Almostgotit.com

Christmas came early for the Almostgotit family this year!

Our best present was having our daughter survive, and relatively unscathed, being hit by a car as she was getting off a school bus a few weeks ago.

The second best was attending yesterday’s news conference, in which Knoxville police department chief Sterling Owen outlined a new enforcement patrol that will target motorists who fail to stop for school buses.

One of our new friends who is a fab reporter (Hi, Wendy!) emailed me later to ask what we had done to get that sort of attention from the KPD. I had to respond that I didn’t exactly know, but that I certainly couldn’t take all of the credit. It seems like it was a sort of “perfect storm” – Knoxville’s Safe Kids Coalition HAD already been talking this fall to the KPD and others about school bus safety. The problem of drivers ignoring school busses truly seems to have gotten worse, recently, too, as it is my understanding that other parents have been complaining about it too.

Also, the kid who got hit happened to survive to talk about it, thank God.  She also happened to be one who lived in a politically-savvy and educationally-empowered community containing such people as my writer-friend Jenny (Hi, Jenny!) who joined me in writing letters and contacting the mayor, members of city council, school prinicipals and the like. I wrote a letter to the local paper as well, which caught the attention of a local television station (which screened a nice interview with us) as well as the interest of the Safe Kids Coalition, who also contacted us (Hi, Susan!).

I am newly impressed by the power of persistence as well as the power of the pen. I used to believe more in those things than I do now, so it was a good re-affirmation in my old(er) age. All those things we tell our kids but secretly lose faith in ourselves?  Turns out they may be true:  Speak up! Keep trying! Go to the top!

And stay in school & read a lot of books so you’ll know how to write a compelling letter when you REALLY need to!

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My 8th grade daughter has a bad teacher in one of her favorite subjects.  He’s a swaggery guy, newly imported from the west coast. He uses curse words, makes stuff up about English grammar, assigns no discernable work whatsoever, and belittles both the natives and the other teachers.Some of the other parents want to do something about it. I’m disgusted by the guy but don’t want to hurt my daughter. 

I also don’t want to commit another murder. 

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Long, long ago, I wrote a very dramatic and terrible letter to my own 8th grade teacher on the last day of school, and I think it made him quit.

Here’s why I think so: I saw Mr. M afterwards, walking across the campus. He looked stunned, my letter dangling from his hand as if it were a telegram telling him his entire family had just been murdered. And then he didn’t come back to teach again the next year.

Mr. M was a mousy little man who wore only brown and gray, didn’t wash much, and peered at us through John Lennon glasses balanced on the end of his long nose. But Mr. M had us studying all night and writing 40 page papers, goading us mercilessly with his dramatic favoritisms and sudden irritations. I was deeply in love some of my classmates, while vying desperately with several others for Mr. M’s arbitrary attentions.

Though it was a language arts & social studies class, Mr. M was our theatrical director, and we didn’t just read Shakespeare in that class, we lived it.  For two hours every day, he played us very skillfully.  We switched identities, fought with swords, died tragic deaths, and did lots and lots of swooning.

(I was particularly proud of that one.)

We were probably Mr. M’s entire life, but were too full of our own selves to notice. What I did notice was that he was impossible to please, and seemed only to have eyes for the same attractive people that I did.

So I killed him.

I had no idea, really, that this mop-headed, bespeckled teacher was also a real person, who could stop being a teacher and become unemployed instead. Nor was he, really, the source of my adolescent angst.

Probably.

Anyhoo, what to do about my daughter’s teacher?

There’s a happy ending for Mr. M, at least. I have no idea what happened during the intervening years, but someone sent me a newspaper clipping about him many years later. It was a feature story, headed by a large color photo of my former teacher, now posing in a flamboyant Bill Cosby sweater.

Introducing the new and improved Mr. M!  He had resurfaced, and was known district-wide for his wildly polychromatic wardrobe, heavily featuring the color purple.  The clothes were meant to  go along with his penchant for dramatically unconventional teaching — get it?

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Moral: Don’t mess with Almostgotit’s head, and don’t ignore her poetry. Cause if you do?

First she will kill you and then she will turn you into a gay purple circus performer.

Knox County teachers, consider yourselves warned.

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Since when did “Do your best at school” become a coercive, politically-biased message?

Barack Obama, the man we legally and democratically elected to be our president, wants to support education by speaking in our schools today, as both Bill Clinton and GW Bush did before him.

“Special interest groups” are protesting Obama’s speech. For real? I’m struggling to believe it, and even wonder if the media might be making up a controversy that doesn’t exist. What’s even remotely controversial about “do your best at school?”

The president is not going to talk about health care or anything else of a political nature. He even made the text of his speech available ahead of time, so parents and educators could be assured of that.

Mr. Obama is a black man who was raised by a single mother, who nevertheless managed to be an educational success: he knows what he is talking about. Moreover, he has already proven to be an inspiration to an entire socio-economic class that desperately needs role models.

I have no patience with people who only love democracy and freedom of speech when it serves their own interests.

