Half Changed World

D got his first report card, or "interim progress report" today.  All Ps, for "progressing in understanding" or something like that.  The skills measured are things like letter recognition, being able to hold a book the right way, understanding the difference between capital and lower-case letters.  In math, they’re focusing on pattern recognition and counting tangible objects.

The school has decided to hire an additional kindergarten teacher and have 3 classes instead of 2.  The good news is that this means there will be about 14 kids in each classroom, with a teacher and a full-time aide.  The bad news is that D is one of the kids who will be switching classes, and the new teacher is a total unknown.  I’m trying not to twitch too much about it, particularly since D seems quite undisturbed.  (The long NYTimes article about The Blessing of a Skinned Knee cites Mogel’s suggestion that parents "spend no more than 20 minutes a day ‘thinking about your child’s education or worrying about your child, period.’"  It seems like a reasonable goal.)

Overall, the person having the roughest time right now in the family is N.  He adores preschool, and has pretty much potty trained himself in the 3 weeks since it started.  But it runs until 1 pm, and D’s school lets out at 2.35, and that pretty much kills his nap on preschool days.  Yesterday he was so tired by the time I got home that he couldn’t stop crying enough to tell me what he wanted.  (D eventually figured out that he wanted to wear shin guards, for no obvious reason.)

How’s school going for everyone else?

Sorry, didn’t mean to leave you hanging.  No, we didn’t all fit into our dining room, not all at once.  But we borrowed a children’s picnic bench from friends, and set it up in the living room, so all was well.

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I’ve been trying to run in the mornings a few times a week.  I need to be out the door for my run by a few minutes after 6 in order to be back, showered, dressed, and ready to go in time to get D to school by 8.  This time of year, that means I’m heading out into the dark, with the sun coming up while I run.  I often linger over my stretches to watch the sun rise over the river.  It makes up for the pain of having to get out of bed so darn early (o’dark hundred, as one of my buddies used to call it).  The past few weeks, the moon has also been visible on most of my runs.  I’ve watched it fade into a sliver as the new moon approached.

As Rachel (the Velveteen Rabbi) noted, by a convergence of the lunar and solar cycles, this weekend was Rosh Hashana, the start of Ramandan, and the fall solstice.  Both the Jewish and the Moslem calendars go by moon cycles, but the Jewish calendar inserts "leap months" in order to keep the holidays roughly aligned with the seasons, so that Passover is always in the spring and Sukkot always in the fall.  The Moslem calendar does not make such adjustments, so Ramadan can land in any season.  And they’ll align with the solstice only when it happens to fall on a new moon.

Andrea, at Beanie Baby, is Wiccan, so she celebrated the solstice, or Mabon.  She wrote recently about her relationship with the annual cycle:

I seem to make this annual journey. Down into the underworld for six months of introspection and quiet and inaction. Up into the real world for six months of activity and learning and noise. Pull inward, push outward, pull inward, push outward, and all the while I feel like things are starting to come together, making sense, like it all fits.

For me, the fall has always felt like a time of new beginnings, of fresh starts.  In part because of Rosh Hashonah, but more because that’s when school starts.  And yes, I’m stuck on that cycle, even though it’s been 10 years since I last attended school on a full-time basis.  (My husband laughed this fall at how excited I was to buy D’s school supplies.)  Summer is for lolling around and living in the moment; fall is for making plans.

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That said, I think I am going to take some time to turn inward for a bit. I don’t have a physical retreat to go to like Jo(e)’s, but I’ll do what I can to find some quiet.  I’ll be back after Yom Kippur.

May your year be both good and sweet.

(Tune in tomorrow to find out whether 7 adults and 6 kids can really fit into my dining room for Rosh Hashanah lunch.)

Today’s book is Debunking the Middle-Class Myth: Why Diverse Schools Are Good for All Kids, by Eileen Gale Kugler.  It was recommended to me by a reader of this blog. Kugler is a parent whose children attended Annandale HS in Fairfax, one of the most diverse schools in the country, and she one by one she knocks down the myths that make parents fearful of sending their kids to such schools (e.g. the best schools are those with the highest test scores, diverse schools aren’t safe, etc).

