Q1 Report Cards & Halloween Costumes

Tyler has C’s in Albegra & Language Arts and B’s in Science, Social Studies, PE & Electronics Band. Overall I’m happy with his report card; his average GPA is better than it’s been for a while. I’m not happy about the C’s, obviously, but I’m most concerned about his grade in Algebra. He has tests each semester that he has to pass with a 70% in order to get high school credit for the class. I’m having a hard time figuring out how much of his grade is effort (or lack thereof) or subject content. I guess the district has a new policy where kids have to be re evaluated for 504’s every three years. This gets on my nerves for several reasons, one of which is that on the paperwork I have to fill out, they ask me to provide copies of report cards. ?!?!?!?!

Halle has a C in math (what’s UP with math this quarter?) and has herself convinced that it’s soooo hard. I watch her try and use strategies to solve problems that I swear to God add like, three or four extra steps. So we’re working on that, and she’s got A’s in every other subject.  She says she wants to run for Student Congress this year instead of Conflict Manager, which is a relief to me. Iasked her if she was going to join Buddy Club this year, and she said no… if she does Student Congress and Buddy Club it’s just too much running around (all these activities happen during lunch recess). I thought that was pretty impressive… hopefully she’ll be able to maintain that awareness of what she can handle & what’s going to just stress her out, unlike those of us who “should” ourselves to death.

Daija is coming along… she’s got self control & taking esponsibility as areas of concern, and everything else is developing or proficient (she doesn’t get letter grades yet). We’re working on that as well… Mommy needs to be more consistent! We spoiled the baby, and now I’m paying for it (and sadly, so is her teacher).

We went and got costumes last night, and somehow, not one of the kids is a vampire. Tyler is an “underworld outcast” and Daija is a US Diva. Halle said over the weekend she wanted to use last year’s costume (she was cleopatra). So I may be dressing up as cleopatra’s mother again… and we’ll be doing our usual Halloween tradition of trick or treating around the neighborhood for a minute and then heading to Doomtown at Rawhide.

A conversation with my son about the Obama Speech

So at bedtime I chatted with the girls about their days, and asked about the Obama speech. Afterwards, I asked my son about it, and before he really got started, I got what I decided was a flash of inspired brilliance and grabbed my crackberry and recorded our conversation. I wish I’d done that with the girls… sometimes with Tyler, you ask a question and when he’s finally done talking, it’s been an hour and you’re asking yourself…

Who put a quarter in you?

… and sometimes, he has a hard time figuring out how to express his thoughts verbally.

He’s like his mama like that…

 a 13yo’s take on the Obama Speech

When I was listening to this afterwards, I cringed a little bit. Something I said with the best of intentions doesn’t sit too well with me.

Obama advises caution in what kids put on Facebook

and other great advice…

By JULIE PACE
Associated Press Writer
ARLINGTON, Va.

President Barack Obama went forward with a controversial speech to students nationwide Tuesday, preceding it by advising young people at a suburban Virginia school to “be careful what you post on Facebook.” “Whatever you do,” he told them, “it will be pulled up later in your life.”

Obama’s Speech to Kids: A different angle on the uproar

 I agree with this article WHOLE HEARTEDLY. I have a rule at my house… unless there was a death in the family, you are running a fever, or you puke before you get on the bus… you are going to school. I can’t imagine letting my kids cut school just because I didn’t agree with something that might happen in the classroom. 

DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH SCHOOL MY KIDS WOULD MISS?

Obama Challenges Nation’s Students to Work Hard

Thank you, Mr. President…

And as parents, let’s ask ourselves… what problems are we going to solve?  Or are we just creating problems where none exist, rather than address the problems already present?

The story of America isn’t about people who quit when things got tough. It’s about people who kept going, who tried harder, who loved their country too much to do anything less than their best.

It’s the story of students who sat where you sit 250 years ago, and went on to wage a revolution and found this nation. Students who sat where you sit 75 years ago who overcame a Depression and won a world war; who fought for civil rights and put a man on the moon. Students who sat where you sit 20 years ago who founded Google, Twitter and Facebook and changed the way we communicate with each other.

So today, I want to ask you, what’s your contribution going to be? What problems are you going to solve? What discoveries will you make? What will a president who comes here in twenty or fifty or one hundred years say about what all of you did for this country?

Your families, your teachers, and I are doing everything we can to make sure you have the education you need to answer these questions. I’m working hard to fix up your classrooms and get you the books, equipment and computers you need to learn. But you’ve got to do your part too. So I expect you to get serious this year. I expect you to put your best effort into everything you do. I expect great things from each of you. So don’t let us down – don’t let your family or your country or yourself down. Make us all proud. I know you can do it.

Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America.

via Media Resources Prepared School Remarks.

via Thank you, Mr. President….

The President Can’t Talk to School Children Because?

utter foolishness… pure and simple.

And because responsible parents must protect their children. The White House has even been forced to release the text of the speech in advance so it can be scrutinized for…what exactly? Four letter words? Extreme left-wing utterances? “I wouldn’t let my next-door neighbor talk to my kids alone; I’m sure as hell not letting Barack Obama talk to him alone,” the New York Times quotes Chris Stigall, who it identifies as a Kansas City talk show host. There are two points here, the first is the suggestion that the president might be a sexual predator, the second is that the Times is quoting a shock jock as though he’s a man on the street. This isn’t a real objection, in other words, it’s symbolic and theatrical—it’s sending a message.

The President Can’t Talk to School Children Because…?

Shared via AddThis

Pledging Allegiance to Whom?

Pledging Allegiance to Whom?.

September 8^th looms large—like an executioner, for some—over the lives of New Jersey’s elementary school students. As the date approaches, the state’s school districts are diligently at work preparing for the arrival of those placed in their charge. Concurrently, some are concerned at how their children’s schools might shift from education to propaganda.

Two reasons for concern come to mind: one from the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) which, through its Teaching Ambassador Fellows, has released a set of guidelines that schools may use to assist students in their response to Barack Obama’s address to students, at noon on the 8^th of September. The other is a video that has already been seen in a school district in Utah, where school is already in session.

The DOE guidelines appear innocuous enough, for the most part, with questions such as Who is the President of the United States? and What do you think it takes to be president? However, other suggestions have been less so, including the following: [Have students] write letters to themselves about what they can do to help the president.

The history behind opposition to Obama’s speech to students | csmonitor.com

Washington

Why the uproar over President Obama’s plan to deliver a televised back-to-school speech to US students? Part of the opposition surely is due to political opposition to Obama himself. But there is another, deeper factor that also may be at work: the historic conservative antipathy in the US to a federal role in education.

Look at it this way: Many people in Texas and Florida (and other conservative states and areas) might well object to anybody from Washington addressing their kids about educational duties, president or no.

Remember, Ronald Reagan promised to abolish the Department of Education (DoE) after he was elected in 1980. It was the Democratic-controlled Congress that prevented him from doing so.

President George H. W. Bush did not press this issue. As has been widely noted, he took part in a teleconference with school children in which he urged them to work hard, do their homework, and study math and science.

But in 1996, GOP presidential nominee Bob Dole promised to “cut out” the DoE and save money. The ’96 Republican presidential platform said this: “The federal government has no constitutional authority to be involved in school curricula . . . That is why we will abolish the Department of Education, end federal meddling in our schools, and promote family choice at all levels of learning”.

ADHD, middle school, and assistive technology

Well, I haven’t blogged about it much, but I have become a prisoner of Tyler’s homework.  He is having a really tough year.  In preparation for middle school, the 5th grade students have reading, writing, and math with their homeroom teacher, and have block scheduling for social studies and science, each with different fourth grade teachers.  On top of that transition, Tyler goes to the gifted teacher for reading and math.  So his day looks like this:

Homeroom
PE, Art, or Music
Homeroom
Reading
Social Studies/Science
Homeroom
Math
Homeroom

So Tyler deals with three to four teachers on a daily basis, and has classroom changes almost every period.  That’s a lot of transition, and he has a really hard time getting back into a calm and focused state.  He gets very little done in school, and he spends most of every evening a) doing work he didn’t do in class or b) on punishment for not bringing home work he knows he didn’t do.

Whose reality is it?

The other week I blogged about attending a Roosevelt School District Board Meeting.  I mentioned feelings of validation because the board president and district superintendent both sought me out after the meeting adjourned.  I had been so nervous to speak in that forum about the topic I wanted to address:  the growing reports of hiring and firing practices that favor one racial group over others.  This is a topic I feel strongly about, for obvious reasons… but even stronger than my fear of public speaking was my fear about how I would be perceived in addressing what was sure to be an overwhelmingly non-white audience about racial conflict.

I confided in a friend that I once made a very passionate commentary about stereotyping interracial relationships as being between black men seeking white women as status symbols.  I made these comments in a largely black forum where they weren’t well received.  The feedback I got included a response that basically accused me of thinking I was the Great White Hope.  That phrase, like AmeriKKKa and others I’ve heard since, didn’t have a historical or cultural significance to me at the time.  Ironically, “Fight of the Century” occurred on July 4, 1910… 86 years ago today.

