A Fine Line

If you’re like my brother you don’t want to hear any more teachers talking about their paychecks. Every year around tax time he used to tease about how little we work and how much we make. He never took me up on any of my numerous invitations to come and spend a day at school, but was sure he knew what he was talking about because, after all, he was a student once. I would argue my case about the trials of going all summer without a paycheck and he would make that annoyingly condescending charade of a restaurant violin player.

I now realize the professional angst educators feel is not related to money nearly as much as it is to something else…time. Teachers never have enough. Speakers, professors, administrators always refer to this lack of time the way a mother talks about the pain of childbirth. Yeah, it hurts like hell but that’s just part of the glorious experience. While it is true of the delivery room it is not so true of the classroom. The issue of time and teaching is usually sloughed off, like we’re making it up or it is just one of those great uniters like dogs to mail carriers, cheap tippers to waiters and non-flossers to dental hygienists. We have just found something we can all complain to one another about.

It’s really not funny, though, if you’re a teacher who is serious about the profession. We have too many demands for the amount of time we are compensated for. There are often meetings before school and definitely after school and during lunch hours. There is homework to correct which cannot be done at school if children are too young to do it themselves. There are long pieces to be read and corrected by those who work with the older kids, pieces and reports that can go on for pages. I think most lay people believe we have time to do this at work. We do not. You can’t just tell a class to do something for a couple hours while you check over their papers, score and record their grades. Early childhood teachers (K-3) spend hour after hour preparing art materials every time seasons and holidays change. Project materials not easily found in school are purchased by teachers. Oh yes, really. Proper channels have pretty much killed reimbursement initiative. It's easier to do it yourself. After teachers have shopped and had dinner with their families, they mix up clay, count out pieces, nail boards, staple books, make nametags, type poems, measure yarn and then box it all up to haul over to school the following day. Just for fun, try making enough play dough for 20-40 people in three or four different colors before you go to bed. It takes hours, and no we don’t have to. We could do everything with pencils, paper and crayons if we wanted to make life easier. But those experiences are often as flat as the paper they are done on. Good teaching is hands on, and hands on means lots of stuff that teachers have to get, organize, store, distribute, collect and clean. No time to do this during class time, either. Did you know it takes a teacher about 45 minutes to put up an interesting bulletin board and then half an hour to take it down? Few teachers will take teaching time to do that.

The “prep time” we are given turns out to be return calls time, discuss a child with another teacher time, clean out the coatroom or cabinet time, try to get the computer to work time, track down a new ink cartridge time, look in the lost and found for the clothes a kid lost and his mother is mad time, scrub off the tables because kids are starting to get colds time, or fix the zipper or necklace or buckle that broke on one of the children’s clothes time. The prep time quickly becomes the I’ve run out of time time.

The extra time we take to work at or for school is time taken from our own families, lives and obligations. Without exaggeration, teachers volunteer over 500 hours and thousands of dollars a year to the school systems in which they teach. Teachers spend no less than 2 extra hours, seven days a week on school related work. Fourteen hours times 4 weeks times 10 months equals about $14,000 a year at a salary of $25 an hour. During the summer, teachers prepare for the next year. For free. While many of you may think we are paid for the time we put in evenings or weekends or in summer before school begins, we aren’t. It’s volunteer work that left undone would lower the quality of life in schools everywhere to unacceptable levels. Teaching is not like other professions that charge $50 a phone call or three times that much for an office visit. Because we work with children, people think we do it only because we love children. Pediatricians love children too, but I’ve never known one to spend 5 hours on a Saturday working for free decorating the examination rooms. We do love children, seek to understand their individual needs, and care deeply about their families. We are their staunch and willing advocates, but we are also professional people who are working as hard as we can, as many hours as we can and as well as we can so please understand if we have to say no once in awhile.

I was listening to a piece on the radio about the power of play in the lives of young children- unstructured play, not adult directed games with rules, winners, losers and only one ways of doing things. As carefully as we manage their day in the classroom itself, we have extended that control to social life as well. We tell them exactly what to do, when, where and how. There are rules about sitting on slides, playing on ice, picking teams, who can play on which fields, how to swing and rules stating that no one can knock down the snowmen or snow forts of others.

