Forever Free

"Once you learn to read, you will be forever free." 

-- Frederick Douglass

I remember learning to write.  I was given a string of phonetic symbols for every sound in the English language and for that reason I could write anything.  I felt so powerful.  Spelling wasn't a problem.  All I needed was time.  However, I don't remember learning to read at all.  I must have breezed through that because I can never remember not knowing what all of those letters meant. I remember getting a prize in first grade for reading the most books and I still have my prize: a book, of course.  

I have always loved to read.  So many books and words of wisdom from writers have touched my heart throughout my lifetime.  I remember crying in my blue room in Illinois over the heartbreak of Old Yeller.  I fondly hold a collection of over 50 Nancy Drew yellow and black hardbacks, beginning with one of my favorites: The Secret of the Old Clock.  I was right alongside the young girl in Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret wondering where my boobs were. As an adolescent, I triumphed with Scarlett O'Hara and detested passive and perfect Melanie in Gone with the Wind.  I snuck books into virtually all of my classes in high school.  My reading was insatiable.  In college, it was destiny that I would gravitate to an English major.  Writing and reading as homework??? Perfect.  I sat in awe as my English professor recited John Milton's Paradise Lost from memory and made those densely woven words sensible through his passion alone.  I had the privilege of reading Langston Hughes, William Carlos Williams, Thoreau, Emerson, and, of course, Shakespeare.  

Throughout any difficulty in my life, I have found a book that has soothed my soul.  Martha Beck's book Expecting Adam became my mantra about having a child with Down Syndrome.  Where is God When It Hurts? helped me to make sense of leukemia and fear.  Maya Angelou helped in so many ways on so many days.  

It was only natural that when I had kids the reading would take on a new richer, more amazing dimension.  Sitting with a child on your lap, laughing at Dr. Seuss, wondering with Roald Dahl, rhyming with Margaret Wise Brown makes any day pure magic.  I remember riding bikes with Jack the summer of third grade down to grab the newest Harry Potter, number three -- The Prisoner of Azkaban -- and oohing and aaahing over the hardback book, all 435 pages.  The warmth of the sunshine, the gift of another epic installment about Harry and Hermione and Ron, the joy of watching Jack enthralled made that moment one of my sweetest memories.  We had the thrill of waiting up until midnight for the subsequent Harry Potters, dressing up, cheering with the crowds and devouring the books within days of their release. I am forever grateful to JK Rowling and her imagination!  Her books lit a fire within Mary Kate as well, along with Junie B. Jones, Judy Moody and our tear-inducing favorite Charlotte's Web.

One of the first things that I read after Patrick was born was that the French school system did not believe it was possible to teach a person with Down Syndrome to read.  They actually stated that any evidence of someone with Down Syndrome reading was equivalent to training a monkey!! It was a trick, not reality.  I remember getting my momma bear claws out and chiding whoever wrote that crap in my head: "Oh yeah, maybe that's true for all the French kids but look out -- my kid's no monkey!  Get out of my way.  My kid is going to read."

In preschool and kindergarten he focused on letter sounds and sight words and in first grade he was given a scientist of reading for a teacher, Mrs. Thompson.  I had complete faith in her ability to teach Patrick, along with 34 other first graders, how to break that code.  Two weeks into school I had a meeting with her.  I'm sure she doesn't remember the exchange at all, but to me, Patrick's literacy hung in the balance.  I asked her if he was going to be a good fit in her classroom.  Did she think he could learn in there.  With no hesitation, she assured me he could be there and that he would learn to read.  Five years later, almost every night Patrick reads to me and almost every night I sit in awe as I hear his voice wrap around the words in print.  Some nights, I can't help it and silent tears just come streaming down.  My boy can read!

That might not seem like much when you've never had a memory of not knowing what those crazy scratches on paper meant but I'm reading a book right now called Life is So Good.  It is the true story of George Dawson, a black man who did not learn to read until he was 98! Listening to the times he was in a restaurant and couldn't order off of a menu, feeling the times he knew he was cheated because someone realized he couldn't read, and knowing how many posters, newspapers, books, magazines, billboards, tickets, medicine bottles, doctors orders, cards, letters and life opportunities just passed him by  like leaves blowing off of a tree makes me cringe.  It's impossible to imagine being so cut off...so left out...so isolated and ashamed.

