A Fine Line

Schools fall victim to clever marketing in ways people don’t always realize or acknowledge. The last reminder I had of this was the peculiar celebration of what is called “100s Day” in elementary schools across the entire country. Corporate America has managed to create a classroom holiday based on the arbitrarily chosen number 100. They market it as math. We teachers fall for gimmicks like this and swear the kids love it. Kids will love most things that you’re excited about, or pretend to be excited about until maybe middle school. So each day teachers add one to the count and when they hit 100, in come 100 little hands and feet carrying buttons, crackers, pennies, nails and other objects that will add up to a couple thousand by the time the last kid brings his stuff in which will be about day 105.

Educational catalogs are filled with 100s Day posters, pencils, stickers, activity books, hats and exorbitant pricing. Does anyone car about 101s Day? Not really. Why not make big deals about other days like that military favorite, March 4^th. Get it? March forth? At least it’s clever. Other days that deserve celebration are April 2, which signifies that passing of the day you can’t trust anyone to not make a fool out of you, February 15 which would signal the dropping of the boy or girlfriend you lost the lust for, but kept around long enough to get through Valentine’s Day and of course the first regular season game of the Green Bay Packers.

The Seuss folks have been extremely successful about creating a day of praise for the great author who wrote Sam I Am on a bet that he couldn’t write a book using only 50 words. Kids, teachers and administrators wear tall striped hats, Cat In The Hat ties and socks with Horton and at least one Who embroidered on them. Seuss books fly off the shelves, padding the wallets of Aunt Alli and her alligator all the way through to the Zizzer Zazzer Zuzz. I’m wondering when Sponge Bob Squarepants Day will be declared. We could all wear sponges on our butts and learn about the mysteries of the sea. I’m surprised that “Get Your Parents to Spend More Money Day” hasn’t been pushed by the feds to boost our ailing economy. Maybe they just haven’t thought of it yet.

Edumercialism has always been part of the candy industry. People have figured out how to teach counting, sorting, graphing, adding, predicting and the reward, subtraction, using M&M candies. Fractions are taught with candy bars that are made to break easily into fractional parts like Hersheys has so cleverly done. Candy corn, Skittle, jellybean, Gummy Bear and Life Saver math can all be found if you Google the right way.

Commercialism sneaks into schools on many scooters. The examples above are choices made by individuals or institutions. They would not lose anything by not getting involved in the celebration of commercially manufactured days or using the products suggested by their producers. Some commercial endorsement comes along defacto, during fundraising efforts throughout the year. Scrip, bottle top contests, barcode collection, wrapping paper sales, and enticing loving parents to purchase cups and refrigerator magnets memorializing artistic childhood renderings is edumercialism at its most crazy making. We want to support schools and the efforts of parent groups dedicated to children’s education, but do feel the sense of manipulation child involved campaigns for funding create. Without such fundraising, schools would be without many of the projects and equipment that benefit everyone.

Public school educators and parents want what is best for children. They want them to have computers, art supplies, visiting musicians, sound systems and things they see in other schools. Product promotion may just have to be the price we all have to pay to give money towards the education of all children. Ironic.

I think parents would gladly contribute money at the beginning of the year to buy out of all fundraisers for the rest of the year. That would mean no selling, no buying, no gimmicks or scheme involvement of any kind. People would be paying to be left alone, free of guilt and done for the entire year. Multiply it by six when your child is in first grade and you’re home free until middle school.

Well, maybe not exactly free…

So you woke up with the usual mix of, “Darn, the weekend is almost over!” and “Yea, the kids will be back in school tomorrow!” Then you realize the kids won’t be going to school, but they’ll be home for the entire week and there is snow. The kids are even sick of it. Where once they used to run to the windows and beg to go sledding, now they look at it like a big plate of salad and cottage cheese. Besides, they lost half their winter clothes anyway.