We are managing kids to the point where they are told everything, except maybe to figure it out themselves. The usual answer when children are asked what to do if someone hurts your feelings, for example, is “Go tell a teacher.“ Kids go running to teachers on the playground whining and tattling about every little thing and we snap into action instead of looking them in the face and asking, “So what did you do when that happened? What could you have done? What can you do? How can you handle that?“ Chances are the kids have tried nothing. Maybe that explains the large numbers of twenty-five year olds still living with their parents, asking mom if she washed and ironed their clothes yet.

There are very few things kids need us for during their play or recreation time, but they‘re too polite and scared to tell us to butt out. Of course, we have to keep them safe but solving all their problems does nothing to help them further down the line. If they go down a slide face first, a mouth full of dirt is a tough but effective teacher and rather appropriate metaphor might I add. Kids have to learn to stand up for themselves, ignore hotheads, resist manipulation and learn what real friends are. They have to acquire the skills of negotiation, retreat and sympathizing. They have to practice acting on their feelings of wanting to join in or get out. They have to learn how to take teasing and joking, being the last one picked sometimes and figuring out if they can’t handle losing, they just shouldn’t play the game. They need to realize that if they act like jerks, they’ll probably be yelled at, ignored or isolated because that’s life.

We shouldn’t be micromanaging every interaction between kids at play so no one is ever sad or angry or put out about something. They need to feel the spectrum of human emotions that make us what we are. They need to want to punch someone but can’t, say something but don’t and cry but keep it in. This will come in handy…

if they ever run for president.

I’m hearing from friends that a lot of twenty-somethings have taken to either moving back to or remaining in the homes of parents. While it’s great to see the kids, seeing their laundry and dishes can get old after a decade. I was thinking about what we teachers could do to prevent this kind of nesting, even as children enter first grade. I came up with a few.

Part of the reason kids stay with parents is financial. We hear from these young adults that it’s too expensive to move out. Historically, it’s been good experience having to live in a studio apartment, sleeping with your feet touching the bathroom door. It calls on creativity to have to mold a couch out of a mattress and use only boxes, boards and posters for interior design. It’s also a money saver to live with other people. Start out with your friends and then when you’re all ready to sue one another, try some total strangers. Everyone should have to go to a refrigerator and find all their food gone. Everyone should have to listen to other people in the next room playing music or “entertaining”. It’s maturing to have deep, sunrise conversations about life, death, religion, politics and other big conversational topics we learn aren’t worth the fight.

So, they don’t have money. Fair enough. Tell them you’ll hire them and in place of room and board, they can work off their bills. Handymen and women are often called for jobs like simple repairs, shoveling, clearing junk out of basements, house cleaning and pet sitting. Parents, make a list of any jobs you need done around the house and the monetary value of service performed next to it. Leave a stack of “How To” books to cover every category. If young adults can read 100 text messages a minute, they can figure out a light fixture. If kids can speed read directions to complicated multi-faceted computer games, they can figure out how to get cat urine stains out of the Berber. One feels a little better about serving home made food to a member of a work force.

So…maybe we can instill some independence early in life with a few simple rules.

1. Don’t do for children what they can do for themselves. Sure, they may be wearing red flowers with pink stripes but who cares. He’ll learn from his peers what he should be picking out in the morning.

2. Let children work out their own squabbles. Ask a child what they should do if someone teases them and I’ll bet all the stuff on the floor of my car that they’ll say, “Tell a teacher.” When students come running to us let’s first ask them what they did when they were teased. How did they handle it? What could they have done? Teach them to stand up for themselves, change activities, ignore, or put up with jerks. That's how life is.