I agree with most of Kugler’s overall points, especially her argument that that many of the people who are the quickest to dismiss diverse schools are the ones who haven’t set foot in them.  But I can’t say that I feel particularly more encouraged about our local elementary school after reading the book.  First, I’m not sure that it counts as diverse by Kulger’s standards, as it’s about 80 percent one race.  Second, Kugler is careful to say that "well-run" diverse schools can provide an excellent education to all students, and I’m not sure that our school qualifies as well-run.  (This isn’t a knock on the new principal, just on the lack of continuity.)

Overall, the major problem with the book is that I’m not sure who the audience for it is.  I have trouble imagining anyone reading it who isn’t already convinced of the value of diversity.  And the chapters on what school board members, superintendents, principals, teachers and parents can do are pretty simplistic.

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Oh, yes, D did start kindergarten today. We did manage to get out the door on time (and I even made pancakes.)  His teacher is an older man with a ponytail who talks to the children in a very soft voice.   D was annoyed that it was pouring this morning when we walked him over, but was happy to sit down in the classroom and say goodbye to us.  In the afternoon, he didn’t tell us much about what they did today, but didn’t have any complaints.  (When I noticed that he had only eaten one of the two cookies I packed in his lunch box, and asked him why, he explained that by the time he finished his sandwich and the first cookie, it was nap time, but he didn’t seem particularly upset about it.)  In his backpack, we found a stack of forms to fill out and return (and yet another version of the supply list).  So far, so good, I guess.

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I just read Sandra Tsing-Loh’s interview on the Atlantic online, which includes this wonderful quote illustrating Kugler’s point:

"I found that once we actually got to public school, everything I’d been told about it was wrong. That’s because we’ve gotten to the point now where in my social class—the media class in big cities—not one person I know professionally sends his or her kids to public school. So nobody actually knows what it’s like anymore. So they’re telling each other about a land, like the North Pole, which no one has set foot in."

I’d love to hear anyone in LA’s reaction to her "Scandalously Informal Guide to Los Angeles Schools."

I did my first triathalon today, and I achievd all four of my goals.  I’m tired (had to get up at 5 in the morning), but don’t feel too bad overall — I have a feeling I may have trouble going down stairs in the morning though.

Someone asked me today what’s the appeal of doing a triathalon.  I have two answers, which are both true, although the balance between them varies:

• Signing up for a race is a commitment device, a way of forcing myself to prioritize getting to the gym to swim or out on my bike for a ride.  Without a goal, it’s too easy to say "not today, I’m too tired to get up early," or "not today, it’s too hot out."  Once I get out the door, I generally enjoy it, but getting out the door often requires a kick in the pants.  Meeting someone for a workout is also a good commitment device, if you can find someone whose schedule and fitness level meshes well with yours.
• Part of the appeal is precisely the fact that I wasn’t sure I could finish the race, that even lining up this morning terrified me.  I like pushing my limits, doing things that I’m not sure I can do, overcoming my fears. It makes me feel brave, and alive.  This morning I was walking around the set-up area saying to my friend "What am I doing here?  What ever made me think this was a good idea?" and I realized that what I was really saying was "Aren’t I brave for even trying to do this?  Isn’t this exciting?"

D’s been off his asthma medications for a couple of months.  He hasn’t had a real attack since the first one, in February 2005.  Last winter, we treated every cough as if it might be asthma-related.  He’s been totally symptom free since the spring, and his pediatrician agreed that we might as well see how he did without the steroids.  There’s pretty good evidence that long-term use of inhaled steroids retards growth slightly, and lord knows that he could use the extra inches.

He’s got a cold, and a little bit of a cough.  School’s about to start, and I’ve read the study showing the dramatic peak in attacks among school-age kids in September and October.  The doctors quoted in that article argue forcefully that asthma should be treated as a chronic, not episodic disease.  But a lot of kids also grow out of asthma.  No one’s been able to give me an answer as to how to find out of he’s outgrown it other than keeping him off the meds and seeing what happens.