But I digress.  Needless to say, it took a lot for me to stand up in a room full of people whose race is subject to discrimination. So on the one hand, I felt very validated to have these two men who hold positions of authority in my community seek me out.  But some of the content of those conversations was unsettling.  One of the men, Hispanic, adamantly expressed his belief that there is not a racial divide… and that those who had spoken in the public comment portion of the meeting (mostly black), were not concerned about the children the school district serves, but their own personal benefit.  The other man, White, lamented that he just doesn’t see it… there at the district office, everyone gets along.

My kids don’t attend school in RSD anymore, and I didn’t feel knowledgeable enough to make blanket statements about whether or to what degree racial conflict exists in our community or the proportion at which black vs. hispanics are being hired and fired and phased out of jobs.  I said as such, but added the disclaimer that I know people in the district who I respect, that feel very strongly that there is a problem, and a big one at that.  But at the time and ever since, I have pondered those conversations and wondered… were we all sitting in the same room?  Did either of you HEAR what I heard? 

I went back to the board meeting archives and watched/listened to some other discussion, and searched online for more articles about the district.  The concerns I heard in that meeting were expressed in other meetings and in media.  When you have THIS many employees and THIS many members of the community you serve, standing up in a public forum and talking about this topic that is largely taboo, how can you possible be unsure whether or not there is a problem?  If you don’t see it from your corner office, does that mean a hostile work environment doesn’t exist?  If you are not at the receiving end of discrimination, is it always obvious to you?  I’m not talking about obvious acts of racism; we can all see that.  But the more subtle ones*.  These thoughts turned to white privilege, especially after my friend thanked me for facing my fears and addressing the board on the topic.  She said something about me putting a new face on it. 

I was far less eloquent than many other speakers whose concerns these men seemed willing to dismiss as non existent.  Since I am not employed by the district, nor do I have children enrolled in the district… is the weight of my perception or the value of my opinion greater than those of the non-white employees voicing criticism, or the black mother whose daughter is facing expulsion for defending herself in a fight, where the (non black) perpetrators are reported to have received no repercussions?  And if so, is it because I am a potential ‘customer’ to be wooed back, or is it because I am white?  Robert Jenson, who authored a compelling article on white privilege (that I’ll post separately, it changed the way I think about race), says it more eloquently than I can.

…I speak with the assumption that people not only will listen, but will take me seriously. I speak with the assumption that my motives will not be challenged; I can rely on the perception of me as a neutral authority, someone whose observations can be trusted.

I’m a little afraid my friend may be right about me having put a new face on it… although not just, as she said, because I am someone whose children left the district and wants to come back… but also because they were more willing to listen to concerns and opinions expressed by someone who looks like me.

*when I’m at my neighborhood Target… the cashiers almost always ask me if I’d like to apply for a Target card.  I can’t recall ever hearing the clerk ask the non white person in line before me if they’d like to apply for a Target card.  Now if it’s hard to believe that I’m hardly ever in line at my local Target with any other white folks,  I live in a community where only about 4f the population is white. Is it their race?  Is it their accent?  Their dress?

The difference is in the school – Jul 2 2006

Jun. 23, 2006 12:00 AM

 John F. Kennedy once said, “The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie, deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.”

The Arizona Republic recently – and only briefly – ran a short series of articles about the failure of schools in the Roosevelt School District. The newspaper needs to keep writing this. State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne should be congratulated for walking into that district and talking directly to the many parents who came to hear him about what is true for their children – and he should talk much more about this.

I have had the opportunity to visit many schools where financial poverty is a family reality. The myth that poor families do not care about the education of their children is devastatingly pervasive, and my experience has been that it is nearly always wrong. What I saw in those communities was that parents were desperate to know what was happening with their children, and the system was equally desperate not to say. The most compelling example of this for me was at a meeting organized by activists seeking to bring officials from the Los Angeles Unified district together with parents who had just been given school performance data.

The room held about 200 people, half of whom were Latina moms who had brought their children with them to a midmorning meeting on a Tuesday at the downtown LA Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. They sat in back, predictably deferential. The other half of this meeting room held various authorities and officials from the Los Angeles Unified School District, from the U.S. Department of Education, and various education groups. They sat in front.

A preliminary presentation from the Education Trust reflected precisely what Horne showed the parents in Roosevelt: Here are your children, who are failing. And here are children from schools whose ethnicity, language ability and affluence are identical to yours, but their children are excelling. The message was clear: Your children are failing, and they need not be.

A district official stood up to say that the parents in the successful schools must be more involved because

“we just can’t get our parents involved.”

Another school official suggested perhaps they should offer pizza and cookies, because

“they may not care about their children’s test scores, but they will come if there is food.”