3. No more shoe tying, jacket zipping and scarf putting on-ing. Learning to protect yourself starts in line at recess.

4. Unless blood or bodily fluids are in evidence, no running to the school nurse. No placebo ice packs, no needless temperature taking, no drama. Learning how to soldier on will come in handy when they age and don’t want to use up all their sick days to be sick. Teach boys the phrase, “Man up!” early and say it often.

5. No more nap times. It’s too much like sleeping at mom and dad’s house. Children can learn to work sleep deprived like the rest of us.

6. No wiping up after them. No rubbing food stains out of shirts, cleaning around mouths or scraping mud off the lime green Crocks. That is just planting the thought seed that if they stand, look helpless and wait, they will be cleaned.

If we start now, we will raise a generation of young people who could live in a school locker, furnish an apartment with macaroni, glue and spray paint and end their days with Ramen prepared in one of a hundred ways. If your child is over the age of 6, it may be too late. The damage may have already been done, and to you I say for now and forever,

better leave the light on.

Do you feel the Oscar buzz? Me neither. I don’t know who goes to those parties here in cow country, but I know there are some; people who get dressed up like stars and go out for a night of oysters on the half shell and beer, then sit and watch TV. Dressed up football. It always comes back to that, doesn’t it? It’s an upscale tailgate party with the common goal of getting drunk and not caring that much who wins and who loses.

So we’ve had the Grammy’s, the Golden Globes, and now the Oscars. It‘s time for an awards show for educators. Can you think of anything more exciting? The first thing on the agenda would have to be creation of a trophy. It would have to be a worn out looking person with a canvas bag slung over his or her shoulder. There should be white line across the buttocks area because that’s where the chalk rubs off when we back into the board. The figure would have to be detailed with a coffee cup with about 3 or 4 rings around the inside hooked on an index finger sporting lines of black Sharpie.

That done, we can roll out the red paper and watch the “stars” as they enter the cafeteria for an evening of glitter and glamour. Take your places on the folding chairs, it’s time to begin. Here are the winners:

Best Musical Score: This would have to go to the director of the band over at Shorewood High School. It’s not easy to piece together eight songs in 2/4 time that mix the might of gladiators with the appeal of Disney.

Best Costume Design: This has to go to the elementary school staffs every year on Halloween, who take virtually minutes of preparation for this event. Their designs have become classics, as returning students can confirm. The gorilla suit of the 80s is a winner in any decade.

Best Art Direction: This goes to the primary teachers who have managed to make turkeys out of nothing but recyclables and googly eyes year after year. Well done.

Best Cinematography: The secretaries have compiles hours of film exposing the hundreds of people who attempt to get in through parking lot doors when they are supposed to enter through the main corridors. These are people who fake ignorance, appeal for exception, swear this to be one time request, and those who make up lame excuses as to why they are trying to get in. It’s all on tape. Congratulations to school secretary security squads everywhere.

Best Original Screenplay: This is awarded to those people leading the charge for teachers to put plans in stone and commit their ideas to curriculum map for once and for all. Their attempts to use new software to lay out every teacher’s plans, goals, lessons and standards met can only be described as Herculean. Getting people to stick to script will no doubt land them next year’s award for “Biggest Believer in Miracles”.

Best Director: While it may be assumed that this award would go to the superintendent, in a shocking unanimous vote, it goes instead to the economy. Nothing has influenced production decisions more than budget, so if there is any more money left to buy it, the statue should go to the dough.

Best Supporting Actor/Actress: Custodians are the spine of the schools; they and secretaries. Truth be told, if either one of those troupes would go on strike, schools would have to close down in about 17 minutes. Teachers have no secretarial skills. We don’t even know when 100s day is half the time. This year it was celebrated between days 96 and 103 thereby illuminating the disorienting consequences of working with little kids all year. Our secretarial deficiencies are only surpassed by those in the area of custodial work. Fixing things? Not really our strength.

Best Actor/Actress: These awards would have to be accepted on behalf of all the students in schools everywhere because kids are the greatest thespians. Watch one of them when someone accidentally bumps him getting into line. He will grab his shoulder, hunch over and then slowly unroll to the ground while moaning, and looking through only slightly open eyes to see if the teacher has spotted him yet. Need more proof? Ask kids who didn’t bring homework in why they didn’t.

