The kids have been especially rambunctious. Cruz has been on a non-stop question barrage since Monday. We get into Wal-Mart today for some last minute room supplies, he asks me about color coded staples and when he's going to play in the Major Leagues (a running theme over the last several weeks), partly from X-Box MLK withdrawal (our game system showed the red ring of death recently), watching little league games on ESPN and the arrival of fall ball machine pitch.
Reycina was shipped off for a few days. She inadvertently wrote with dry erase maker on our newly 5-coated waxed floors at school (according to Lisa, she also likes to write on her dry erase board in the room, except with Lisa's mascara or lipstick, walking down the stairs looking like a drunken Cleopatra applying makeup) , which drew out naturally a verbal reprimand by the custodial staff's supervisor who probably had his eye-twitch when he noticed her handiwork. She came back today, talking even more and looking a year older.
But school is pretty good, all things considered. Financially, it is actually good to keep me in a building away from my wallet. Back to lunches and routines. This year, we are down 15 minutes from our cushy one hour lunch break, so there's no opportunity to eat out, which will be good for us in the long run.
School continues to challenge me and awakens me to a side of people that I would otherwise never have known. As a father myself and with a child in the building, I'm even more aware with how I'm supposed to talk to children (the "old" Mr. C sometimes will unleash itself on a unsuspecting elementary student), what I expect from parents and being patient with what kids deliver to me, in terms of their learning, work ethic and achievement.
Amazing how so many people can live on the Earth and everyone has a different opinion on what raising their child for school really is. What makes a parent choose a charter school, only to watch their kids fail and return? What makes a parent not bring the required paperwork from building to building, knowing that the school has a legal requirement to uphold a child's disability? I moved around almost every year when I was a kid. I know there were years I saw the principal more than the classroom, and other years that the teachers held on to every sarcastic musing and wondered when I was going to perform up to my ability. Never having been that "A" student, I relate to the hyper kid, the funny one, the all-out-boy. The baby boys and the quiet, wall-flower girls, those are the challenges. The learning disabled boy, raised on hip-hop, strife and bad teachers. One tells me recently, "I never got a 3 before (the equivalent of an A)" after his right answer. My young man, it's only the beginning.
No comments:
Post a Comment