A Fine Line

We Can Wait 'Til After the Holidays

2008-12-31T17:12:10Z

After the holidays.

Kids don’t realize how little adults want to do between mid-December and January 2. From businesses to classrooms we use the phrase about waiting until after the holidays to procrastinate in an oddly acceptable way. Since people take off in all directions, seems a big white flag is flown over the country admitting that we are helpless against the demands of the season and can’t be responsible for anything normally expected of us until after the last noisemaker is blown, candle put our or tree dragged to the curb. That may be the appeal of the holidays people don’t talk about that much. There is freedom during that time; we eat what we want in bigger portion sizes than usual, we stay up later, we let major decisions go, and we spend more than we normally would on things we would normally not buy. All this under the cover of it’s the holidays.

The only thing that really got me moving this week was receipt of my real estate tax bill. I moved on that really fast, because it’s a cold hearted visitor proceeded by no card of good wishes and no hope that I have a happy new year. It just wants money. My insurance company didn’t project quite high enough so a check will have to be written, signed, dated correctly and given over to the village. I’m always dumbfounded when I figure out that tax on my little four room “charmer” adds an extra $300.00 a month to my otherwise modest mortgage. I’ll be making a concerted effort to spend at least $75.00 worth of quality time in every room during each month of the new year so that next December I‘ll think it was worth it.

A few things would make it even more worth it. I think for residents under 5’3”, garbage carts need to be less Sesame Street and more Frank Lloyd Wright. Less height, more width. More prairie, less urban alley, please. You see, if we don’t shovel them out we get a note about suspension of future trash collections until stated snow offenses are corrected. What they don’t get is that some of us can’t reach the top of the carts, much less open them enough to dump a bag of empty egg nog cartons into it. I do apologize for the path to the trash not being cleared, but there are many moving parts involved here, none of which include laziness. Obviously the way was clear enough to reach the cart, open the lid and place the violation notice under the rim. It was better than last year though, when white out or something was used to scrawl a note on the cart lid about moving it out of the snow. What they may not realize is that unless you live next to an open field, there is no place to put snow in Shorewood. Not to cast aspersions, but my neighbors snow blow all over my cart, my parking space and my arbor vitae great wall. After that, the plows come through the alley and seal the deal with an additional two or three feet of plowed snow that fell overboard onto my property which included the garbage cart. If I pull the cart out, the people who use the garages across the alley push it back in so they can back and forth their two cars into the space originally built for one. I know I should get out there and break the ice off the wheels and try to get it on even ground. I have an ice chipper. Why is it so hard to tromp across the back yard, chip the ice and throw it into the neighbor’s yard? I don’t know…

Guess I’ll wait ‘til after the holidays.

It's a Snow Day. I Had to Do Something!

2008-12-19T18:12:40Z

The first so called holiday card I receive every year is from a financial advisor. It’s an annual reminder that she puts my interests first. I appreciate it, and the ones to follow. It clearly takes more effort than an e-card or nothing at all. There has been controversy about cards, of course, because they are for people and people don’t agree on things. NPR played a story about those fabulous family photo letters vs. cards about Jesus. Are we putting our families and news about them above Mary and Joseph’s kids and the good news that has surrounded him? I don’t know. I just think those lists of how everyone in the family is doing are pretty lame. A friend made one up one year about how his son had just gotten out of jail and that his daughter was finally in a methadone treatment program. The wife, he boasted, conquered her gambling addiction and he (after many past promises)has stopping sleeping around his female employees. This time for real. So all in all, the year had been good to them. Very well done. The hope of a new year wafts from every word and says to us all that if those losers can make it so can we. I am thinking of coming out with my own greeting card line and already have some ideas. Here’s my sample portfolio for a year. Good investment opportunity here, entrepreneurs. Call me.

January: "It's Martin Luther King Jr. Day! Even though you're white, I value our friendship."

February: "It's almost Valentine's Day, an opportunity to prove to other people we're still having sex."

March: "It's Women's History Month! Let's start with Tonya Harding and work our way back."

April: "Sorry you're reading this off of the inside of an empty envelope. Happy April Fools Day.

May: "Happy Memorial Day! Even though you've never really done anything heroic, I'm pretty sure you would if you had to. "

May: "Happy Mother's Day! You've done more for me than I would ever do for anyone. No, really."

June: "Happy Father's Day! I know you may or may not be my real father, but at this point what difference does it really make?"