And I have no patience with people who are apparently so afraid of the man himself that they can’t let their children hear ANYTHING he has to say… and yet remain willing to raise those children among the dangerous electorate who chose this man as their leader.

Perhaps it’s not Barack Obama we’re afraid of at all, but rather the specter that he might actually help someone — or even a whole class of someones — succeed, when we’d rather they didn’t.

So many opinions; so few places to put them.

This is a big problem, turns out. What will I do with all of them? I can’t write about them all day, and no one else much wants my opinions either, so here they sit, rotting like so much USDA agricultural surplus.

These are not standard grade opinions I’m talking about, either. These are genetically modified SUPER opinions.

I’m talking OPINIONOUSES MAXIMUSES.

I wonder if I could ship all my extra opinions to a foreign country that is suffering from a shortage of them, like Canada. Or maybe the government could sponsor efforts to find New Uses for Excess Opinions– I mean, it sure worked for soy beans.

Perhaps I should donate them to fishermen in Southeast Asia, who could put them to good use blast fishing?

Or maybe I’ll become a teacher.

The Economist recently featured an article about Teach First, an elite new training program in England that is modeled after Teach in America which was founded in 1989. The aim of both programs is to recruit highly-qualified new teachers who actually might make a difference in the deteriorating public (state) schools.

What Teach First seems to want most, however, is a fresh source of raw, unsullied opinions.

Teach First’s most important contribution, though, may be to shake up education research and policy. “New teachers bring fresh eyes to education,” says Mr Wigdortz. “Our chair of trustees, Dame Julia Cleverdon, often tells participants to keep a notebook and write down everything that strikes them as crazy in the first few months—because a year in, those things will seem normal. And two years in, when they have gained in experience and confidence, they should get that notebook out and start changing those things.

Hmm.  The side effects for this opinionectomy sound pretty severe.  No offense Dame Julia, but if the return on donating my fresh eyes is having crazy things seem normal, I may opt for Bali instead. 

If we can’t support them, we need to get rid of them.

Top Tennessee economist Bill Fox, among many others, has already given us the hard numbers: sales tax collections do not ever keep up with economic growth, and thus are a terrible way to provide ongoing funding for anything, including public education. This is true even when the economy is in good shape: when it isn’t, consumer spending slows and tax collections plummet.

Dramatically.

Moreoever, the University of Tennessee, like many state universities, already receives less than 20% of its total funding from the state, even as it remains fully accountable to Nashville for every dollar it spends… including the millions that Nashville does not even provide.

Nor has UT ever done a very good job of presenting the seriousness of current and past funding cuts to the tax-paying public. A major barrier to reforming UT’s regressive funding structure is the persistant public perception that universities are rife with excess spending (or) that the whole point of a state university is to field a football team.

UT’s Development, Alumni and Communications offices are good at wearing orange but have always been too tentative about promoting UT academics, nor have they yet aimed high enough with their private fundraising goals.

So how about this: move the football team to Nashville and privatize the rest of UT — under a new name, of course. Let’s stop pretending that we can support, or that we even want, publically funded higher education.

Only a fraction of Tennessee’s taxpayers takes advantage of higher education in any case, so why should taxpayers pay for it, either? Why not reserve our tax money for other government projects (K-12 education? Public transporation?) — or even give it back to the people who earned it?

U.S. universities are still the best in the world, and one reason they are is that they are very good at raising their own money. Universities are also better than legislators at managing their own budgets and setting their own curricula, without state interference.

Why not let them?

(Image: TheAtlantic.com)

A few years ago, my son was being harrassed by another middle school student.  We knew that bullies can become even more dangerous if parents intervene, but this had become too serious to ignore, so my husband and I marched together to the principal’s office and laid it all on the line.  

Fortunately, the principal took us seriously and the bullying was immediately stopped.  Had it not been resolved, however, my husband and I would have continued to take action ourselves, up to and including moving our son to another school. 

A couple days ago, on the day of the shooting, our daughter received a minor bit of bullying herself, which the teacher apparently did nothing about.   I admit I was a little more afraid this time.  What if none of us can act against misbehavior or abuse anymore because we’re afraid we’ll be shot if we do?

Every Knox County parent received a recorded phone message from the system superintendant yesterday.  The gist was that this latest shooting was not, in fact, random — the two kids knew each other and were having some (yet unrevealed) difficulties.  Be at peace, therefore: there are no gangs, no conspiracies, and the rest of your children are safe.

Well, yes and no.

The superintendant’s words reassured me that those of us blessed with the right family resources still have a great deal of control over our own children’s safety; it does not necessarily mean, however, that this or any school had any further ability to prevent this shooting than if it *had been* a random event.   While we may be able to point to a number of risk factors, reasons, and motives in the aftermath, we can’t proactively lock up or expel every child who exhibits them, nor can we even separate ourselves or our children from every potential “thug.”

Simply:  we can’t always “see it coming.”

We need to be prudent about safety, of course, but we must also be reasonable.  I doubt that the schools can or should do very much more than they already do.  The fact is that the great majority of children are not murderers, including the great majority of children who live in the same sort of environment as Central High’s shooter.