So what can you do with your children for the seven hours a day they are usually in school? They’ve only been up an hour and already are complaining about how there is nothing to do and they’re so bored and can't they get another video game. Nothing you suggest will excite them. Unless it costs a lot of money, involves electronics, animation or volume they won’t be interested. You offer all the ideas you can come up with but still the bottom lips are curled down and eyes rolled up. You have to resort to something they will be able to relate to. You’ll have to become the person they won’t say no to, the one they don’t sass, pout for or manipulate…their teacher. You have no choice. Do this right today and the rest of the week will be free of mumble and moan. You'll be back to your book in no time.

Make them get all bundled up, don the backpack and walk around the outside of the house. Open the door, greet them all by name and make them hang up their own things. Call them all to the living room carpet and go over the days’ events which you have written on a piece of white shelf paper you had left over from the last time you actually had time to replace shelf paper.

Start out the day with language arts, they’re used to that. Have them pick books to read to practice the reading strategies they learned at school. They'll swear they don‘t even know what a strategy is. Ask them to read out loud so you know they’re really doing it. If they insist on reading in their heads, ask them to retell the story when they’re finished as you quickly read the book yourself so you can catch 'em trying to make stuff up.

After reading, hand out some paper and pencils for writing. Make sure the pencils aren’t sharp. That will make them comfortable. It’s the familiar. Movement is good for brain function so don’t fret when they continually pop up to get a new pencil, roam around a bit and then realize there's no eraser on the thing. One more slow wind around the house. Kids are great at killing time. Be sure you have a clock in the living room so they have something to check every ten minutes while wishing they knew how to tell time.

Do math next. Anything having to do with money, time or measurement is sure to go over well because these answers are clear. The time is never 11:ab. The time is 11: and some other two numbers less than 60. A dime is 10 and a nickel is 5. Period. You can count on math when nothing else in the world seems to make sense, except from middle school on.

Now, point out to the kids that you are only on the second activity of the day and watch their faces. It’s time for recess. Get everyone layered in whatever winter clothes are left and head outside only remind kids of the rules as you stand at the closed door wagging your finger with one hand and holding onto the knobwith the other. No throwing snow, no pushing, no sliding on the ice, no sliding on what will eventually be grass, no teasing, intimidating or threatening. Stand at the window and watch the kids pretty much stand in one place for fifteen minutes. Call them in and tell them it’s time for snack. Finally, something they are excited about. Bring out the celery and mushroom slices with a chunk of tofu between. Miraculously, they realize they aren’t really hungry.

Remind them that there is still science, social studies and Spanish left to do before the first day of vacation is over. Show them the stack of workbooks you got from Half Price Books that have everything they’ll need to stay busy. Sound really, really cheery like you‘re actually excited. That’s what teachers do and it won’t take long for the kids to recognize the smell of it. Busywork aka seatwork aka torture. If you have the kind of children who like to complain about how bored they are or how there’s never anything to do in your stupid house, shelf paper is really cheap these days. After about half a day of this you'll realize just how self-directed your children can be when a day with you as teacher is their only other option.

Have some peace and quiet on me.

Who thought that putting zip-off legs on little kids pants was a good idea? It’s not like they are on safari and need to carry a canoe across a river. I’ve been holding up the bottom of somebody’s pants in front of the classroom for the last two days now asking, “Whose is this?” They don’t remember unless they’re standing there in boots and shorts with zippers around the bottom and you‘re staring at their kneecaps.

Now that winter is almost over and we can look to spring, be sure to go to your child’s school and check out the lost and found. It’s absolutely confounding what kids don’t realize they’re missing. How do you walk home in eight inches of snow with only one shoe and not notice?

If you plan to insulate your soon to be greener home this summer, don’t go out and buy costly materials. Why, you could cover the better part of a four bedroom colonial attic with all the mittens, jackets, scarves, and snow pants laying in internment just outside the office. How many people can claim they have Land’s End insulation? And that's just the non-perishable items. Hazmat suits are donned to empty the lunchboxes and bags that have been buried so long the now liquid contents even make dumpsters hold their noses.