July: "It's July 4^th! Show America you love her. Drink beer and start a fire."

August: "No presents. No cards. No guilt. Happy August."

September: "Labor Day! Don't worry. Just put the ground beef and charcoal on a different credit card."

October. "Happy Halloween! Yea! We get to wear slutty clothes!!!"

November: "Happy Thanksgiving. Would you please make sure you label the pies this year? Last year I told my mouth it was getting pumpkin and apparently someone snuck in sweet potato."

December: "Hey! Nothing says Happy Holidays like a fight over the baby Jesus."

"Happy Snow and Shovel Day, everybody!" It sucks to be us.

We're Trying and Losing

2008-12-17T13:46:00Z

Hey, there’s something going around…

I spend my days with kids. These kids touch things. They touch the door knobs, push bars, slide locks, chairs, pencils, one another and me. I watch them pick their noses, slide their hands up and down across stuck out tongue (on yeah, really), lick their fingers and draw on the table tops leaving a saliva picture. We have discussed at length what a bad idea all of these things are, and we catch what we can but no way can we interrupt every disgusting movement that occurs.

We have hand sanitizer right inside each door, a sink with cool soap on each side of the room and an open policy about hand washing or leaving to go to the restroom where there is also soap and water. Parents, be sure to remind your child to wash hands before eating, and they will never be denied the opportunity. This sounds like it should work, but when schools were built, I guess kids had more time. Our lunch time starts at 12:05 and many of our classes are at art, music, and other specials until noon. Try to get a couple dozen people into snow pants, boots, jackets, with lunch, mittens, hats and scarves all ready to carry to lunch in less than five minutes. Remember, three have stuck zippers, one lost a glove and is in tears, a lunch box is dripping some juice drink that opened inside and one kid is still finishing spelling and you can’t leave him alone in the room. This does not leave time to do a military hand wash. A squirt of hand sanitizer, sure, but there are parents who want nothing to do with the stuff. They want honest to goodness soap and water, full minute soapy rinse before their child eats. Sorry. If your child has specials up until noon in winter, it’s just not going to happen.

We suggest you send something with your child to use for hand washing. Many parents put a wipe in the lunch box or instruct the child to stop in the rest room before getting into the lunch line. That’s a good idea, except there are germs all over the numeric pad the kids have to type lunch account codes on, and smeared over everything they come in contact with from that point on.

In Japan, I visited a school in which there was a 20 foot long sink just outside the cafeteria. Lots of kids could wash at one time. This makes sense. Schools would need this kind of upgrade in order for there to be enough sink room for everyone. There are two or three sinks for 100 students on each end of the hall. Line up 100 kids outside a bathroom door and give them 4 minutes to wash their hands squeaky clean while being quiet enough so as not to disturb others.

Scheduling classes to end twenty minutes before lunch would be groovy except there is no way a schedule can be built to do that. No one has an extra twenty minutes to spare. Nah-uh. So, we do the best we possibly can, but if surgery room hygiene is your thing, you may have to work that out with your child and with everyone else‘s child, as well. The schedules in schools these days don’t always leave time for us to do what we say. We don’t even have time to do what we do.

Maybe we can form a committee.

A Fine Line; It don't need no stinkin' motto.

2008-12-07T23:41:00Z

Hey, have a good motto for your local school? It’s all the rage, now that education involves recruiting and customer service. It’s not just Ford, it’s “Ford Tough”. Not a pansy truck like a Toyota. Although “Quality is Job One” used to be catchy, it’s sort of a laugh line these days. How ’bout, “Ford; OKAY! We get it!”

I like the snooty nature of IBM telling us to “Think” back in the day. How’s that one working? Now we’re being asked to add this fluff to school names, too. It is causing quite a bit of consternation from people who took too many English courses along the way. I’m seeing otherwise very clever and pragmatic intellectuals arguing about which four words should follow the school name and if it would sell sweat shirts.

What is with our urge to brand? Can‘t there be the assumption that public schools are set up to educate children? How ‘bout this, “Federico Fellini School. We teach. Crazy, isn‘t it?” I can see School of Rock might need a war cry like, “Wake up, play music and die.” so as not to be confused with “School of Rock; We are all Igneous”.

A school called, “Old School; we teach, test and move on,” probably wouldn’t get many takers, I guess. Maybe we do need mottos for definition. “Lemming School; Tomorrow’s Followers“, could attract that segment of our population uninterested in taking the lead or climbing up a corporate ladder or even getting homework in on time.