A young Latina mother stood and waved for the microphone to be brought to the back of the room, from where she spoke to the assembly:

“I do not think that our families want to hear more lies about our children. We do not want to hear that our children have A’s and see stars on their papers and then wonder why they can’t make it in high school.

“You say you want us at your schools. Well, we do come to your schools. Our children are in your schools. But you need to give good education to our children and respect to our families . . . We do not want your food.”

There are some moments that are so true, they stay with you for the rest of your life.

Arizona can now see that in the majority of financially poor districts, children are not being provided challenging curriculum. We can see that the children who come to us and our schools from Mexico or from other non-English speaking countries are shunted off into subpar courses with a justification of needing more time to learn English. Instead, they learn nearly nothing.

Until recently we have lacked tangible, visible proof that the failure of these students was not somehow a result of their family status. But now, in the presence of one set of standards and one state test for all children, we can see.

We can see that there are poor children and non-English speaking children who absolutely excel. We can see those children who fail. And the difference is not the children, it is not the wealth of their parents or the color of their skin. The difference is the school.

So it matters a great deal when The Republic shares these truths about our schools. It matters when the state superintendent talks directly to poor families about what is real for their children. It matters most that the families of children who are being failed by their schools are increasingly no longer willing to go unseen and unheard.

Lisa Graham Keegan is a former state superintendent of schools for Arizona and partner in the Keegan Company, where she consults on emerging markets in K-12 education.

The difference is in the school – CURLYGURL’s MySpace Blog | Cyndi–s Jewels

Shared via AddThis

What It’s Like to Be A Child with ADHD

Celebrate! ADHD: What It’s Like to Be A Child with ADHD – CURLYGURL’s MySpace Blog | Cyndi–s Jewels

May 19, 2006 – Friday 11:52 PM

From the Heart of a Child… Dear Mom and Dad, I want you to know what it’s like to be me. My brain runs like a washing machine powered by a Ferrari engine. It runs all the time and it runs fast, churning and tumbling ideas like shirts and pants and socks mixed together.  I can be talking to you and having another conversation running inside my head. I can be in class listening to the teacher, but be fully engaged in a daydream inventing something with my LEGOS. You know how I sometimes repeat questions? It’s not that I didn’t hear your answer. It’s just that in the second between the time I asked and you responded, I went somewhere interesting in my mind. And I didn’t pay attention to what you said. Sometimes I have so many thoughts swimming inside my head that I just blurt things out because I’m afraid I will forget them.

Typing for IEP or 504 Accommodations

Tyler has been using Scholastic’s Type to Learn at school as part of his 504 plan.  He absolutely loves it – and has ‘forgotten’ to go to the cafeteria for breakfast once or twice in his hurry to get into class early to play it before school.  I had assumed it was something only the school could get, but there are two downloadable versions for about $15…

Type to Learn Jr. and Type to Learn

as well as their full versions that are available to the public, and most of which won’t break the bank. 

Scholastic/Sunburst Type to Learn Software

Check with your tax professional, but personal use items designed for or recommended by a doctor as a way to mitigate a medical condition or learning disability can be deducted in your taxes or reimbursed by a flexible spending account.  BTW, I was able to get reimbursed with no questions or delays from my TFSA for the Watchminder2, an event that rivaled Moses parting the Red Sea.  I am not kidding – my issues with AON are a standing joke to my neighboring coworkers.  I wouldn’t say that I hate the company or their brain dead customer service agents, data entry clerks, and managers… I simply dislike them with the white hot intensity of the Sonoran Sun in the sixth year of drought.  Unfortunately, the product (though designed for kids with ADHD) couldn’t hold up to the reality of being worn by a kid with ADHD.  But I have my eye on another reminder device that might be everything the Watchminder2 was supposed to be.

ARTICLE: Growing Up Gifted with AD/HD – 2006

ARTICLE: Growing Up Gifted with AD/HD – CURLYGURL’s MySpace Blog | Cyndi–s Jewels

March 7, 2006 – Tuesday 11:50 PM

ARTICLE: Growing Up Gifted with AD/HD Category: Life I’m twelve years old and for as long as I can remember, I’ve had opposite sides to myself. I’m told that I’m “gifted” — very smart and creative. But I also have to work really, really hard at things that seem much easier for other kids, like memorizing and paying attention. Here’s an example: In math and science and in art, I’m quicker at figuring things out than other kids. Like when my teacher tells us a new way to subtract fractions, it seems obvious to me and not to other kids. But when I’m trying to listen to someone talking or lecturing, my mind starts to wander. Link to Full Article

Shared via AddThis