But before you say that final good-bye to the season, stop in the office and ask to see the lost and found drawer. There you will possibly find the glasses your child said he lost at church, the watch you bought your kid so he’d get home on time, the heirloom necklace your little girl wore because it made her look pretty and the cell phone you’ve been looking for since your sweet little boy snuck it out in his backpack just under the Star Wars guys. In haphazard display will be pagers, ipods, video games, inhalers and the clarinet you said would get lost if she didn’t take better care of it. It’s a Vegas pawn shop without the pawn or the Vegas part.

Next winter, parents, don’t bother with the nice clothes. I know you mean well, but it won’t be worth it. They’ll just come to represent your kinda crazy part. You’ll find yourself taking inventory every morning and afternoon to see if all the pieces are still there. When something is missing, it will take on double the meaning because everything in winter comes in twos. When one of those items gets lost it renders the other useless. Hearing your child trying to defend himself by saying, “I can wear this one,“ while holding up the left hand glove just makes you madder. You’ll find yourself headfirst at the bottom of a wooden box, swimming through two feet of clothing orphans, throwing onto the floor other parents’ kids’ clothes with both hands, the hands you used to write your master’s thesis. See what you’ve become.

Oh by the way, the forecast is for snow.

Did you ever have one of those weeks where everything seems to go wrong, like your dogs eat a full bottle of anti-inflammatories you got because one started limping really badly, so you had to induce double vomiting to figure out who ate most? Then you had to take them to the emergency room for charcoal treatment and subcutaneous hydration leaving them looking like two little hunchbacks, one of which doesn’t even limp anymore?

Or did you ever have a seventeen year old diabetic cat who eats prescription food that comes in a shrink wrapped case of twenty-four cans? Were you ever in such a hurry that you just put it up on top of the stove until you got back, but the recuperating dogs figured out how to pull it down and tear open cans with their bleeding gums leaving shards of aluminum shimmering like the ripples on water during the last hour of sleep you just lost over the weekend? What about when you got your partner teacher a rabbit for the classroom and it chose to show only your friend his love and desire by spraying her clothing and not that of the other 38 people in the room so you had to dish out a couple hundred bucks to have it neutered or she'd give it away?

Yeah, it’s been one of those. I have a feeling the presidential candidates can understand. All three of them have been sent to the yoga mats to contemplate the repercussions that outside events and beings can have on one's life. I’ve tried to watch each one and figure out how they handle it when weeks like this come by, yank off the flag pins and poke them in the eyes with them.

What’s good about days like this? Ironically enough they can be unlikely equalizers. They remind us of how similar and vulnerable we are. Kids have days like these too. They get blamed for something a friend does, or maybe the whole class has to stay in from recess because somebody belched real loud on purpose and everyone started laughing but no one admitted doing it. It’s very hard to peel the layers efficiently to get to the truth of the matter, so a one-size-fits-not-fair-to-all judgment is made and administered. Punishing someone for the misdeeds of others is time effective and less complicating than getting to the facts can be.

Just as we, kids have days when nothing seems to goes right, when anger begets anger, when everyone else is dumb and when no one loves or understands them. On the same, only older hand, It’s not the rare employee who gravels up the voice, declares a well child ill or has a spouse reluctantly call in their sickness. We know when we’ve had enough of the real world.

I would say before you get to the point where you are even metaphorically downing vials of dog pills, ripping open cans with your teeth, saying stupid things to the press, or in front of a microphone, stop and do everyone a favor. As Pat Buchanan said so naturally to a fellow pundit twenty-four hours after he should have stayed home for a mental health day, “Just shut up.”

No matter how much we teachers complain about kids being absent, I’m all for a filter day once in a while. One day of peace and uncluttered thought can do wonders for the next days‘ replies. Kids in school are expected to behave well, participate, engage, volunteer, cooperate, self-control and accomplish all day every day. Adults have to drive the high road, measure words, edit, be professional, parental, measured and mature. Now tell me who in the hell can do that all the time. That’s just crazy thinking! Besides, show me one person on earth who wouldn’t lie, cheat or steal their way to personal gain all the while trying to convince people they are grown ups or congressmen, past attorneys general or even state governors. And kids? They are all a bunch of little liars just like we are only better. They play us like keyboards and we fall for it every time. They swear they aren’t tired and they are. They say they have to go to the bathroom and they don’t or that they don‘t and they did. They scream they hate us and they don‘t. No, not really. I could go on for pages, no make that volumes.

