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We think of fireplaces, Thanksgiving, something from childhood.

After two nights in NICU, I will always think of it as a Miracle.

The Military vs Education

The soldier in the field merely obeys orders, so when someone suggests that teachers "police their own," what that person fails to realize is that, to match the military, this would have to be done from the top down—not on a peer level. To that end, administrators would be "policing" teachers (as they already do), getting rid of all the bad apples and, as per the speaker's wishes, rewarding the good ones.

First of all, this already happens. Teachers who are deemed to be failing are put on improvement plans, have contracts that do not renew, or are given the dregs of the student body, the worst classrooms, terrible schedules. Occasionally, they are even fired. The good ones are rewarded with more planning periods, higher pay and stipends, better students, and smaller class sizes. The problem? The process is political, as with many things. There are good and bad teachers who get "rewarded." There are good and bad teachers stuck in the "dungeon" with the large class sizes and poor ventilation.

We haven't managed to fix the political system, so I'm not sure how we're supposed to use political power to fix the politics that go on in the education system, but—let's try it anyway! The ideas floating around now involve monetary rewards for high-performing teachers (and schools) and consequences for the "failing" ones.

I'd like to think about how that would play out in the military. Imagine the soldier who is paid based on the number of bad guys he shoots. Doesn't really seem like a good measure of success, does it?

But since teachers can't shoot their students, this isn't a fair comparison. Students aren't even the enemy, someone will point out. Of course, not everyone who gets killed in a military conflict is the enemy, either, but I digress. The "bad guys" are the OBJECT of the soldier's work as students are the OBJECT of the teacher's work. Teachers aren't allowed to defend themselves on any level, or they're out of a job.

So imagine soldiers being sent into a war without equipment, and the measure of their success is how much they change the hearts and minds of the opposition they encounter. Based on THAT, their pay, performance, and job stability are determined.

It's actually a good idea, if you think about it. A Ghandi-vision of world peace.

On Giftedness

I have a secret passion for gifted studies. I’ve always been fascinated by the brain and education, but standing in a Barnes & Noble one day about ten years ago, waiting for my husband who was about to meet me for lunch, I found a coffee table book about giftedness. Having grown up in gifted programs, I’ve always been drawn to books on giftedness, as if it’s evidence of a secret club I once belonged to as a kid. You see, gifted programs end with high school, sometimes before, like the tree houses that say, “No girls allowed.” So evidence that it really did exist—this haven where there were others like me—is nostalgic. It’s nice.

But what I read in that coffee table book—hardly a deep analysis of giftedness—has changed my life. I knew that giftedness meant that I went to a special class like the special needs kids. I knew I went because I was smart in some kind of off-kilter way: I’d started school early and was always bored, but I was hardly the highest achiever in the class.

Beyond that, no one ever told me what it meant, this “gift.” We did logic puzzles once a week and extra work when we got back to the classroom. I loved it because it was a place I felt understood, and so it was worth the extra work, but other kids thought we were crazy to volunteer for such torture.

The book I skimmed at Barnes & Noble that day brought me to tears. On every page, it described every failure of my life in acute detail, as if it were an art book instead of a brag book for parents. This book knew already that it would take me seven years to finish my BA after transferring back and forth between nine schools and more majors than I can count. Instead of calling me a quitter, as my college guidance counselor did, it said I could do anything and was interested in everything. The book made it sound not so bad.

It described the way I would approach projects—with the vision and gusto of a person with clinical OCD—as if it had been there when I tried to paint the 8’x12’ mural of a street scene in France onto fabric for curtains for a closet in a single day, when I tried to build a life-size model of the Eiffel tower for an informational booth at church, when I decided my first sewing project would be an evening gown for a Christmas party the week of Calculus finals when I was nine months pregnant with my first baby.

And then it described the late nights and tears when my grand visions were realized for what they were: more failures, more lofty dreams. Dresses hemmed in duct tape, informational booths that everyone passes by, unfinished curtains and carpet stained in blue paint.

This book had seen inside my closet, too—all the unfinished projects, all the hobbies I have to maintain to keep the world more interesting. It knew that the world moved too slowly for me, that I hurt people with my impatience. But the book forgave me, because it knew that I was impatient with myself most of all.

The book knew that what I experience on the inside looks more like bipolar disorder than any kind of “gift”—there are the days when I can do anything, when I believe in my writing and my art and the education I am giving my kids. And there are the dark days. The book knew the statistics for suicide that I had always thought were just me.

The book knew that when I graduated from the gifted program and was thrust into real life, the odds were against me. It predicted the joblessness, frustration, and guilt, but it offered no advice. The book was written to parents. And so I stood in Barnes & Noble and tried not to cry. If only I had been told what the obstacles would be, I could have faced them better instead of being eaten up by the shame.

Because of that book—the name of which I don’t recall—I earned a master’s degree in two years, without changing majors or schools or adding on half a dozen minors. That degree has turned out to be almost as unprofitable as a liberal arts degree, but it represents a victory over myself, over my dark side. It’s a sign of normalcy that I can waive like a flag, even though my very self was the cost of that flag and lies buried beneath it.