T was out of town for a long weekend, and I didn’t want to use up vacation days just to sit around at home, so the boys and I went up the road to Baltimore overnight.  We had a good trip, including visits to Port Discovery, the Aquarium, a real submarine, and a high school friend of mine.  So when I asked the boys what their favorite parts of the trip were, D’s immediate answer was getting to go to TWO different McDonald’s.  Great.  At least N’s pick was the dolphin show.

The two McDonald’s were a study in contrasts.  One was the shiny one that’s attached to the atrium of Port Discovery, the other a somewhat rundown one in downtown Baltimore.  We got happy meals at both places, having surrendered to the cult of the cheap plastic toys. The current boxes have PollyWorld on two sides, Hummers on two.  At the shiny McDonald’s, the boys got toy Hummers in them.  I assume that there’s also a Polly toy, but we weren’t offered that option.  (Please tell me that there weren’t gendered versions of the Pirates of the Carribean and Cars toys we’ve previously received.)  At the rundown one, the boxes were the same, but the boys got a Lightning McQueen and some weird rocket-propelled dragon.  I have absolutely no idea what that’s a tie-in to.  But at the shiny one we were charged separately for the chocolate milk, while at the run-down one, they included it with the happy meals, and threw in free ice cream as a bonus.

I hate going to McDonald’s twice in two days, but I’m just not up to taking the boys to a real restaurant by myself.  I have to spend too much energy keeping them sitting and quiet, and they’re probably going to wind up ordering chicken fingers anyway.  I brought string cheese, crackers, yogurt, and muffins with us, which covered breakfast and snacks.  Away from home, on my own, just isn’t the right time to draw a line in the sand on the nutrition battlefront.  (And yes, it often feels like a battlefront.)  And I’m willing to eat their salads, which is precisely why McDonald’s sells them — it makes fast food an acceptable fallback for people for me.

The friend I visited has a 2 1/4 year old.  They’re pretty crunchy — cloth diapers, a hybrid car, and the kid has only had ice cream twice in his life.  I felt sort of bad bringing my kids with their love of sweets and Happy Meals toys into their house.   At least their son is young enough that I don’t think he quite understood what my guys were so excited about.

I’ve been reading Charlotte’s Web to D at bedtime, a chapter most nights.  I insisted on reading it, in spite of his only moderate interest, because when we saw Cars a month or so ago, I saw the preview for the new movie of Charlotte’s Web coming out this fall.  I really wanted his first experience of the story to be the book, not a movie.  It’s not as much of a hit with him as Captain Underpants, but he’s willing to listen, especially since it gets me sitting in his room reading for much longer than our usual picture books. 

Today we reached the penultimate chapter of the book, Last Day.  I should have realized in advance that I wouldn’t be able to make it through the last paragraph without crying.  I’m hopeless that way.

"She never moved again.  Next day, as the Ferris wheel was being taken apart and the race horses were being loaded into vans and the entertainers were packing up their belongings and driving away in their trailers, Charlotte died.  The Fair Grounds were soon deserted.  The sheds and buildings were empty and forlorn.  The infield was littered with bottles and trash.  Nobody, of the hundreds of people that had visited the Fair, knew that a grey spider had played the most important part of all.  No one was with her when she died."

Both boys were pretty perplexed by my crying.  N (who I don’t think has really been following the story, although he likes to look at the drawings) didn’t get it even when I explained that I was sad that Charlotte died, because she was a good friend to Wilbur.  Daniel started crying a few minutes later.

As regular readers of this blog know, I’m not entirely sanguine about our choice to send D to the local elementary school.  It didn’t help my confidence when I got an email last week telling me that both the principal and vice-principal of the school were leaving.  This means that the school will have its 5th new principal in 6 years.  Not an encouraging sign.

I spent a couple of days freaking out a bit, emailing the local school board members and trying to figure out whether it was too late to get D into a different public school, or even a private school.  I’ve more or less calmed down now.  The article in the local paper suggests that the principal was reassigned, rather than quit.  Still worrisome, but quite so disturbing.  And I’m hearing generally good things about the new principal. 

Next week is the start of "k-prep", the city’s two-week optional kindergarten orientation program.  And just a few weeks later, school starts for real.  Wow.

Blogging feels like work tonight, not fun, so I’m not going to do it.  I’ll be back.