My theory is we’re being snookered by well meaning capitalists who are pushing books, kits, programs, consultant time, classroom materials and speaking engagements. Come up a market, a need and something the market might buy to meet the need. They bank on our belief that they’re on to something new. Hey, nothing’s new. Character Education is basically a ten commandment retread, but without the thous and shalts. If you’re declared a school of character, you get money and the prestige of saying that that‘s what you are. A couple catches, though… you have to use half the money you would be granted to go to wherever the Character Education Partnership Conference will be held and present there for nothing, and you would have to use the other half to recruit other followers, no doubt to the website where they can buy anything they need to become as successful as you are. The payoff will be a country full of suspiciously polite children. Just wait and see.

Now if you want to be a Blue Ribbon School, you have to make George Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act look like it’s actually working. That means you have attained and maintained high academic goals (determined by test scores). In return you get a big banner to fly on your school which declares that no child has been left behind in your building and what a great idea that act was.

No matter what I think, the search for identity goes on in schools across our country. I found some good ones from corporate America, but my favorite is from the National Security Agency.

“Anything is possible, the impossible just takes longer.”

Indeed.

Curb Stop Shopping

2008-12-01T13:34:10Z

I was surprised to hear a New Berlin friend express her amazement at the roadside rummage giveaways we have in Shorewood. They don’t do that where she lives. Maybe they don't know how cool it is. Maybe they haven’t heard about the reuse part of the 3Rs. I find it a service that I can leave an old chair out in the alley next to my trash cart one day, and two days later wake up and it’s gone. I hope someone made a few bucks on my laziness. This little quirk of ours is one I really like. I think it’s the appeal of the mystery around who took our things and the magic of its disappearance. It's like backwards santa. The fact that we don’t have to pay the DPW to pick it up or to crush it is an added plus.

There are some days better than others. Summer and spring are usually the high times, but I’m trying to create some buzz about December curb shopping. I think Shorewood.now could set aside a little corner for us to post what we will be dragging out of the house, where it will be put and when we can get it when no one will see us. Instead of letters to Santa, we could post wish lists and hope someone will grant one. For example, I was wishing someone would have a pair of size 7 tap shoes laying out on the curb because that’s the latest great idea I’ve had. I’m going to learn to tap for health and entertainment. The fifty cent pieces crazy glued to the soles of my running shoes isn’t quite making it. It would be great if someone would tell me when those would be available.

I know someone who is looking for lawn furniture. Come fall, there is always a good selection of the butt molded plastic white chairs around. Unfortunately, you missed the season. Now you will have to wait until January when people toss the old stuff they got new stuff to replace. If only we knew what would be there, it would save time and gas. We could check things off our shopping lists right there in front seat. Hopefully, non-residents will honor the honor system which dictates that Shorewood residents get first dibs, but after two days it’s all up for grabs.

I think if we could coordinate our curb shops, we could be more effective. Maybe Mondays could be recreation and fitness equipment, Tuesday office machines, Wednesday furniture, Thursday breakables, Friday old windows and doors, Saturday boxes of clothing (size marked please) and Sunday entertainment pieces like cassettes, disks, albums, DVDs, books and children’s toys or play equipment.

Some tips: Don’t remove cushions from sofas or overstuffed chairs. The smell will go away eventually and having to get new ones defeats the beauty of the find.

If it doesn’t work, please say so. It may not matter, but some of us aren’t too handy.

Make a big sign that says “FREE” so your neighbors don’t think we’re stealing.

Leave ice cube trays in the refrigerators. People need those.

Put any hardware necessary for installation in a labeled plastic bag, please.

If you leave leftovers out (say, turkey?) please date it.

This holiday season, we can get some good bargains right here in our beloved Shorewood. Someone is bound to have something you want. Do your part.

Take it.

Grandma 2, Willpower 0

2008-11-27T15:08:11Z

Boy was that turkey good.

In order to stave off the discomfort of the Palin public humiliation and slaughter of Alaskan birds, I had to fool myself so I would be able to eat the dinner my sister so generously prepared. It had to have been a lot of work. Approaching the front door I smelled the trademark family holiday smell and it was good. It took me about seven seconds to get to the carving tray where I hand-hovered over the little hunks looking for just the right catch then pecked a long piece of white meat like a bird plucks fish out of a lake.