Whoa...someone needs a sick day.

So, Florida. It’s you again. You hang around in the back of the room goofing off, texting your friends, listening to the ipod you don’t think I know you have, and then wonder why you keep getting caught and punished. It’s bad enough you roll in trouble yourself, but dragging Michigan into it? Shame on you. Not exactly shocking that you both totally flunked the chapter test. So now your parents want us to let you take it all over again, huh? A do-over, just for you because you’re so special.

There’s one in every class. There is always a child whose name is uttered at least 20 times a day. The one who is willing to push other kids out of line to be first. He’s not afraid to wrestle in order to get the football for the game he insists on being team captain and quarterback of. He declares himself victim while standing among the wounded, and doesn’t understand why he can’t have, or be the exception to every rule. Don't blame him for trying, though. It works sometimes. We’ve become a fair-conscious society and young people help us all establish thought boundaries. You swore you didn’t want to be in the performance, Florida. You gave up your chance claiming you always got stupid parts and all the other kids got the good ones. That's your constant gripe. They get the wish bone, you get the coccyx.

You stomped around, pounded the desk and if truth be told I thought your head was going to explode. Yeah, you were mad. Okay, that was the last straw, I concluded. No performance, no speaking part, no walk across the stage, not for you. You would be on stage crew (and I mean no offense to stage crews). That would be your punishment this time and we all hoped you'd learn from it, or at least not ruin it for the rest of us.

So it’s the night of the play and the male lead shows up with a voice that sounds like the satellite dish got knocked out of line just a bit. The words eek out crackly, like they are being born against their will. There is no way this poor guy can get through this show. The understudy is at his aunt’s wedding that weekend and the pickings are pretty thin. Guess who are the only ones that have the parts memorized?--Florida and Michigan.

You weigh your options. Florida, although a punk, is more theatrical and you’ve seen his work before. He could definitely pull it off. Michigan, on the other hand, mainly wants attention and for someone’s coolness to rub off on him. Still, he’s not averse to getting into trouble every now and then. How do you think children would solve this dilemma?

Children have an inner Ghandi. They just want people to get along, live in peace and be nice. Their memories are too short to hold grudges which makes them very likeable people. A sense of fairness is strong, especially when it comes to their own gains. What would they do? They’d go for fairness without prejudice. They’d write the options down on little slips of paper and pick one.

I love the way kids think.

A friend came to my parent’s house with me one day and while I was doing something, she sat in the living room with my dad, who was watching television. I heard her ask a couple of questions just to get a conversation going. Not hearing any replies from him I went in and saw he staring at the TV, apparently oblivious to what she had said, “Dad, she’s been talking to you!” I admonished. Laughing, he turned to my friend and apologized. “I’m sorry. Your voice sounds just like my wife’s.”

Classrooms are seeing increasing populations of little dads in recliners. Teachers are talking and they are ignoring. Children with no legitimate excuses are being found guilty every day of selective hearing syndrome. They will sit and look right at us as we give directions and then ask if the task is crystal clear. “Yeah! “the chorus harmonizes. Kids get up, take out pencils and then in the same swivel, yell out, “What are we supposed to do?” They get to work and when it’s time for step two which requires cutting, we hear, “WHERE are the scissors?” which are on the front table they were told to go to in order to get scissors. This drives teachers crazy. Generally speaking about ¼ of the kids in a class need directions repeated, ask friends what they’re supposed to do or do things incorrectly because they didn’t listen to what was said.

Imagine watching a presidential debate and two out of eight candidates are paying little or no attention to the Tim Russert who asks, “So what is your opinion on this, Mr. X?

Mr. X looks up. “What?”

“What is your opinion?”

“On what?”

So the Russert moves on and has his question answered by Ms. Y, Mr. Z and Mr. A.