As I listen to a little voice sound out children's books beside me and feel that familiar curl of coziness as Caroline climbs aboard for another adventure I think of George.  There is so much grace in shared stories, the written words of people from past ages sharing their observations and the beauty of letters coming together in a way that hasn't happened before.  Reading is a comfort and sense of belonging to all of humanity; it's a highlighter pen for places to visit or people to meet, a spark that lights a fire, and a salve for the deepest wounds.

Today I'm grateful that I was given an opportunity to learn to read and know the love and power that comes from being able to seek information for yourself.  I'm grateful for the educational opportunities that my children have been given -- for the schools and the teachers that believed in them.  I'm grateful to live in a place where ALL children are educated and I'm profoundly moved that I can continue the circle of education with beginning teachers.  Today, I'm going to appreciate print and the immeasurable joy reading has given me my entire life and I'm going to finally find out who taught George to read..

The Eyes of Love

"There is no surprise more magical than the surprise of being loved.  It is God's finger on man's shoulder."  ~Charles Morgan

So last night I was folding laundry...a job I usually save for late Sunday nights when the whole house is quiet and it's just me.  But this week, miraculously, I was ahead of my chore and was folding on a Thursday night with John next to me.  I was trying to choose a TV show to watch.  He was on his laptop.  It was the epitome of mundane. 

I walked by his chair and he reached his hand out, not looking at me.  I looked down.  He looked up. And there they were...the eyes of love.  It wasn't romantic or sexy or anything other than supreme comfort.  "I love you," he said with his gaze.  I felt it and leaned down for a quick kiss.  And just like that, I continued forward and he went back to his computer.

An hour before that we were saying good-bye to our family friends who had come over to dinner with their 13 month old cherub.  Kalev was opening and closing his hands in that adorable good-bye that young toddlers do and I couldn't take it.  Mary Kate, Caroline and I were fussing all over him and his mom squeezed him tight and giggled with joy.  Her eyes were leaking love for her son and it was tangible and felt by all of the admirers around this sweet little guy.

Later that night, I took a walk with Buddy.  His look up at me was full of love and contentment as he waited for his leash to get attached. Just before I left, I walked down the hall to check on Mary Kate, making sure she was in bed.  With the lights off, all I could do was walk up to her bed, stoop down for a quick kiss and notice the highlights in her hair. Afterwards, I walked beside Jack, talked in the cold night time air about an amazing invention and the fun waiting for him back at college.  When we got home, Jack went upstairs and I made my way to check on Caroline and Patrick in the dark.  I could hear Caroline's slow breathing of deep sleep.  She was snuggled in covers on a cold night.  She received her goodnight kiss unaware.  Patrick, too, was cozy and lost in sleep.  His kiss was sprinkled on the top of his head and he took no notice.  I walked up to say goodnight to Jack.  This is our last night before he heads back to school.  I looked around his comfortably messy room and felt a pang.  I'm going to miss that guy...again.

And so, I started thinking about looking at those we love.  Getting to see them each day and having the chance to say with only our eyes how lovely they are.  How inspiring.  How brave.  How magnificent.  

I remember reading  a quote from Maya Angelou.  She was talking about her son and the intense love she felt for him. And she mentioned that she wanted him (and all children) to be greeted with the radiant smile and effusive love of a mother whenever they come home.  She wanted all children to feel the thrill of love's gaze.  The joy of being cherished.  The transformation of being wholly, indefatigably loved with abandon.  I try to remember that whenever I see my kids after I've been away from them for awhile and it's not hard.  They are adored and hopefully they feel it.


But there are others who rarely, if ever, feel the sweet contentment of love's gaze.  Of course, we can guess who they are.  They are the "marginalized"...those on the outskirts of society so I guess that makes them on the outskirts of love.  Which is pretty crappy.  We have the homeless, the addicted, the abused, the defeated, the discouraged, the bullied, the taunted, the disabled, the neglected, the orphaned.  Whatever the situation, the least we can do is offer acceptance, encouragement and yes, even love in the simplest way...through our eyes.  People feel judged.  They feel ridiculed. They feel dismissed or misunderstood simply by the way we look at them.  How often do we look past these people? For me, I'm ashamed to say...way too often.