When meat is sliced, it doesn’t look like an animal anymore. It became in my mind, sort of like cake that signified a party. The rest of the “cake” still took on the look of a turkey, yes but cake makers can be very clever these days (yeah, that’s you Ace of Cakes). I convinced myself that it was a plate accessory, rather than the main character of the dinner story.

I’m probably not the only one in America who swore not to eat meat again after the sideshow of last week, and certainly not the only one to have gone back on the promise to myself and to other living things that they would no longer be my next guilty pleasure. Now, after the way I went after that meal even my dogs are looking at me with suspicion.

I’m weak I’m weak, but right after I eat the take home pie Grandma Jo sent me out with, I’ll gird up my loins (don’t worry pigs) and renew my resolve to cut out the meat. On a grander level I’ll try yet again to prove to myself that there is at least the small possibility that I might be able to exhibit a modicum of willpower and self-regulation.

This year I blame my sister as I wipe cold turkey sandwich off my face, she and my pumpkin and apple pie baking mother who use culinary art as a form of mind control.

It worked.

Turkey as Metaphor

2008-11-22T14:19:08Z

Wow, I’ve never seen turkeys being slaughtered before. I’m one of those people who operates with my fingers in my ears, saying la,la,la,la over and over again until the truth teller goes away. My meat is grown on Styrofoam. There have been a couple times in the recent past, however, that caused me to erase my vote for eating meat. One was a newscast showing how Foie Gras was actually made. Stretching a goose throat and forcing it to feed was horrifying. I’ve never ordered it, but never complained about it either. This turkey slaughter debacle was the other. Shoving a turkey head first into a machine that punctures, then drains the turkey of its life blood was not easy to watch. “Well, where do you think turkey dinner comes from?” I ask myself as I’ve asked my students through the years. Seeing it was something different.

When we talk to children about rural vs. city life, the discussion is always steered to farms. Every year there are kids who look absolutely stupefied when asked where things like bacon, hot dogs and hamburgers come from. One child, when asked the origin of pork, yelled out “Chickens!” with a weird sense of certainty. Another was convinced ham was from cows, hamburger was from pigs and fish were declared to have sprung from…fish. One for four.

In the interest of full disclosure, I think we have a responsibility to understand, and pass on the understanding to our children that when we eat meat, something had to die. We need to connect the living things of the world with, if nothing else, acknowledgement. I’m not for making people feel guilty about what they choose to eat, or not eat and I’m sure I’ll be diving in to a nice grilled steak sometime soon. I’m not, nor have ever been a vegetarian. Meatloaf reminds me of my childhood, shrimp cocktails preclude special events, hot dogs and burgers bring families, tailgaters and neighborhoods together. But I think killing is starting to get to me, on every level.

At the very least, we all owe it to ourselves to think about it. So thanks, Sarah. You gave me pause for thought. Your thinking still scares the hell out of me, but this was a good wake-up slap across the face. If only the executioner would have taken a moment to thank each animal for its sacrifice, maybe it would have felt a little different. But then, it's not about me. From now on when I talk with kids about where food comes from, I’ll be sure to put a bit more heart in it.

Gunga Din's Math Lesson

2008-11-21T13:29:08Z

There are some things teachers do not look forward to and November is one of them. Report cards, which take many volunteer hours to do, parent/teacher conferences which also take hours to appropriately prepare for are the first two. More than that, it is the welcome mat for the upcoming holidays. There are some things parents can do to make their child’s school life more productive than it normally is at the end of each year. Some teachers pretty much feel that come mid-November, the idea of teaching anything new, difficult or the least bit complex should be put on hold. The kids are falling to hype just the way many of us are. November brings Thanksgiving, which brings relatives in many instances. Children are excited to hear of all the plans for the day. They go along shopping for the turkey or turducken or tofurkey and see it become the 400 pound gorilla in the room until the holiday is over. Children know that right after Thanksgiving goes out the back door, _______ (fill in special day here) comes in the front. Even if your family doesn’t celebrate a holiday during this time, school is out. This is reason enough for kids to be excited. Something different is great, as long as it doesn’t last too long.

At the risk of seeming like jerks, teachers say very little about things these two months. We write our plans in pencil. It would help if parents could keep in mind that after the kids are wound up, they come spinning into classrooms the following day. Please:

-Don’t start baking cookies until December. Nothing says school’s out like staying up until 9pm putting frosting on sugar cookies.

-If Grandma and Grandpa are coming, hold the news inside until the morning of the day they arrive.