Probably, we each need to do our best to carry on, and do the best we can, as always.  Nor is it generally very useful to make decisions or conduct our lives in an atmosphere of fear. 

If there is any single key to safe and effective educations for our children,  it probably is the parent, and guess what?  I found the article I mentioned in yesterday’s post (Who needs to be a walking bibliography like my husband, anyway, when God gave us the Internet?)    I don’t agree with every word, but felt the author had some brilliantly-new insights I’d not seen anywhere else before. 

Tales out of School: How a pushy, Type A mother stopped reading Jonathan Kozol and learned to love the public schools  (Sandra Tsing Loh, The Atlantic, March 2008)

Image: Goods 4 Girls

This is a picture of girls learning how to use menstrual pads.  Maybe this topic embarrasses you, but imagine how embarrassed you would be if you were a young woman who had no access to any kind of menstrual protection at all. 

Imagine trying to go to school or work without such protection. For girls and young women in many parts of the world, their lives virtually come to a halt for up to a week every month.  In some places, the lack of proper sanitation for girls means that school ends for them completely once they enter puberty. 

Proctor and Gamble has a program to provide girls with disposable products, and you may have seen some of their ads.  Proceeds from selected purchases help fund this program.

There is an even better solution than Proctor and Gamble’s, however.  Disposable sanitary products don’t last, and they also cause significant environmental problems where disposal facilities are inadequate.  Goods 4 Girls is a non-profit organization that has stepped in to fill the gap.  Since most of these girls are using rags now, having a reusable, washable pad that is more sophisticated (with a waterproof barrier) may be enough to allow them to participate in school and other activities.   Goods 4 Girls accepts cash donations  or or donations of reusable pads, which donors can either purchase or sew themselves — patterns are provided. 

For more information, please visit http://www.goods4girls.org/

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Related Post:
Wednesday for (almost) women: Locks of Love

I posted yesterday about the Mother-Daughter Book Club  my daughter and I have been part of for the past four years.  Here are the books we read during the last two of them:

5th Grade

• Ruby Holler by Sharon Creech
• Worst Enemies/Best Friends (Beacon Street Girls, volume 1) by Annie Bryant
• Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse
• Jacob Have I Loved by Katherine Paterson
• The Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett
• The Witches by Roald Dahl
• Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O’Dell
• Princess Academy by Shannon Hale

6th Grade

• Catherine Called Birdie by Karen Cushman
• The First Horse I See by Sally Keehn
• Hatchet Gary Paulsen
• Rachel’s Journal: the Story of a Pioneer Girl by Marissa Moss
• The Tale of Despereaux: Being the Story of a Mouse, a Princess, Some Soup and a Spool of Thread by Kate Dicamillo
• The Doll People by Ann M. M. Martin, Laura Godwin, Brian Selznick, and Ann M. Martin
• Sahara Special by Esmé Raji Codell
• Kira-Kira by Cynthia Kadohata

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Related Posts:

Mother-Daughter Book Club List, Part 1
International Women’s Day: Toasting Pink

Smart, strong women read books.

This is the lesson I hope the daughters in our mother-daughter book club are learning.  We’ve just finished our 4th year together, and even though our daughters are growing taller than we are, we hope to continue.  We meet about once a month, and the girls take turns hosting and leading the discussion.  Moms help out by providing an activity and food. 

We’ve visited one author in her home and heard another one lecture about being a writer; we’ve marvelled over a local grandmother’s WWII rationing coupons while trying to bake without sugar; we’ve built tiny “Borrower” houses and been teased by our daughters when the books made us cry. 

These are the books we’ve read thus far.  You may recognize some old friends, but we discovered some really wonderful new ones, as well. 

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Creative Commons Photo, “Little Red”  by Flickr.com’s Aussie Patches, aka Ali J
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3rd Grade

• From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E.L. Konigsburg
• Felicity (American Girls Collection Books) by assorted authors
• The Gadget Wars by Betsy Duffey
• The Magic Treehouse book #16. Hour of the Olympics by Mary Pope Osborne
• Molly (American Girls Collection Books) by assorted authors
• The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis
• Emmy by Connie Jordan Green

4th Grade

• Island of the Aunts by Eva Ibbotson
• The other side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George
• Number the Stars by Lois Lowry
• Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder
• Joey Pigza Loses Control by Jack Gantos
• The Borrowers by Mary Norton
• Misty of Chincoteague by Marguerite Henry

 - To see rest of list, click here -

Good news for “older employees:” According to MSN, there’s hope after all!

Apparently, there’s a huge job shortage looming just ahead as baby-boomers approach retirement, meaning that several industries will be particularly short-handed when it comes to the more experienced employees that they most want and need. Among the most promising of those industries are health care, business-to-business services, education, and services for the elderly.

What makes these particular jobs attractive to the seasoned employee is that they tend to be both lucrative and flexible; moreover, they call upon one’s existing expertise and experience, requiring at most only a minimal investment in school or retraining.

The key? Being open-minded. Also, just a little thing — we may have to wait until 2014.