About a year ago, I was standing in church listening to the priest and I could barely hear him.  I was distracted by a father just loving his daughter.  She was in a wheelchair, drooling with fists clenched in that twisted, painful, tell-tale sign of cerebral palsy. She clearly couldn't speak and yet the conversation those two were having drowned out the world. He couldn't have been more rapt, more fascinated or more interested in her and she knew it.  His love and tenderness took my breath away and I knew that for me, that interaction was today's gospel, homily and God's holy presence all wrapped up into one.  


That moment still inspires me.  And it reminds me why Mother Teresa, the Dalai Lama, Gandhi and Martin Luther King are all revered.  They were (and in the Dalai Lama's case still are) able to give every single person that gaze of loving devotion. There is no price.  The criminal, the leper, the sick, the mentally ill...all of us...are worthy simply because we are here. 


So...I guess I've stumbled onto an extra New Year's Resolution.  In addition to the exercise I need to do, the closets I need to clean or the letters I need to write comes a real challenge: look at the world with a gaze of love.  Yes, that means even when my kids bug me, when someone is rude, annoying, self-centered, obnoxious, needy, intolerable or just plain wrong I need to hold my gaze and offer my love.  I'm pretty sure I'm going to blow it a million times but why not give it a try...that's what resolutions are all about.

Once Upon A TIme

Once upon a time there was a daddy that held his newborn baby on the first day of July and heard the words: Down Syndrome, open heart surgery and heart defect all in the same sentence.  Holding that baby that was barely an hour old the daddy felt sadness and fear like a total eclipse.  His normal sunshine had a shadow.  He could barely breathe.  He couldn't stop holding his baby.  He had to leave his wife and carry his tiny bundle up to some tests. Those tests would reveal the heart defect that was suspected.  As the daddy was watching the tests, all alone and desperate, a song was playing.

In The Arms of an Angel

That melody, those words and the moment created an indescribable peace and comfort for this daddy.  He held onto that in his hours and days of bad news that followed.  He could feel the blessing he was given.  He knew his son had a rough road ahead but he also knew that the "arms of an angel" would wrap them all up and see them through.

For nine weeks, that baby tried to grow.  At the weekly weigh-ins at the doctor's office, the mommy dreamed of adding little pebbles to the baby's socks so that there would be some weight gained but she knew it would only delay the truth: the heart that was their baby's had only one large chamber and only one valve.  A skilled surgeon would need to build the walls of that baby's heart and create two valves out of one.  The hope was to wait until that baby got bigger but it took way too much energy to eat.  Every meal was like a full workout for that tiny baby.  Normally, it takes about six weeks for a baby's lungs to fully adapt to breathing oxygen.  Once that happened, the lungs tried to do the work of the heart for our baby and he officially went into heart failure. Open heart surgery was no longer sometime in the future.  The time was now, September.

As that daddy held his tiny son, the darkness and fear couldn't help but begin their march toward this daddy's big open heart.  He needed something to get him through this scary part.  He wanted to picture life after open heart surgery.  He tried to imagine the months following.  He couldn't.  All he knew was that within a little while Christmas was coming and his other two children, ages 6 and 4, would be eagerly awaiting Santa's arrival. Would his baby be here for Christmas? Would he survive?  Would he ever know all of the joy that Christmas brings?

Those thoughts swirled around in a sea of fright and hope, a mixture of possibility and worry and landed on one guiding thought.  The daddy announced: "If we get through this and our baby survives we are going to have the biggest, most amazing Christmas decorations and lights to celebrate.  Every year we will add to it and soon we will have the brightest, most dazzling celebration light show around our town."

Miraculously that baby hung on for dear life.  He survived his rib cage being pulled apart, his body being put on a bypass machine so that all of the blood could empty from the heart, his heart being cut open and the "electric field" being broken, the surgeon maneuvering a Dacron patch to create the missing walls and the surgeon somehow using the tissue from one valve to create two.  He withstood a breathing tube, three days without food and two chest tubes to drain the fluids from his body still measured in inches.  He was enveloped by music that brought comfort and hope. And he weathered that invasive attack on his small body with the grace of a baby.  Any one of us would be complaining, reliving the tortuous moments, worrying about recovery and trying to imagine feeling better.  The baby slept and ate and snuggled in and healed remarkably quickly.