-Under no circumstances should you take children shopping for gifts with you. They become temporarily disassociated with reality, much like democrats on the evening of November 4. It takes a while for them to come down off the possibility high.

-Withhold all holiday plans from your children. Every day can be a new adventure. Pretend it’s spontaneous.

-Don’t let kids sign holiday cards. It adds a commitment to their celebrations…a binding contract.

-Keep bedtime what it always is. No late nights no matter how much fun they are having watching the adults play Trivial Pursuit like a blood sport. In fact, move bedtime to an hour earlier.

Families please, have mercy on your child’s teachers. Go along with us in our sometimes futile attempts to keep school a place of learning. If a bunch of art projects that take the shapes of turkeys, snow people, horns of plenty, and the ubiquitous evergreen trees start coming home, you’ll know we’ve given up.

Happy (Insert holiday here.)

Ixney On the Iner Lays and Other Friendly Advice

2008-11-18T13:17:00Z

Hey, have you stepped outside? It’s cold out there. Children don’t necessarily pay attention to the weather; they run right over it on the way to the equipment. You won’t believe what they don’t notice. We will find kids outside with no mittens, and they don’t seem to get that you can pull your hands up into your sleeves or put them in the pockets of the warm jacket they did remember to put on. Don’t bother with gloves. They are useless to little kids. First of all the kids can’t get their fingers in them if they are lined or when they are wet, and secondly half of them don’t know left from right so it takes a lot of time to twist the glove around. Many kids don’t even consider it’s on the wrong hand. Help a teacher, buy mittens. Thrill a teacher; buy mitten clips.

Children have hoods, but they are so floppy that little ears are bright red after time outside. Many a teacher has taken off their scarf to wrap around a child’s exposed ears. It seems like it is only then that some realize how cold they actually are! Be sure your child’s hood closes tightly or a hat comes to school. Be sure to label it with a name, though, because blue or purple knit hats all look alike.

Whoever invented boot liners should have taken forty kids outside in winter before going to the patent office. As long as the liners are in the boots things are fine, but after the first roll in the snow they come out with the foot and the sock. Don’t get boots with liners. Your child will be frustrated every day.

Snow pants. The plastic adjusters on the shoulders either don’t work or they break. That’s just a fact. Figure out a way to make them so they don’t slip and pass it around to all the parents of Shorewood. We will all thank you. Once again, put a name on the inside.

Just so you know, when kids come to school on a really cold day improperly dressed we can’t help but wonder. Even if your child refuses to wear stuff, send it along in a bag and we will force them to put it on later. It usually doesn’t take much. We’re not you. They succumb and later thank us for it, but not out loud.

Sweet winter. How we have missed you…

Stop Messing With Your Tooth and Finish Your Report About How Presidents Are Elected

2008-11-13T01:58:58Z

Children’s perceptions are beautiful. I don’t know which little bits of aural information they hang on to, or why they come to conclusions, but just conversing with them is just plain fun. They say funny things like, “I fell and I think I broke my butt.” or “I have all this stuff in my nose and it’s going up in my brain and it’s hard to think.”

Sometimes they’ll get into physical humor like just falling off a chair for no apparent reason and if you don’t look worried at them, they start looking around to see if anyone saw it. That’s not even the most funny part to me; that would be the fact that lots of other kids saw it and they just kept on reading or working on whatever. It’s part of their everyday world. Just like when we see a drunk fall out of the car, I suppose.

I love the things they write, too. It comes from the heart or sometimes a book or sometimes it is merely a collection of words they are sure they spell correctly. Children write about their moms or dads a lot. Reading the writing of a child who feels secure and loved always gives my skepticism about the future, a little kick of hope.

Children learn about plagiarism the first time they read a report about the “quiet migration of these regal birds.” They look confused when asked what it means, and feel little obligation to really be able to explain it. Their idea of what a report is evolves over time. It goes from sort of winging it, copying out of a book and finally emerges as a beautiful butterfly full of misspellings and grammatical errors. We start out by reading the sentence to them and explain what it means, have them tell us how a kid might say that and prompt them to make the edit. The migration sentences turns out to be something like, “The birds are cool and look really proud. You can hardly hear them.” (You’re welcome middle school teachers.)

I had a great laugh today checking some social studies assessments. When asked about the community, one of the questions asked what was always in front of a public building (the flag). While most of the kids got it, my favorite answer was, “A door.” We also had about 30 different spellings of the name Barack Obama when we asked the name of our new president. Incidentally, one child thought the new commander in chief was Sarah Palin, another Michelle Obama and one declared it was Max, the sixth grader upstairs.

