just can't stand it. really. why didn't i send this kid to school?

i just ate a delicious home grown lunch of a radish sandwich (sliced radish on wheat bread with butter) and a big bowl of radish greens and arugula. the garden continues to surprise me. it kind of does its own thing at this point, although i am sure it could use some more help from me. many of the greens have reseeded, and surprises like big red radishes just kind of pop out some days. sorrel, arugula, broccoli raab, radishes, slowly rounding blueberries, tall green onions,a lone lemon on a small tree. the fruit trees are blossoming, confused by this weather. i don't have much to do with any of it but i love going out back and coming back in with some food.

miles and i watched "pelada" today, a documentary made by two soccer players who traveled around the world filming pick up games and meeting players. i tried to tie in a little geography and explain some of the different cultures, but miles aptly summarized the film as "if you miss something just keep on doing it to enjoy it. or if you miss it keep on doing it. if you quit start again." which is really what the movie was about--the film makers were both players who were very good, but never made it to the pros, and in the end were joyfully playing pick up games in a park as an enrichment to the rest of their lives, like the folks they found playing pick up games around the globe for the pure enjoyment. one child described first seeing a soccer ball and finding it "beautiful".

anyway, the title here refers to the rick riordan books which miles has been reading pretty relentlessly. he is learning about greek myths in detail from them. somehow this is tied in to the rest of this sick day post, and the rest of our lives...how? i am not sure, but you do have to keep doing what you enjoy....reading, writing, studying our goofy kids, sports, marching in a spectacle, pulling backyard greens for lunch. everything doesn't need to be complicated.

my mandarin language learners and empathy

my kids are in a dual immersion program, mandarin and english. when my son started most of the families spoke only english, and the kids were all learning mandarin together. in the past few years things have shifted, and there are more and more families with children who speak mandarin. in many ways this is wonderful, and the newer groups of kids are closer to the language mix the program is designed to serve. at least a third of my kindergartener's class speaks mandarin fluently, and i think she is learning more from her classmates than my third grader did. we have met so many great families in all the grades.

the ugly side of this is that now kids like my kids are viewed in a negative light by some parents at the school. just a few, but the viewpoint is out there and it hurts. some of these parents may not be aware that they are thinking this way. but kids like my kids (Mandarin Language Learners, or MLLs) are considered to be slowing things down for the kids who are already fluent in mandarin. "diluting the quality of the program" is a phrase i heard about english-speaking families who don't pursue tutoring outside of school for their kids. it is just a few people, but knowing that anyone at a school does not think your kid really belongs is troublesome. it is a public school! it is designed as a dual immersion program!

i remember when we looked for schools many in-search-of-kindergarten parents (including myself) would say they didn't want a certain school because there were too many english language learners (ELLs). it was assumed that the kindergarten classes full of these ELLs would go at a slower pace, and there would only be a focus on "the basics"--not good enough for our kids who already spoke english and knew oh so much. there was also the feeling that kindergartens with too many poor kids who had not attended preschool would not be interesting and challenging for our middle class kids.

now i am on the other side of that equation. is my creative and wonderful daughter who is just starting to learn a new language at school hindering the progress of her classmates who are already bilingual? is my funny and athletic son who reads like a fiend, always does his homework and particpates eagerly in chinese language arts bringing others down? and what about me and my husband? we can't teach our kids anything in mandarin, and although we make sure they do their homework we can't really talk about it. i suggest chinese books from the library but since i can't read them the kids want the ones in english. so what do we do to support their progress in learning mandarin at school? so far the most consistent activity we have done at home is to let the kids watch mandarin videos.

just kind of interesting. i had not thought that enrolling my kids in mandarin immersion would create more understanding in me for those ELL kids who are subtly judged and criticized for being behind in their english language acquisition. i hadn't thought i would feel more empathy for those families who for whatever reason can not provide much academic support at home--but i do. what is the point of thinking a kid or family doesn't belong? it doesn't feel good to know your kid is not wanted somewhere, especially when you consider them to be thriving.

we are moving towards more inclusive practices in special education in this district as well, and all these issues come together--in a public school, and in public society, all kids belong, and all teachers need support so they can serve all our kids as best they can.

catch-up post

it's a gray monday morning and i am off work doing laundry, dishes, sorting out mounds of kid artwork (maya has been drawing lots of lovely ladies and decorated wine glasses), and listening to NPR stories about oil in nigeria and how private equity is destroying our economy.

hard to know what to write about when there is so much to say. i just came from the school where there was a presentation by the kids who will be marching in the chinese new year parade. i liked watching a very cool fifth grade boy help button a third graders jacket and watched my little boy running as part of the dragon, which looks smaller each year as the kids grow bigger. when they announced students of the week lots of people cheered when a little boy who spent the first months of kindergarten being sent to the office and sent home was named student of the week for his class. his smile was huge in his little round face. a parent who will be helping with the parade this weekend confided her fear about being near the school at night, which is sad but honest, as there has been lots of violence in the neighborhood near the school recently. it is hard to reconcile the facts of these bright little kids running around on the playground with the crime and gun violence happening so close to some of their houses.

i have been part of a group interviewing garden coordinators to work at the school and hope that all the efforts of adults--to engage kids with sports, nature, reading, parades,music, art, good nutrition (while struggling through their own lives as teachers, parents and learners) will somehow fortify the kids to steer away from a future of more crime and violence--of the white collar type, the blue collar type, the gun type, the emotional type, the throw your garbage out the bus window type, the ridicule others type, you get the idea. it is hard for all people to do the right thing, don't think i am making judgments here. i know i am not so great at it.

i felt a flash of anger this morning seeing a photo in national geographic kids of michelle obama exercising with a bunch of kids on the lawn of the white house. it bugs me that our president's kids are in private school. it just does.

see, you never know where these rambling posts will lead. the sun just came out. on the couch next to me is a tattered copy of "after the quake" by haruki murakami. what a beautiful book, i encourage you all to read it, a group of stories written about characters in japan dealing in different ways with the facts of their lives after their country is shaken hard.