Fishing!

Rethinking My Passion

I am an educator. I am very proud of being an educator. I come from a long line of public educators and I work hard to deliver instruction to students that is a cut above anything else they have ever received or will receive. In my current position I have revamped the technology curriculum at the elementary school where I teach. Instead of doing what every other school in our district does in the computer lab--electronic worksheets, essentially--I created a curriculum that starts with PreK students learning to alter text color, backgrounds, and inserting clip art to 5th grade students who powerfully blog about what they read and create multi-media projects on a whim. The school I teach in is AWESOME! It's a foreign language magnet school with a literacy curriculum that draws national attention (no lie) and a math curriculum that is being modeled across the district. It's the cleanest school I've ever been in and lately I've been in MANY. Why? Because my son is going to start Kindergarten in the fall and I have to get him into a good school. Here's the problem, he didn't get into the school where I work. He didn't get into our second choice, either. He's zoned to attend a school where he would be the only white kid. A school where we saw a drug dealer in the parking lot just today when driving around. That school is 2.2 miles from our house. Up the street is another wonderful school that has awesome parent support and is actually only .8 of a mile from our house. On a nice weather day, we could walk to school. We're not zoned for that school and I've been told they have only 1 student opening for a 3rd grader. Our third option is another magnet school. It's about 20 miles from my house. I can't get him to school on time and be at work on time myself. I've been told to put him on a bus. The neighborhood in which this magnet school is located is sketchy. In fact, I'd be concerned about PTA presentations in the evenings, even.

How am I supposed to go to my job day in and day out, pour my soul into my passion of educating kids, giving them the BEST education they can get in the district, yet my kids don't get the benefit? I have to send them to something less than that and be okay with that! I am furious. I cannot afford private education. I'm not about to send my kid to a parochial school and I'm at my wit's end. How do I look at my sweet boy each morning, drop him off at school and say, see ya after I finish teaching at my great school that you're being denied entrance because your name didn't come up in the lottery. I love you!

Here's my question. On the magnet school waiting list, we're #18 for our first choice and #40 for our second. Siblings get preference. If you have an older sibling already in the school, then younger siblings go higher on the wait list. How is having a sibling at the school any different from having a parent working at the school? And when my kids can't get in, how am I supposed to remain loyal to my job?

Fun at the Park

We should have taken pictures yesterday since we got out to play and the weather was so AWESOME! They're calling for a wintery mix on Saturday. What's that all about? Here are a few images from one of our recent visits to a favorite park.

Bikes!

Both kids got bikes for Christmas--Santa brought Breck a great orange bike that matches his dragon helmet and My Carolyn and Papa John got Meric a Big Wheel. To say they love their bikes is an understatement. Over the break we have gone on at least one bike ride each day and sometimes two. It's pretty cute!

No Nap for Meric

National Boards are getting the best of me right now. It doesn't help that it is requiring 2 hours of my time each night to get Meric to bed...well, not to bed, but asleep. In an effort to recover National Board working time and not to lose it on a 2 year old, I've decided to alter my schedule to accommodate us both. If I'll just go ahead and go to bed when Meric does, then I won't be angry with her for preventing me from getting my work done. Plus, I'll have gone to bed early enough that I can get up at 4:00am and work for a couple of hours before kicking in gear to go to work.

I tried it this morning and it went just fine. I drank a pot of coffee and reread the standards (about 70 pages) for Entry 3. The kids were on the perfect schedule to get their naps on time and I was planning to work again through nap time. That was, until Meric entered the office, dropped a lap board from the chair onto my open laptop and busted the keys off.

Bridget the Awesome Great was calm and collected and continued to remind me, as I freaked out and cried, that I do have options. We have our desktop computer and I haven't lost any of my work. As the kids crawled into beds for nap, I got ready to work again...only no nap for Meric. What is up with this kid not sleeping? Is it developmental or is it intentional to drive me crazy!?

"No"hawk

So we get the Parents of the Year award because when our 4 year old decided he needed a mohawk, we said, "Go for it." Did either of us really want him to have a mohawk? No. Was it worth the battle? No. It was fun for the one day that he liked it but I think he grew weary of the attention. After that he just wanted to wear it down. That means he looks like he's got a 1989 mudflap. Nicccce. And we can't get back into the beauty shop to get the rest of his hair cut until....you guessed it....after Christmas. It's all good and truly it's not THAT bad. So he "won" and now he's over it...so WE won. Like I said, Parents of the Year!

Why is the rum always gone?

This weekend was AWESOME at the cabin. We traveled to my old stomping grounds for some relaxation with our bestest buds, the Joheims. And while they truly are our friends and not our relatives, Breck thinks Sydney is his cousin. Go figure.

Those two roamed around and explored everywhere their hearts took them. When Sydney showed back up at the cabin with an actual deer leg my first response was, "Where are your mothers?!" I'm know Breck was a little jealous but that subsided very quickly when he found a "coon" tail...really it was a squirrel tail. Oh yeah, good times! Syd was so funny about the doggone deer leg.

Breck: "You should give that back to the deer because you know it hurts to not have your leg."
Syd: "Breck, the deer is dead, he doesn't need this leg anymore."

We had lots of alcohol and Breck was thrilled to see that we (just the adults, no kids) were drinking Captain Jack Sparrow's favorite, rum. He loves the line in the movie, "Why is the rum always gone?" And then Jack stands up, swerves and says, "Oh, that's why."

When I felt hung over this morning and Jess had a belly ache and Bridget discovered that there was hardly a shot left in the bottle, well...oh, that's why.

A lot of great pictures were taken, just not by us. You'll have to check out the pics from the real photographer: Somewhere Over the Rainbow.