During this time of year when teachers spend hours on curriculum planning, preparation, ponder and diagnoses, let’s remember that what we teach six and seven year olds is only sometimes what they learn.

Get some sleep.

Take the Opportunity to Downsize Your Life

2008-11-06T13:37:00Z

As we all approach a season of debt, credit card debt, guilt, obligation and of course, joy, I think we need to educate our children in more meaningful ways of thinking about Thanksgiving and depending on your views, the next big reason to celebrate. What is actually left of them? We’ve all been succored into believing that the larger the expenditure, the more the love. Let’s bring it all down to the basics, save money, teach values and end up with the same outcomes only leave out the debt, waste, materialism and gluttony. While materialism and gluttony have always been attractive to me, they have not served me well as I sit at my annual rummage sales in pants another size larger.

First, let’s take on Thanksgiving. Pull the word apart and the mandate is clear. Thank somebody for something. Whether your thanks take you back to religious roots or you simply take some time to show appreciation to someone who has made a positive difference in your life, let's keep it simple. We’ve gotten to the point where it becomes a day of high culinary, emotional and familial expectations. Memories of Thanksgivings past will be made.

Since the core of a good Thanksgiving experience is an atmosphere of serenity, reflection, and now low-fat gravy and pie, it seems we could keep that while losing the great American love of excess. Some people find it in others, some on their own. The meal doesn’t have to take 36 hours from thawing to toothpick. Maybe those who call Thanksgiving “Turkey Day” are the most honest of all. In that case, go for it. Start the preparations now.

If you say Thanksgiving is about family, then make it about family. Tell family stories, look at photos or videos, talk about the future, your family member’s goals or hopes. Have some fun together, feel sad for those no longer there and put food in parentheses.

If religion is your focus, ask yourself WWJD? on Thanksgiving. Maybe now, with our economic problems we can not only reconsider the role of government and the governing, but we can reconsider living within our means without being ashamed of it. Start small.

Maybe with a Cornish hen.

Open Your Bag, Here's a T-Shirt!

2008-10-28T12:48:12Z

So we had the Halloween parties all afternoon on Friday, the kids went trick or treating on Sunday and now I hear some neighborhoods are doing it again on Thursday evening? Do we think kids aren’t enjoying their childhoods or something? This gets to be expensive for people. That’s why I just walk the dogs between five and seven. I must say I wasn’t the only one gone Sunday, either. Home Depot was full of people with no Packer game to watch, passing off Halloween on someone else in the family and I‘ve never seen so many people walking behind their usually homebound family dogs at the dog park. I understand. It’s not that much fun to sit at the front door waiting for kids who you’ve never seen before, who are standing with their uncomfortable parents or weirder yet, were driven over to your neighborhood and dropped off at the corner. Poor Lake Drive. I know lots of our future who tell me they go there because they get big candy bars.

I saw about four teenage guys sitting at the bus stop with their bags of candy and very lame costumes. They were going through all the free stuff they managed to scare people into giving them. Who is going to tell four fourteen year olds, they don’t get candy? Kids are huge these days. They might come back and take revenge.

I was thinking of using my old tactic of putting an empty candy bowl on the front porch with a cute sign that asked the children to “Take just one, please”. Then I thought of giving out everything I plan to take to Goodwill, or put a used book in everyone’s bag and watch the smile disappear. One of my students told me that last year I said I was going to give out toothbrushes. This year I just crossed a big ladder over my front steps. I’ll bet no one even looked to see if I had fallen off it and was lying dead in a basket of the neighbor’s mini Hershey bars.

Let’s all put a fork in trick or treating and if we must, do it at different times throughout the year on dates known only to the people in the neighborhood. If word gets out early, the day is automatically changed to the next day. If football size boys come to the door and they can’t tell you the name of a sixth grade teacher at Lake Bluff or Atwater well then sorry, Buster. Give them some aftershave and send them on their way.

When something is so hopelessly broken don’t bother trying to fix it. Hit it over and over again with a sledgehammer until you kill it. Only then, can we truly start all over; that is if we want to.

August is available…

No Child Left Without A Party

2008-10-23T12:48:00Z

I wonder if parents know how much teaching time is wasted on Halloween. Sure, it’s fun and all but it is a real drag on momentum just forming around this time of year. It is probably most intrusive with the youngest school kids. It seems by sixth grade, walking around school in a plastic painted bag with lipstick on has lost its luster. They just want candy.