So there you have it. This year’s awards and nominees. While maybe not as thrilling as the real ones, we ought to be able to be as self-congratulatory as anyone else.

Thank you, and goodnight.

I think if elementary school teachers want to be respected as professional people we have to cut out a few things, first of which is “Pajama Day“. Imagine going to your workplace, say as a psychiatrist, attorney, international banker or salesperson donning slippers and pajamas over your underwear and then being forced to keep them on all day long. You don’t have to do that, do you? Well, guess what’s coming up in a school near you very soon?

Going to a staff meeting or having a parent conference in pajamas just feels, well…creepy. It’s even weird standing at the copy machine or going to the mailbox with other people witnessing what you normally would wear in bed and maybe even with somebody. I like to keep a bit of mystery. Most little kids don’t think teachers ever even leave school.. The mystique comes to an end when you’re standing there asking for children to be quiet and focus on their work when you’re in flannel plaid from head to toe.

Another thing we need to cut out is the dopey teacher fashion fads. Knit sweaters with red apples, rulers and pencils are just silly. I would consider wearing one if they were more realistic and had images of untied shoes, yanked out teeth or faces with tomato sauce or chocolate all over them. When was the last time you saw your physician in a cardigan with an embroidered stethoscope around the front, or maybe some nice hypodermic needs running up and down the arms? That would be friendly and unthreatening.

Anybody ever see any other professional woman wearing a canvas jumper with hand painted desk items on them? Me neither. They make ’em for teachers, though. They even make stupid stuff for the male teachers. There are the ties with letters of the alphabet and the ubiquitous apples sometimes with facial features, probably thinking something like, “I’m an apple, why am I on a grown man’s tie?”

Pajama days aren’t the only days of crazy ass costuming, either. We’re supposed to wear funny looking hair or silly hats, have dress alike day, wear sports apparel (what’s the official uniform for curling?) and the ever popular dress like a character in your favorite book day. I’m not sure how to dress like the woman in the Kama Sutra.

I don’t really get the whole school spirit thing, I never have. School should be spirited all the time. Do we really have to drum up enthusiasm? Is school such a bore every other day that the only way to pluck us from the depths of woe is to put us all in jammies? I don’t know. It’s just weird.

Watch, I’ll be the old lady put in charge of planning pajama and crazy hat days at the nursing home in a few years. It’ll serve me right.

A new tool for elementary students…flatware. Gone are the days of the puckish spork, nemesis to all who have had to use it for soup, cutting meat or spearing hard vegetables. The graveyard piles of headless sporks are gone forever, or at least until June when they take inventory of the remaining flatware. Kids are creative and ever-thinking. I didn’t realize it was quite so easy to make letters of the alphabet with bent stainless steel.

The reason for the switch from the plastic spoon/fork, to stainless is born of good intentions. Real forks can be reused so waste, landfills and endangered spork populations are protected from the environmental paganism of us black hole humans. Children are learning to care about our planet if they stop long enough between bites of carrot coins to think about it, which they don’t. They just want to get out and play. Collateral good fortune is that children, who have had no experience eating with utensils in our finger food world, will know how to conduct themselves when faced with an entire place setting at some point. So that's good.

It’s time to think about other ways to help the environment by making changes in our schools. The easiet place to start would be paper consumption. The copy machine reproduces at sonic boom speed. Packets, reports, memos, flyers, spelling lists, maps, entire books, workbook pages, penmanship pages, math tests, homework, and scholarly articles clutter up mailboxes, then recycling bins throughout the school. My very favorite environmental irony is the wallpapering of posters and signs reminding us of Earth Day.