Within a few days it was clear that the baby was going to see Christmas.  The daddy got busy.  True to his word he bought some Christmas lights, box after box, bordering on obnoxious and teetering on over the top.  He didn't care.  He bought a jigsaw and started cutting wood.  He created a lollipop forest, a row of candy canes and a gingerbread house.  He let his young children sand and paint and get messy. He was a former master at creating a parade float.  He knew how to set up a large party.  Those skills came in handy for the Christmas light project. 

Each year, the daddy gets out his jigsaw and creates another wooden character.  Twelve years later there is a North Pole sign being held by a penguin, Santa and his sleigh, Mrs. Claus, three snowmen (one in honor of baby Caroline wearing a pink scarf) , a mailbox where you can mail a letter to Santa, and last year's newest addition an angel.

"Christmas waves a magic wand over this world, and behold, everything is softer and more beautiful.” 

~Norman Vincent Peale

This year's newest addition -- after much voting and discussion -- was an ice-skater, skating in 

Rock-elf-eller Center. 

Twelve years later that faithful daddy still celebrates the miracle of his baby's health.  He brightens up his neighborhood at Christmas and remembers to acknowledge the light during times of darkness.  

May we each take the time to brighten up our small corner of the world: through our actions, our faith, our generous heart and our mindful moments of optimism even during the darkest hours. Someone once called it: stubborn gladness.  With only a handful of days until we celebrate a real miracle, let's steep in stubborn gladness, reflect joy and be messengers of hope...just like a certain house I know.

The Airport

“Whenever I get gloomy with the state of the world, I think about the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport. General opinion's starting to make out that we live in a world of hatred and greed, but I don't see that. It seems to me that love is everywhere. Often it's not particularly dignified or newsworthy, but it's always there - fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, old friends." -- Love Actually (movie) 

I've been hanging around airports the last couple of days.  I've been traveling alone, in my own little world, and so I got to do a lot of observing...listening to conversations, watching the arrivals, seeing the departures and creating stories in my head.  

One of my favorite movies is called The Terminal with Tom Hanks and Catherine Zeta-Jones.  In that movie, Tom Hanks is stuck indefinitely at an airport and must figure out how to survive (and thrive) in a world where everyone is going someplace and has no time to help.  Tom Hanks makes friends with busy airport employees and yet stays true to himself throughout the movie. 


What I love about that movie is what I love about airports: the connections.  Most of the time, we are busy on our path.  We almost always have blinders on...busy, so busy, insidiously intent on getting to our destination and on maintaining our forward momentum.  It is literally the opposite of what we know brings about happiness...enjoying the journey...and yet still we march forward.  


At the airport, for just a moment, instead of being on our daily straight line, we have circles...circles of connections all around us.  Wherever you look, you have families saying good-bye through tears and bear hugs.  You can spot a romantic couple stealing a kiss or whispering love notes.  There are kids eagerly awaiting the arrival of a parent with a home-made poster or a shy smile.  There are reconnections of several generations and excited whoops and hollers.  Yesterday, as I made my way home there was a very non-descript older lady being pushed in a wheelchair by some airport employee who was also pushing a very obese young twenty-something guy in a separate wheelchair.  Of course, I noticed the guy and barely registered the old lady in pink. However, when I heard "Sis!!!" yelled out from an equally old lady in blue and the ensuing home-coming of love and friendship and family that surrounded those two in a frenetic airport, I took note.  Old lady in pink is important to the old lady in blue.  She's somebody's someone special and it was plain as day.  It made me smile, not just for the two of them and their obvious joy, but also in anticipation of the day I yell "Sis!!!" to my old lady sister in a pretty pink sweater...forcing some random airport employee to get caught up in our homecoming: two old ladies and loads of love.  I can just picture it. :)


Airports are portals of adventure but are also just as importantly a passageway home.  Waiting for Jack at the airport a few days before Thanksgiving I had tears in my eyes.  I had nowhere I'd rather be.  I wanted to just be as close as I could get to the spot where he stepped off the plane and headed back to us.  I had to be satisfied with lurking near the new monorail that our airport has created to carry people back and forth to the new terminal.  Waiting with Caroline, Patrick, Mary Kate and John we had our circle, ready to celebrate a home-coming, waiting to feel complete as a family again. And there he stepped, cool as a newly minted college guy can be when his whole family shows up at the airport to bring him home. We swarmed him, hugged him, tried to play it cool as we laughed and joked and hugged some more.  All around us, the same miracle was repeating itself: regular people pausing for all the world to see and greeting, loving and welcoming home (or sending off) their loved one.  It's OK to reveal your emotions here...at an airport real life happens and the masks we so carefully contrive to take us through our days slip away. 