“Mr. B? How would you handle that?”

“I would leave it up to the states.” fakes Mr.B.

“You would leave the barrel price of oil up to the states? Mr. B? How would that work?”

Unfortunately, that’s the way many conversations go in classrooms. Time is wasted, those who are ready to go, get inpatient with those who never seem to listen; teachers get frustrated, the little dad gets confused and it makes for a tense workplace. When we talk with parents many tell us that their children do the same thing at home, and then punctuate it with a shake of the head and the upturned palms meaning there's nothing that can be done about this genetic deficiency.

While the urges are to admonish we may repeat ourselves three or four times. All that does is reinforce the not listening. Children quickly figure out they don’t really have to attend the first time. If you want your child to learn the fine art of being a good listener, the following suggestions may be just what the ENT ordered:

-Turn off external sounds from things like Xbox, TV, DVD and friends. Offer assistance and arrange opportunities for your child to practice. Listening is graded on the progress report under work/study skills and as such can be sharpened.

-Part of the reason kids are slow at getting the listening thing is because they tell us they don’t have any chores to do at home. Not all, of course. Just the ones that don’t listen. Too much throne time at the palace. Give the little princes jobs around the house that require them to follow multi-step directions such as cleaning out a litter pan that you forgot to line first. Oops.

-Children these days don’t have a lot of muscle strength in their arms. You can be a doubly good parent if you stack up the rewards by stacking up the tasks. Following directions can improve listening and muscle tone. Make them pick up things they capriciously strewed over the floors, under the beds and in the closets for the past four months. Step two? Pack them snugly in boxes to accomplish step three, which is to carry them down to the basement where they will stay until the room remains clean for a week.

-Have your children repeat what you have just told them to do. Require word endings and correct pronunciations. “Scrape the pasghetti offa my plate.” cannot be an acceptable answer to “What did I tell you to do after you finished dinner?” English as a second language isn’t just for foreign speakers.

Be creative. Integrate your listening curriculum with as many household chores as you can. Every time you have to repeat yourself, add a chore. If you read this piece aloud to your children, I can almost guarantee that they will ignore the whole thing except for that “add a chore” part after which their heads will spring up. They won’t need that repeated. They’ll look indignant and go into a diatribe about fairness and justice which might spark a great social studies or civics lesson! Watch what happens when they figure out that you just won. The hearing returns but only until they get the money or the favor they wanted from you in the first place.

Selective hearing syndrome. When it comes to teachers' frustrations, it's a cockroach.

It’s parent/teacher conference day; only here it is parent/teacher/student conference day. There is something new in the air and it is causing excitement in some Shorewood classrooms. These meetings are not parent sit across from teacher who talks for half and hour conferences. These are student led, and the teacher stays out of it. Students engaging in this type of meeting have been preparing to sit down with their parents and go over work samples they have declared their best work for a reason they state during the meeting. Children have portfolios that hold some work they were required to put in, much of it they chose to include. Some very young children may actually show their parents what they know as they move them from area to area in a classroom set up for the purpose of parents watching children do and discuss what was taught this trimester. If a picture is worth a thousand words, watching with your own eyes is priceless.

When you are looking at work samples and asking the right questions, you can learn more about what your child knows and how they think than you ever thought possible. Here’s an example. One child turned in a drawing of a house and family, beautifully drawn but covered with horizontal lines from one side to the other. The teacher was concerned about the cross outs suggesting anger or anxiety, possible problems at home or in class. She went up to the child, knelt down and gently asked why he ruined his beautiful picture by scribbling all over it. The boy glanced at his picture then looked up in bewilderment. “That’s not scribbling! That’s the wind!” I nodded and walked away, certain that a future in child psychology was not to be. He was probably shaking his head thinking wondering what dope his teacher is.

If you have your child with you at conferences, as how they got answers they did less on the answers themselves. You will learn much about their thinking process. Ask a lot of why questions and you’ll know if they are thinking deeply about things or just memorizing. For example: Children learn all 50 states in 3^rd grade. Ask them why there are states at all, then look at their faces. If they look at you like you’re nuts, they may have never had that discussion and it holds the bigger idea.