So, how to get rid of paper waste? The answer is electronics. We need to look to technology. There is nothing we can do with paper and pencil that we can’t with computers and appropriate hardware, except maybe jam them into the bottom of a backpack with a lunchbox, stuffed animal and snowpants. Stylists are pencils, pads become paper. An entire class can till work on “seatwork” but not the sheetwork. Forms ought to be on school websites to download or fill out online. The cost of textbooks is ridiculous and unnecessary. They are out of date as soon as they are published.  Workbooks get used and tossed like a prom date, and the uninspiring packets we all run off and make kids complete end up who knows where after parents get to see some evidence that their kids are actually doing something.

We need to have equipment, extensive training, maintenance, and relevant ongoing instruction regarding how to use school hardware and software with children. We need equity in distribution and periodic upgrading. There is not enough staffing for even part of the demands we would have if we were really schools of the 21^st century. We are stuck in the past decade on our technology timeline, at least at the elementary level. Classrooms ought to have wireless computers for at least half the students, accessible all day and not just a 45 minute sign up time. We need to have keyboards designed for little hands, so our early childhood population isn’t left on the other side of the window, watching other students become part of the present, as they sit on their miniature chairs writing with constantly breaking pencils on paper that is too thin to erase without ripping.

I’m all for helping the environment, but those who tell us to widen margins, use the backs of paper, make art pieces out of liter bottles and mud are missing the bigger picture. We need to educate the community as to what could be possible with reliable technology in our schools. This isn’t a bake sale cause, or a one shot grant target. Thousands of penny wars and milk bottle caps won’t do it. It will take the kind of effort and money that is going into other Shorewood projects meant to beautify, update and impress. I applaud everyone who has worked to advance technology in our schools. Committees have tried for years to pull the dead technology horse of the past into this century. I don't know how you keep up the fight, but admire your commitment. How do you keep from screaming and pounding tabletops? It must be extremely and continuously frustrating.

Maybe bending some flatware would help.

This week lots of kindergarten parents are having to face one of the emotionally difficult realities of raising a child, particularly the first one, and that is admitting that your little pooky-doo, sweet pea, or silly willy will have to go to the "big school" soon and be placed under the care of a total stranger in a single grade or multiage classroom. Although it can become as laborious as deciding on a new house if you let it, choosing the right kind of first grade environment for your child in Shorewood is like choosing between Harvard and Yale; you can’t go wrong. I thought, however, that you might appreciate a helpful list of things to look for when visiting any classroom. Generally, it’s a good idea to set aside what you would have liked when you were a kid, what you've read, what other parents have advised or what you‘re assuming your child would like. The sooner you get rid of the notion that you know your child inside and out the better, because after the big school comes middle school and if you don't get it by then, they'll make it all too clear in the most unsubtle ways. That said, please consider the following:

1. When you enter the classroom, if all the children and the teacher stop what they are doing and stare at you, it may signal the running of a pretty tight ship or it just could be the kids were getting lectured about putting pencils up their noses or tying both legs of each others’ snow pants together.

2. If children are walking freely throughout the room engaged in conversation and laughter, this means the teacher is confident and has created an environment in which children take on more responsibility, or it might be that she lost her glasses and lesson plan book or maybe someone just barfed in the coatroom and she’s shaking powder over the chunky splat so all the kids don’t rush in just to look at something really, really gross.

3. Find out where the supplies are. If everything is on the 3^rd shelf from the bottom, chances are only the teacher has been trained on their proper use or there is not much trust that children can handle classroom supplies responsibly. On the other hand, it could be that right before you came in the room a couple of the boys decided to play barber shop in the art center.

4. When you go in to visit go talk to the kids who are sitting by themselves in a single desk facing the wall pouting or fuming. They are the ones you get some good stuff from.

5. Understand that the naughtiest kid in class will be the one who runs up to you first. If he wants to show you around, be prepared to see his coat hook, lunchbox, loose tooth and where the rabbit pooped on the rug once.

Good luck in your journey.