The degree is in Education and was obtained so that I would never be unemployed again, a double whammy for a homeschooling mother in an economy that has put all of the local schools on a hiring freeze. I’d dreamed of an MFA in Creative Writing and a PhD in Literature so that I could hide in an ivory tower and think beautiful thoughts. Equally useless, perhaps, but if I’d known that that would be the case, I would have chosen the more beautiful path. Life is full of false starts for me, although I expect to have it figured out by the time my hair has lost its natural color.

But I told you that my passion for giftedness is secret. I have rarely told even a friend that I fall into these ranks, much less internet strangers, because I know the dissension wrapped around the word. People think that those who are gifted brag about this glamorous state or that their parents brag about them. They think that “giftedness” is an indictment of the rest of the world, that it is nothing more than academic prowess. In fact, giftedness does not always even mean success in school, and in practice, it looks much more like something one would medicate to make it go away rather than something someone would embrace, much less announce. One is more likely to look around for a limb to sever, another part to bury so that she a few more moments with the Normalcy flag for a party or other social obligation—anything big enough to hide the truth.

Tonight I am longing for the OCD eyes to give way so I can sleep, but instead I am sitting at my computer at 2:30 in the morning, surrounded by books and papers and filled with the irony of ideas and creativity and grief, wondering again if I can bury myself beneath a flag of normalcy or if the sacrifice is ever worth it.

Like a Little Child

"To not know history is to remain forever a child." Or something like that.

The kids finally asked the question--WHY study history. I was eloquent; Landon quoted famous quotes like the one above.

8yo said, "But doesn't the Bible say to remain like a child?" Uh......

On the Cusp of 3

Sitting here overseeing school, explaining singular and plural in Latin and 6 blue marbles plus 4 red marbles times 5 bags and why you can't pick your nose at the table, & I overhear my little one in the background making truck noises and saying, "That will be a good idea," pronouncing "good" like it rhymes with "food."

My 4yo starts cleaning up, & 2yo cries because she's only picking up his toys. I tell her to quit it & tell him she's sorry. She does, & I hear, "I forgive you. It's not time to pick up—that's not how we play." And the truck noises start again.

I think everyone should always have an on-the-cusp-of-3yo in their house. It's like having a beautiful garden and a song and a philosopher who helps you see what's true and what's small and what's big. It's a reminder that tears are for more than tragedy and rejoicing is for less than a new job. It's the birth of hyperbole and faith. It's never being bored or smelling quite right.

This morning, I am thanking God for these years.

This Moment

He steals grapes. He sneaks apples. But he can only manage to get the apple on one side, so I find the Other Halves stashed...in the playroom, the sofa, my bed...

I've been promised that one day I'll miss the surprises.

Eschewing Obfuscation in Academia via Kinesthetic Jargon-Elimination...

or "Learning Vocabulary"

Sometimes when I’m writing lesson plans, I have an epiphany, and I realize that my kids’ attention spans are no longer or deeper than my own. If I have not managed to retain the definitions of stomata, xylem, and chloroplasts from our reading…they probably haven’t, either. And if a review of the terms simply makes my eyes glaze over…then I know that their “study skills” leave something to be desired, too.

Science vocabulary in particular has always eluded me: it seems an obnoxious way to weed people out who might very well understand concepts but get tongue-tied when it comes to names. I’m the same way with meeting people at church, reducing them to layman’s terms: “Talking Man” and “Meat Sandwich.” (The latter was the unfortunate result of a lady trying in vain to help people remember her name: she’s the wife of a guy named Pat, and in Sunday School, she’d sit next to a girl named Pat. She said she was the middle of a “Pat Sandwich.” She also said her name, but I forget that part. I do know it wasn’t Pat.)

Looking again at the mysterious vocabulary, I began to work to make the mental pictures that allow me to remember faces, if not names. I pretended to care, and the result was the following lesson plan:

Vocabulary: phloem, xylem, leaf, root.

Method: Put on a play.

Name tags are passed out to the audience, including “Flower,” “Bud,” and  “Stem.”

Play opens with Mrs. Root sitting in a blue laundry basket. Leaf is cooking in the kitchen, wearing an apron that says, “LEAF the cooking to the cook!”  Phloem and Xylem are dressed as waiters.

Leaf: “Soup’s on!”

Phloem takes his tray to the kitchen and loads it up with food.  Then he carries it out to serve to the audience.  (This could be play food or snacks.)  He also takes a plate to Mrs. Root.

Xylem takes his tray to Mrs. Root, where he fills it with cups of water.  He serves those to the audience members.  He also takes a cup to Leaf.

The End.

My oldest enjoyed practicing the play so much that he wrote an extended version of the script.  It was simple enough that my two-year-old and three-year-old played the extra parts.  We performed it for our homeschool open house, passing out cookies and punch to Granny (“Flower”), Grand Dad (“Bud”), and Aunt Pat (“Blossom”).

Now it’s easy for all of us to remember that Phloem and Xylem are the “waiters” of the plant.  Which is which?  PHloem serves the Food.  (It alliterates.)

My husband was a Biology major for a semester in college.  There was only the one class before he switched to World History, but from that experience, his conclusion is that learning the vocabulary is half the battle.  In other words, it’s worth some creative effort to help your kids learn the obnoxious terminology—the jargon—of academic fields.

An added benefit?  As the vocabulary becomes more manageable and familiar, the concepts become less foreign, too.  Before you know it, you’ve learned a lot more than vocabulary.  (And your kids have, too!)