When you look at your child’s writing, you can tell if there is an understanding of what a word or sentence is. If all the letters run together, your child may not be able to answer the question, “What is a word?” If there are no periods, or sentence endings but a great number of “then” or “and then” connectors, your child probably doesn’t know what a complete sentence is and instead of putting the period in the wrong place, they just continuously write the world’s longest sentences. You may want to address that as you read or write with your child at home.

If your child is sticking capital letters in where they don’t belong there are a couple reasons why; either s/he doesn’t know how to physically make the lower case letter, or there is confusion about when to capitalize letters. One child started each line on the left side of the paper with an upper case letter thinking that that was where sentences began. Another capitalized the word “birthday” all the way through a piece because it is the name of a day. These are things you can only know by seeing the evidence and talking with your child about it. Learning how they think is fascinating and they usually come out looking like geniuses.

If you don’t have student led conferences, ask your child’s teacher to see work samples and ask questions about what it is you are looking at. Sometimes writing is primitive and sloppy because they were doing it five minutes before recess or writing about a topic they can’t stand writing about. Passive aggression. Kids are great at it.

No matter what kind of conference you have, use physical specimens as jump off points to discuss your child’s progress. Ask to compare work from earlier in the year to the work produced now. Even though today’s work may not be great, you may find that your child has come extremely far considering the starting point. Resist the urge to talk in terms of how your child is doing compared to other people’s kids. It does no one any good. Believe in the end that children want to do well. They want to learn and will, if we figure out how they think. This takes a conversation that includes them, not one that leaves them home or sitting out in the hall.

Just a little tip: When conferences run for two consecutive 12 hour days, try not to get the last conference on the second day. I’m just sayin’…

After thirty some years in teaching I feel qualified to state the obvious about parent volunteers. They are women. Occasionally, men will help out and I’m sure there are some that are reliable regulars somewhere but for the most part it is women doing the yeoman’s share of the work. I don’t think it is because fathers don’t care, I think it is that they think bigger. There is no way I could find even three men willing to sit at a table and count thousands of milk bottle tops and oddly enough, I tip my hat to them. One parent suggested to me that rather than being gender issue, it is a stay at home vs. out of house worker issue. I conceeded the point to him but mostly to be conciliatory.

 At any rate, this father had what I considered to be an excellent idea to raise funds for the school. Based on the knowledge that our community is full of competent residents, services and expertise could be purchased instead of popcorn or cookies. One transaction could raise $100 and the purchaser could get computer repair or house cleaning instead of 37 carbohydrates and guilt. Rather than take months to collect bottle tops which if fact are corporate tactics to product push, why not tap the talents of people invested in the good of the school community?

While nickel and dime approaches to fund raising have a foot solidly in past tradition, costs and capabilities have escalated. The time it takes to bake, package, price, present, sell and total is just not efficient when you consider that one service transaction could reap much greater reward. I think we would see a lot more representation from parents if they could offer their services rather than spending time doing something requiring twice the work for half the reward. Sure, they could count bottle tops at home, but don’t. They could put cookies in plastic bags in their homes, but I haven’t heard of them doing that and the fact that they don’t doesn’t bother me one bit. I wouldn’t either. It just doesn‘t make good economic sense.

The fact that public schools have to do fundraising at all is sickening, when you think of where other public monies go, but as long as we do it, the government gets away with being dead beat parent to children all over the country. Public funding has not kept up with today’s costs of educating young people and if corporations are about education so much that they will hand out a nickel for a milk cap, free ice-cream for a good report card or a hamburger for a child who reads 30 books, why not drop the little dance and contribute to schools because they are good corporate citizens instead of clever corporate schemers.

Until pop top, bar code and bottle top counters refuse to bite, people will assume there is enough fund raising going on to provide everything needed for quality education but when the counting stops, the trickle stops and when the trickle stops people will see just how much need there is and then maybe politicians will have to address big issues in big ways. As long as fundraising is seen as necessary, then I say think big or stop completely.