Progress reports will be coming out soon. They used to be called report cards, but “progress reports” sound so much more optimistic, like there’s still hope. The sharpest minds in the field of education have tried for years to find some way to communicate human academic, social, emotional and intellectual growth with a time saving system employing only 5 letters or 4 numbers. Although we all know it’s not possible, the rest of the world needs a basis for comparison. A, B, F, 3, 1? Which letter would you chose to summarize progress in your slice of existence? You see the struggle…

Early childhood education requires we see children’s learning over time, in spans that are natural rather than manufactured by administrators, unions, or standardization requirements. Children in their first three years of school learn in series of ebbs and flows. When they begin first grade, all they want to do is learn how to read. They may spend much of the first semester working on that and little else. They focus on math when reading ability has been self-acknowledged. Along with this come all the other subject area requirements. Social Studies, Science, Math, P.E., Writing, Art, Music and Spanish. That’s a lot when you consider the children’s feet have only walked the earth independently for 5 or 6 years.

Do this. Think about having to learn how to lay on your back and roll a log on the bottoms of your feet while at the same time doing your own taxes, writing a story about your favorite condiment in rough draft and final form, disabling your car’s “check engine” light, beating a 15 year old boy at an electronic game, playing melody and harmony at the same time on a broken cello and learning Pig Latin well enough to say you like meatballs, cats and fat dogs. Giving individual grades for all those things every 12 weeks or so doesn’t tell us much that won‘t change, in some cases drastically, over the next few months. Things happen quickly in the learning life of little kids. So, look at the progress report as you would a photo taken with a disposable camera, not an oil painting. Older students are given grades. Few schools are brave enough to let those go. The argument is and always will be that this is to prepare them for the grades they are given in middle, high school and college (and then never used again as long as they live).

But whatever. We use them, you get them and because of that they have been given meaning. I had fun one year when I had the kids fill out report cards for their parents. That wasn’t really the best idea I’ve ever had. Some weren’t happy when children answered questions like:

1. Do your parents know all your teachers‘names?

2. Do your parents read with you every night?

3. Do you have a quiet place to work at home?

4. Do you have activities on more than 2 weeknights?

5. Do you think your parents let you watch too much TV or play too many video games?

6. Do your parents check over your homework before you return it?

(I don’t have kids do this anymore. As you read on, in the spirit of full disclosure, I want to be sure to state that in 34 years I’ve pretty much made every mistake in the book.)

Hopefully, if there are problems you’ve been told way before this point in the year. There should be no surprises on a report card if communication has been good, if you’ve been looking at work from school, if you’ve been checking over homework, if you’ve kept in touch with your child’s teachers and finally, if you’ve not believed it every time your child answered a question about school with “ fine“ or “nothing“.

The progress report is only one small look into how your child is doing. What do you learn from a letter or number about how your child best learns, what their academic fears and strengths are, what they feel passionate about, what their natural talent seems to be, why they seem don’t understand what they don’t understand, why their stories follow no logical sequence or even end? Describing a child from the inside out can’t be done in one shot, with one symbol and with a statement like, “It is a pleasure to have your child in my class.” Oh, try this. Next time you get a comment like that, follow it up with a sincere look in the eyes of the teacher and ask, “Why?”

We need new holidays. Valentine’s Day is coming up, preceded in abundance by “the holiday season”, Thanksgiving and the Superbowl of childhood holidays, Halloween. The more you know about the origins of these days the more you may question our embrace of them. Here’s an appetizer. One theory regarding the origins of Valentine’s Day involves cutting strips of sheep, dipping them in sacrificial blood and slapping women with them. And the women liked it. Makes you want to Google, doesn’t it?

So anyway, I was reading an article about deprivation studies and how well it has worked for Burger King. Depriving customers of Whoppers seems to have made them absolutely furious, demanding their prompt return. I began wondering how we can put that theory to use right here. Come to think of it, that might be what Romney is up to. Withdrawing with the sheer intent of creating a groundswell for his nomination as VP. Very clever, Mitt. Very clever indeed. Admittedly, I’ve used this deprivation theory myself. Children have begged me to keep reading instead of going out for recess. I gave them a scornful look and said, “Well, maybe just this once.” or, “You can do a power point presentation about elections when you’ve proven to me you can remember to put your crayons away.” Yeah, they actually fall for this stuff.