Airports are busy.  Airports are a weird paradox between all of the boundaries and borders we put up to guard ourselves from our enemies and all of the crazy interconnectedness of the world.  We are ALL somebody's someone special.  We ALL matter.  Someone somewhere is waiting for us, wishing us home or sending us off with good luck and lots of love. The pilots have families that care; the airline attendants do too; the people who work the counter and (God bless them) deal with missed flights, wrong bookings, lost luggage, tired travelers with crabby kids and oversized baggage also have people waiting for them at home ready to love them up.  Those air traffic control heroes who watch mind-numbing radar  and coordinate the flow of flights in a safe calm manner most definitely have people back home cheering them on.  And at the airport we give them our life and our safety and take a leap of faith.  We grant them access to our lives all the while knowing that it is a fragile, breakable, no-guarantee situation. We each hold within us the knowledge that we're taking a risk and it is this reason that allows us the emotional moments of good-bye and welcome home.   


I guess at the airport, with its mandatory security clearance, x-rays, pat downs and baggage checks, we are forced to stop and take note that our world might not be as safe or as free as we lull ourselves into believing. It makes us recognize the incredible gift of traveling without limits or restrictions and the amazing job that the airports and airlines do day in and day out without very much applause or appreciation.  They keep us free and safe and return us home again.  Airports are a treasure and today I say thank you to every single person who works so hard to help it all run deceptively smoothly.  Thank you for your dedication, your professionalism and your kind acceptance of all of us stumbling and bumbling travelers.  Thank you!  Now, bring my husband home safe, OK?

Catherine Grace

"A babe in the house is a well-spring of pleasure, a messenger of peace and love, a resting place for innocence on earth, a link between angels and men."

                                     --Martin Fraquhar Tupper

There's a baby in our house...well, not quite, a baby in my sister's house.  Catherine Grace.  She was born on November 22, 2011 and those of us with number focus think it's a very cool birthday: 11.22.11. Good birthday karma.


Babies, oh babies.  I've been blessed with four tiny bundles to love and squeeze and hold in the middle of the night and whisper and sing and create silly nicknames for and I know I sound greedy but it really doesn't seem like enough.  Look what they do...just grow up and away they go!  Having a baby in the house brings a quiet sense of wonder, a reverence and a feeling of connection to the bigger world and yes, even the universe.  It forces you to pause and soak in that baby goodness.  Holding someone so very fresh and brand new always creates in me a feeling of possibly, if I play my cards right, just maybe being privy to the secret of life.  If I just hold him long enough, I'll know that connection to the heavens.  If I snuggle in close, I might understand for a moment the incomprehensible. 


How can it happen?  It's as magic as a butterfly.  How do the cells know to become eyes, heart muscle, skin, toes, bones and ligaments?  How can the heart beat so steadily and just keep going like the never ending waves in the ocean?  How does the baby know your voice when it's been hearing it all muffled and under fluid for her whole life? How can two completely different people together create a baby that has a little of her daddy and a little of her mommy and yet be the only one on the planet, forever irreplaceable and one-of-a-kind?  It's a breath-taking and breathless time and it stuns me each and every time.


Holding Baby Catherine Grace, my whole world stops.  I'm taken back to holding each of my babies for that very first time.  My heart is so full with the job and privilege and gift of motherhood.  I remember being soooo clueless, soooo tired, soooooo full of doubt and misgivings and honestly wondering how anybody thought I could be capable enough of mothering this brand new baby named Jack.  


Seeing Mary Kate for the first time, I was awash with the joy of having a daughter.  The possibility of pink. I had convinced myself that I was having another boy and so upon hearing the words, "You have a daughter!" filled with disbelief I begged John to "check again".  Hearing Jack call her "Mary Cake" for the first few days of her life renewed in me the deliciousness of babyhood...yes, she was better than cake! 


Holding Patrick for the first time I was filled with a sense of the familiar. I "knew" him in a way I hadn't felt with Jack or Mary Kate and the instant message that came through loud and clear from the universe in those moments I simply spoke robotically to John: "This is Patrick.  He has Down Syndrome and is exactly as he should be." I was comforted by that message but felt an incredible urge to "circle the wagons" and begin protecting him. Little did I know that he would need no protecting.  