This year, it is particularly glaring. Halloween used to be on October 31^st. Through the years, the 31^st has become the day adults celebrate Halloween and kids do it the Sunday before. This year, the schools are having Halloween a whole week early--tomorrow, the 24. Why? Because people have come to expect schools to take care of this Halloween for them.

People may not understand that for elementary teachers, Halloween starts around September 15, at least as a main topic of conversation and excitement. Some classrooms begin to make masks or decorations or Halloween stories or something so everyone has at least one thing (sorry Jehovah’s Witnesses) Halloween. The orange and black paper stock is depleted by the 10-15 and gone after the 20^th. Even teachers who swear they aren’t going to let the class get distracted for a whole month give in when the time comes. We’ve traditioned ourselves into it and now we can’t let go. We’d feel too guilty.

Aside from the zany classroom atmosphere, there is the day itself. Some parents send costumes still in the plastic bags. Others send kids with a make-up supply thinking we can apply it at a convenient time, which is never. One year we had a kid come to school with his packaged get-up. Two of us teachers spent almost half and hour trying to get the blood circulating around through the tubes in his costume. It was clearly a dud, but this child really could have used the positive attention this horrible costume would have given him. It had its own parade in the sink at the back of our classroom. One child devastated.

We also have to pin skirts up, hair dress, apply face paint, make masks fit on faces so little that no elastic will hold it anywhere but around the hopeful neck of that poor kid trying to hike up fabric with one hand while pushing that mask up with the other.

There are always parents who come to help and far that we are truly grateful. They bring the kind of enthusiasm dressers should have on this day of days. Teachers just want to get it over with.

In the future, if trick or treating falls on a weekend the Friday before which is a day off school, please don’t do anything to accommodate us. Making sure children are trained in the traditions of non-nationalistic holidays shouldn’t be our jobs. If families want to have a Halloween parties, they should have one. Teachers, even those who teach the little ones, have enough to do trying to get through our curriculum requirements without giving up days for Halloween, St. Patrick’s Day, Mother’s Day, Valentine’s Day and even Christmas and Easter in some districts. I would, however, lobby for April Fool’s Day to be made a national holiday. That one, our school traditions have completely prepared us for.

Read While Humming "It's a Small World"

2008-10-18T14:47:48Z

Some fifth and sixth graders have been running an election over at the elementary schools. They elected party nominees, developed platforms, made flyers, had conventions, press corps, campaign managers and a videographer. They prepared a debate between the two presidential candidates with moderators and a quiet audience of about 100. The moderators prepared insightful questions and the debaters answered each one thoughtfully and respectfully. It was cute. This is, of course, how we have taught our students American politics works and sure enough, they believed us.

It was impressive to see all the participants taking their jobs so seriously. Of course, they had some realization that there wasn’t a whole lot their sixth grade nominee could do about healthcare, Iraq or taxes. It felt…well, good. It felt like the way things should be. I think all the parents and teachers who attended wished as I did, that this could really be how things go every four years. Certainly, there were great differences in the two parties and their platforms, but there was an air of class and respectability to the one-hour debate session as well as the leafleting, conventions and signage of each party. The framers would have been pleased.

I had no interest in telling them that this was a rather distorted representation of how things really work, that it was sort of the Disney version of American politics, and in order to have full understanding they would have to take off the mouse ears and shove them down the throat of their opponents. Wise teachers protected them from this underbelly of political life. Next to their assigned vocabulary list of words like democracy, fairness and respectability, their teachers did not make them include robo-calling, innuendo, mud slinging, voter fraud, or dirty politics. It would have been like hiring a monkey to throw *** around in the art museum, I suppose.

I hope for these students, that the air of politics they breathe when voting in their first elections is as fresh as that in this crowded, hot, wonderfully engaged, seriously lively classroom. If things aren’t as they experienced in this mock debate, I hope they work like hell to pull it closer to the memory. We may need a few more cages for the monkeys, but it will be worth the expense. Congratulations, kids; and teachers, you’ve given their dendrites great and noble connections.

Nice one.

When They Say, "Don't Even Open the Envelope"...Don't.