Synthesizing all of this, one can only anticipate that through systematic deprivation, we can get what we all say we want for our children, to realize the true meanings of holidays. When you think of it, we have morphed even the most altruistic of celebrations into mere “getting days“. New Year’s Eve is for getting clothes, parties, food, booze and in some cases dramatic presentations of jewelry. Valentine’s Day is for getting candy, cards, proposals, reassurances and for those lucky few, underwear with hearts. St. Patrick’s Day is for getting drunk. Easter is for getting more candy, new clothes and cards with the ever confusing images of rabbits laying eggs. Memorial Day is not much of a getting day, unless you count beer soaked barbequed brats as a gain. We should keep that one. We can also keep the 4^th of July, Labor Day, Veteran’s Day and MLK day unless gift exchanges are drummed up for those somehow. Whether or not we have President’s Day should be decided in the president’s last year. Not until then can we determine if it is really deserved. Manufactured holidays need to go. Mother’s, Father’s and Grandparent’s Day actually do all a disservice. Because these days exist, people are given absolution, or shall we say amnesty, from the absence of presence the rest of the year.

It seems that there are three classes of holidays: the religious, the political and the Wall Street and what we need to make all three are non-action holidays. Give nothing, get nothing. Once someone gives something, that something automatically flaws the whole holiday so NO giving. There will be those people who can’t help themselves, however. Pandoras who say, “Oh, it’s nothing, really. “ They dump into the pure waters of unselfishness, the red Kool Aid of obligatory consumerism generating an ambivalent, frantic run out to gas stations for tube roses to place on the traitor’s desks with a little cards that ought to say something like, “Thanks Judas.”

We need to deprive all of us the holidays we’ve so intoxicated and welcome their resumption in about a decade or two if we still need them then. But who knows? Maybe we will have given up the binge eating of pandemic holiday emotion in exchange for a more constant diet of consideration and reflection. Until then, don’t forget Thursday.

p.s. I hear you can order pajamagrams now.

Your children need you

To leave them alone sometimes

To let them find a challenge for themselves

To sit and wonder

Without being directed.

To lay on the floor with eyes closed.

To look at the writing of nature

Fibonacci patterns

Have much to teach

But it takes time.

We’ve almost convinced them

That they are not capable

Of occupying themselves

Or coming up with something to think about without us.

They are occupied by us

And fed through wired umbilical

They find their joy in advancing

Electronic levels

Holding trophies

They know they don’t deserve

And prizes they know they didn’t earn

But still it’s fun to get them for awhile

We vaccinate them with praise

To keep disease of truth at bay

What a relief for them

When they realize they don’t have to be great

At everything

But for some it takes too long

I’ve heard from kids, especially in high school, that a B is a D

In the eyes of achievers

That’s what happens when there is only one lane

Out

I figured out that each of the four rooms in my little Snow White house costs me $66 a month in taxes. They aren’t even that nice. It makes me wonder at tax time, “What am I doing here?” I think Shorewood is a great place on each side of a great avenue, don’t get me wrong, but without a school aged child or sidewalk plowing I’m starting to reconsider. If I’m paying that much for my four "spaces" (as they call rooms on HGTV) then I need a little more bang for my buck. I need the turf in my yards replaced with something I don’t need to mow, weed, or get neurotic about. I need new lighting inside and out, maybe something that won’t rust, and so distinctive that it would just scream "Shorewood taxpayer!" Now where could I get outdoor lighting like that, hmmmm? I need more places to walk in my house; all I have are four worn pathways that cross in the middle of my dining area. Maybe a nice plaza...

I could use someone to rinse out my cans and plastic containers. That’s a benefit that should come with residency. Cat food cans, especially, are no fun to clean; the same with tomato paste, peanut butter jars and syrup bottles. I’ve actually stopped eating that stuff rather than have to deal with scrubbing the smeary remains off the sides and unreachable bottoms.