And then there's Caroline. "Out of the everywhere and into the here." Never thinking I would be crazy enough or lucky enough to have a fourth baby, I couldn't believe that she was here.  To this day, I still whisper in her ear, "Thank you for coming" as she sleeps. I knew she was there "out of the everywhere"...could feel it, and one late night I asked her to come. I know it sounds bizarre.  And I guess that's what makes it even more real...yes, the bizarre happens and she is living proof.  Someday, she'll get her own blog story about that fateful night. Watching the kids love her, protect her, dote on her and envelope her in love has been amazing. 


Babies.  Every single baby deserves to be wanted, cherished and held tight in a cocoon of love. So many are not.  Many, many babies are thrown away and discarded because of bad timing, the wrong gender, a cleft palate, an extra chromosome.  Holding Catherine Grace reminds me to fight for those unwanted babies.  There are couples waiting in deep sadness for a hole to be filled.  They are waiting to be chosen as an adoptive family.  They are waiting to raise enough money to be able to adopt.  They are waiting and trying to muddle though layers and layers of bureaucracy trying to wind their way though a maze that has their baby at the end. If for some reason, you find yourself unable to love a baby at the moment you are pregnant, know for certain that there is someone in the world who will love your baby if you just give them a chance. I promise.


I know of many families who have adopted special needs kids, baby girls from foreign countries, children out of the foster care system, kids with the worst stories possible and yet still their family finds them. I know of one family in my own town who adopted a little girl from India with tremendous burns all over her little body, severe health issues, a need for constant vigilant care and still her mom stood up and said, "She is mine."and with her mother's ferocious love she has transformed and blossomed and become the very clever and capable little girl she is today. 


Reece's Rainbow is an organization that connects orphans all over the world who have Down Syndrome with their adoptive families. If you are looking for a charity to donate to this holiday season, they might be the one.  They offer you a chance to have a Christmas Angel ornament supporting a particular child for $35.  If you're not careful, you might fall in love and bring a baby home.  That's what happened to Jennifer and Hector Sanchez when they got the Christmas Angel Ornament for baby Sophia in December of 2009.  Today she is home with her forever family, thriving and growing in astounding ways, and keeping her three older brothers busy. And the ripple of seeing Baby Sophia exactly where she is meant to be has led to numerous additional adoptions.  The Herrington Family will be making their way overseas in January to adopt their special bundle Baby Olivia.  


Miracles happen everyday.  Babies are born.  Families reach out and scale mountains to get to their children. The unwanted are welcomed and the discarded are treasured. During this season of waiting for a Blessed Holy Child, I can't help but think of the many babies waiting. Love is at the center of babyhood.  May all children feel it and know it and be surrounded in it.  Just like precious Catherine Grace, my little spot of holiness in an ordinary day. 

No Child Left Behind -- Ironic Isn't It?

“We need not to be let alone. We need to be really bothered once in a while. How long is it since you were really bothered? About something important, about something real?” 

- Ray Bradbury

I'm really bothered.  There is a dirty little secret in education and it is called No Child Left Behind.  Ask any educator what they think of it and you will get an earful. It has a fantastic premise: "Setting high standards and establishing measurable goals can improve individual outcomes in education."  Who can be against such a thing?  

Nobody.

Which is why the bill passed with huge bi-partisan support in 2002 and the heavyweights of politics signed on: proposed by George W. Bush, co-authored by John Boehner (R-OH),  George Miller (D-CA), Ted Kennedy (D- MA), Judd Gregg (R- NH).  It sounded great.  It was going to reform education and make teachers accountable. It was going to make sure that every child in every school improved and made progress or else.  It was the "or else" that changed everything.  If the improvements didn't happen every single year, your school went into "Program Improvement".  Eventually your entire district would go into Program Improvement.  

After ten years of NCLB, 80% of the districts in the state of California are in Program Improvement.

Should we guess which districts these are?  The poorest and the most diverse.  No duh.

What happens when your entire district is Program Improvement?

no field trips

no art

no science

no social studies

no writing of any significance

no literature

no PE

reading and math take up most of the day -- with constant re-teaching and fill in the bubble testing

Here's where it gets really bad.  The teaching is literally taken out of the teachers' hands and a "scripted curriculum" is given.  The teacher must be on the same page, on the same day, at the same time as all of the other teachers at the same grade level in the district.  People come in and check and make notes of where you are.  Any professional respect has vanished.  Any feeling of competency is gone.  Teachers with 20-30 years of experience in the poorest, most diverse districts are treated with derision and disrespect.  Morale at these schools is at an all time low.