If you don’t mind, Shorewood, will you stop plowing my trash container in? Spring will come soon enough. It’s fine with me if you just take the stuff in all the bags I lean against those dark green plastic sides. March will be here and then when it freely rolls, deal with it. The pile of snow in front of the kart actually acts like a footstool for me, so I kind of like it. Did you know that a person only about five feet tall can’t really lift a heavy trash bag high enough to get it over the edge of the stupid kart? I have to open the top with one hand and hold it so it won't slam down before tossing the bag over the side with the other. Prior to the big snow falls, I usually end up standing face to face with a garbage bin that comes up to just below my shoulders. I end up slamming the side of the kart with the ripping, dripping bag, again and again like a middle school bass drum player as I try and fail to get enough height to clear. I don’t know how the neighbors have kept from laughing this long. Maybe they haven’t. I wouldn’t blame them.

One more thing I’d appreciate my tax dollars be used for is to reline the parking spots over at Pick n Save. Because they aren’t angled, it’s way too easy to back straight up into another person backing straight up and there you are stuck together mumbling and in everyone’s way, which is just about anywhere in that crazy lot. So can’t we use a bit of tax money for some white paint and liners who specialize in artistic parallel slant?

Our schools are doing well enough for us to ignore for a few years. There are so many other, more personal ways to make Shorewood stand out from the rest. What would make your life better? The American people are crying for change.

Might as well throw in your two cents worth.

Imagine you are standing in front of a group of peers, trying to explain something about the tax code or Village parking regulations. During your presentation you become distracted by the sound of ripping paper or fabric of some kind. You turn and ask, “What is that?” and watch the group turn to look at the guy in the back of the room opening and closing the Velcro bands on his running shoes, attempting to get just the perfect fit. Rip, tighten, rip, tighten, rip tighten. He is so distracted by the sound and action that it is apparent he jumped off your message train many stops ago. He notices it is dead quiet in the room and looks up. Hands go back on his lap and publicly shamed eyes are back on you as he pretends you are fascinating once again.

You continue on and when you turn to write on the board hear laughing. A seed from an open milkweed pod has been caught by a burst of air and is flying around the crowd just out of reach of the arms and hands attempting to capture it. Your audience has clearly noticed that if they try to grab the floating seed, the stirred air just pushes it up and moves it along even further. People reach so high, their bare stomachs are showing. The scene resembles that of a stadium wave and now only a couple over achievers are still listening.

Decorum is established after a bit and you move along after restating the last five minutes of your presentation in a long drawn-out sigh. As you speak you notice one guy sitting with his legs pulled up on the chair covered by an overstretched t-shirt sucking on his now almost unrecognizable neckband. He was, apparently, going at it for quite awhile as a spit soaked discoloration bib has clearly formed. A couple rows behind him, there is your neighbor who has curiously tied both her shoes together and with every tug tightens the knot of eventual embarrassment and teasing.

Again, you continue with your explanation when you notice one of the listeners rocking back and forth and side to side. “What's wrong?” you inquire. He springs to his feet, stands in front of you hopping up and down grabbing himself as you signal him to get to the men's room before you find yourself having to search through the bag of extra clothes for a pair of pants that might fit him well enough to last the rest of the evening.

Back to your talk; about four minutes into the resumption you now are distracted by two women. One is sitting behind the other, moving hand over hand, braiding the hair of her best friend as you try to stick to message, emphasizing the importance of keeping the even sides of the streets cleared for village workers so they can plow in the end of your driveway during the night.

As you parents of kindergarten students read this, please consider what you can do to really prepare your child for the educational setting they are about become a part of in fall. Find or invent silent Velcro for the shoes. Get your child to focus on coloring while you toss a bunch of ping pong balls around the living room and see if she can ignore them. Buy a wardrobe of waterproof or quick dry shirts and cut all hair too short to wrap around a finger. Start having recess at home and require your child to go to the bathroom only during that time. Jumping and grabbing is absolutely forbidden. It would help us teachers a lot. This is advice you won’t hear from anyone but me.

You’re welcome.