It used to be that if you taught in a poor, diverse district your students had a chance, a real chance to grow and learn and make progress and lift themselves out of poverty.  They had opportunities afforded them that their family life would never provide: science camp and outdoor education in 6th grade, a field trip to a farm, an observatory, a play.  As a first grade teacher in one of these districts I started out my year with a field trip to the city library by city bus.  We had them get their first library card and check out their first ever book; 75% had never been to a library and sadly, many did not even know what a library was.  Although the economic and family situations of my students were often disastrous there was always the hope and love of school.  Reading big books or fantastic stories and poems, singing songs, playing outside games, creating art projects and doing science experiments naturally ignited their curiosity and fired up their wonder.  
That is all gone now.

Today, students in Program Improvement districts are treated to heaping mounds of reading drudgery and worksheets.  There are math worksheets and the unforgiving pace of constantly moving ahead regardless of mastery and leaving behind most of the class.  The second language learners are given ever more opportunities of re-teaching and more worksheets.  It is grim.  

And yes, I'm bothered. 
Real bothered.

I keep waiting for the big wigs to shout this insanity down.  But, how can you say out loud that you are against NCLB without looking like a teaching lightweight?

Of course, I am for high expectations and equal opportunity.  Who isn't?

But, I am not for condemning an entire segment of our society to educational gruel while the haves continue to have all of the enrichment and joy of learning.  

Most of you don't know education's dirty little secret because you are part of the lucky 20%.  Your district is wealthy or perhaps your children attend private school -- either way your child's school is full to the brim with opportunity, joy and educational privilege.  You naturally thought all children were given real opportunities for learning. Well, No Child Left Behind left behind an entire chunk of our population. Check out the drop out rates. 

And where is the grace in all of this?

It is in the incredible resilient spirit of both the students and teachers in the desperate schools.  After ten solid years of this, those teachers still come to school each day with hope in their heart and faith that their students can learn and grow even with drudgery.  They work to provide a moment of lightness: skipping to recess and calling it PE, singing while they take attendance, assigning the fun stuff for homework.  

The students still come to school with bright eyes and high hopes.  Their parents, with no real knowledge of the system, still put their faith in the school. 

Those teachers are heroes.

They haven't left town, retired or put their hands up in the air and waved a flag of surrender.

They are still there, regardless of the rancor, the disrespect and the impossibility of their situation.  

They believe in the kids.

And now here is the Kryptonite of No Child Left Behind that no one wants the poor and diverse to know:  we can dismantle it.  We have the power.  All we have to do is to choose not to take the test.  If enough parents make that choice, the test becomes invalid.  Suddenly, Program Improvement has no weight. 

Trust me.  No one wants you to know this or do this as a parent.   

There will be incredible push back and repercussions but what can be worse than TEN years of drudgery??? TEN more years?  Entire generations of learners thinking this is the only way?

I'm ready for a fight.  Bring it on.

As a parent at one of those schools, I'd opt out of the test. Bring the legislators with no educational knowledge to task.  Ask them to think up some new way to have high expectations and accountability.  I'm all for it.  I'm against teaching to the test and pure drudgery.

Our poorest, most disadvantaged kids need way more than that.  

They need the wonder and joy and excitement of school.

"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."
-- Martin Luther King, Jr.


Today, I'm not quiet any more.

Home Is Where the Heart Is

   "My home is not a place.  It is people." -- Lois McMaster Bujold

I've heard it said, "You can't go home again." and I've worried about that.  Because if that sentiment is true, what happens to Jack, my oldest who has left home and is in the very first few months of college?  Is it possible that he won't ever return home with the same heart, the same self, the same Jack-ness that we love and adore? What does that mean?  Where do we go from here as a family?

I had some crazy feelings of excitement and trepidation as we ventured onto an airplane just John and I headed to Los Angeles to see Jack for the first time in two and a half months. I was simultaneously tortured by the idea of seeing him for just a few hours and thrilled with any time at all.  Like a wilted flower, any drip of water would do.  When it became clear that we would for sure get to see Jack, John's face was lit up with a smile that wouldn't stop.  He kept looking at me, smiling.  I kept brushing him off.  I just wasn't sure.  Were we going to be cramping Jack's style?  Would he want us there?  How was it going to play out?  It felt unreal and dream-like and I couldn't quite picture it at all. Most of all, I wondered, would Jack be the same? 

We got to his dorm and took the elevator up.  We walked the halls that at the beginning of school had been freshly painted, new and clean. Today, they were dirty, lived-in and rather collegiate looking. We knocked on the door and found three room-mates missing and three girls sitting in the living room with Jack in the shower...so college...so classic.  We introduced ourselves and heard their stories. Zoe from Dallas, Aubrey from San Diego, and Jordan from LA.  All were together and friendly and polite.  Zoe gave us the run down of the plans for the day.  We made small talk and visited until Jack popped out, clean and ready to go. We hugged and took a good long look at the newest incarnation of Jack: college guy.  He was smiling, excited and happy.  He was ready to show us around and we followed his lead and got ready to go.  Zoe, ever the cruise director, handed Jack a list of phone numbers that he could use since he had misplaced his phone. 

First stop: book store.  We walked across campus and noticed mothers and fathers and sons and daughters just like us.  We felt part of something and yet a cloistered bubble of three at the same time. We decided to get some red for the football game and put on our required USC clothes.  We watched guys paint their entire bodies, we saw Trojans and cheerleaders and families and fraternities and an entire college scene that seemed scripted and watched Jack maneuver and make his way.  He greeted friends as he passed through and knew instinctively where he was going.  He guided us through it all.  He seemed comfortable and confident.  This was his turf and he wanted to share.  He showed us where he practiced volleyball, where he filled out paperwork for the screenwriting program, where he hung out with friends.  Best of all, he was genuinely himself, nothing was lost or missing, totally himself but with a bit more.

I don't know when I first felt this, maybe it was eating a hot dog at the Parents' Barbeque amid red and gold swaying balloons or it could have been as we were rushed along with the sea of red making its way to the Coliseum, but I knew that my heart was here.  It didn't matter what I was doing or the thousands of people beside me, as long as I was with Jack, my heart was here.  It was then that I realized for perhaps the first time that my heart is indeed cut into four very large pieces and they are outside of me.  

I guess since my kids have always been under my roof and generally with me that I was tricked into thinking that my heart was in my home.  But being with Jack and feeling a piece of myself there, I know now that my heart is wherever my children are.  Somehow, in the strangest way, I feel comforted by this.  I feel as if I have unintentionally made four horcruxes and stitched a little piece of my soul into Jack, Mary Kate, Patrick and Caroline.  They may travel the earth but they have my heart and that is where my home is -- wherever they are.

We kicked the flagpole and wished for good luck.  We resisted the bacon wrapped hot dogs with sizzling vegetables tempting us on our way to the stadium.  We walked by the rose garden planted in the early 1920's and filtered our way into the LA Coliseum.  We went down into the student section almost onto the field and were greeted by Jack's friends with a warm welcome.  We basked in the balmy southern California sunshine, the sublime joy of an afternoon of nothing but football and Jack and started learning the Trojan way.

If you've never been to a USC game let me tell you one thing: they live large.  They must have taken lessons from the British because nobody does Ceremony and Pomp better than these guys.  Out comes the fairy tale white horse with a Trojan atop.  He leaps off the horse and plunges his sword into the soil.  A cheer releases from the thousands of people and the game begins.  The band with full regalia plays its heart out.  The cheerleaders give it their all.  Gigantic flags are waving with an individual U and S and C and a Trojan all working together.  Smoke comes billowing out of a side entrance and with music playing, cheerleaders yelling and the crowd chanting, the football players rush onto the field.  

The game was fantastic...triple overtime and a heartbreaker of a loss...but that was beside the point.  We were with Jack.  Suddenly, we had to rush to the airport. We had to kiss our sweet son good-bye.  We got a glimpse of his world and had to head back to ours, where three other hearts were waiting.  We knew that we had found our way back home and that Jack would too.  Thanksgiving isn't that far away.

Change is inevitable.  Babies grow up.  Kids move out and we must adjust our sails or get stuck in stagnant waters.  This week-end, the grace that filled me up was learning that my home and my heart are where my people are...no matter where on the planet that takes me.