2008-10-15T00:00:00Z

Finally, we got to hear “I’m in the Money” on NPR this morning. The market has been treated for its bout of de-regulation. All this has made me realize how much money I don’t actually have. I was not the product of parents who talked about money. It was a secret. I guessed my dad, who was a physician, had a bit more than others because whenever I told people he was a doctor, they seemed to think me more friend worthy; but if we were wealthy, I wonder why we lived in that old duplex under the really loud Polish family of five. I’ve certainly never had so much that I’ve lost track of it.

I don’t understand money all that much more now that I did back then, but I get that a dollar is like a Warhol, it’s worth is only what people deem it to be worth. It is almost impossible to talk with young children about what is going on around them causing their parents to watch the news a little more, maybe be a little grumpier, and insist you eat at home instead of in the car on the way to someplace fun and expensive. As I have taken in the news this past week-and-a-half, I’ve developed my own glossary of words we hear from every pundit, commentator, moderator and politician as we ride this wave of Wall Street meltdown.

1. Wall Street and Main Street: These two labels, often said in the same sentence are juxtaposed to talk about places where guys sport monogrammed shirts with their actual initials on the cuffs, and places where the rest of us work.

2. Crisis: An event that happens to investors before they realize they should have made a plan for it.

3. Rally: This can be a verb or a noun. As a verb, it is that last little bit of energy to go to the noun version of the word, knowing there will always be someone there who will embarrass you incredibly by yelling out something stupid or low class when there is a break between words or sentences of the speaker.

4. Red Meat: This is what you throw at a crowd when you want to get them all fired up and ready to actually tar and feather the opponent. Maybe even tar, feather and then re-tar. Words like

5. Terrorist: come to mind. I’m not sure what the entire definition of terrorist is, but apparently you don’t actually have to do anything to be one anymore.

6. Junket: That’s like a field trip grown-ups take, only with massage oil, golf clubs, a smirk and an ass that should have been served to them on a platter, but was saved by the American people instead.

7. Fundamental Difference: This is what you say when you describe the contrast between what you believe and what that knuckle dragging idiot you are debating with thinks.

8. A Bailout: What we’re being told we’re not doing for investment bankers and Wall St. mucky-mucks. In other words, it has been elevated to “rescue” status, to make the guilty seem like victims so we’re more willing to chip in.

9. Gonna, nothin‘, lettin’, somethin’: What happens to some politicians’ vocabulary when g’s are all in foreclosure.

Now that we’ve gotten through the wannabe crash, the threats, brigades of white horses and one day of hope, I guess we can take some comfort in the fact that the price of gas is going down. But then, you don’t need to fill the tank just to go into the basement and play ping-pong again.

May the financial force be with you.

A Big Pile of Dirt and The Lessons It Can Teach

2008-10-06T12:31:59Z

As we all go forward with more of a thirst for financial reassurance, we see the importance of teaching our children the value of a dollar as well as the risk and importance of stoking the furnace here, because it keeps a fire burning everywhere else. Still, in regards to the bailout/rescue, the knee jerk reaction on ubiquitous Main Street was to punish the rich and have a people’s uprising. Then 700 points of reality dropped on our kitchen tables right between the gas bill and the new car brochures. I wonder if people are talking to kids about this.

I think that in Shorewood, if we want to talk with our students about the whole economic mess we can take advantage of what I see as a wonderfully serendipitous art installation on the lower playground of Lake Bluff School. While it may just look like a huge pile of dirt, it is the powerful half of an artistic, organic art installation. It and the hole it came from should be shipped up to Kohler Art Center and be put on display next to the Rhinestone Cowboy's house.

Let’s say we change the name of “Capitol Drive” to “Ball Street” at least in front of the gentrifiable high school. We must understand that if they do well, we all do well. They get additions, we get free dirt. That’s how things work. We ought to be excited about the truck dumps of dirt because they make our lives better. With it, we can fill the dips and holes that have made America’s game a bit like little league rice-paddy-ball after a downpour, and you have to appreciate the metaphorical value of the orange plastic fence corralling the dirt, thwarting any plans it may have to sneak back to the whole it once filled just a few blocks away.

I think we all learned a little lesson this past couple weeks. We don’t know much about the food chain that is our economy. We need to do better with our kids at home and in our classrooms. So teachers and parents, take your kids over and show them the hole where the new and costly stadium will be. Stop at the site and thank the ground that has been broken for the good of our village and its taxpayers. Imagine how home values will soar when people get a look of that! Talk about investment, gains and losses. Then go back to the fence and stand at attention as you consider all the things we can use leftover dirt for. Revel in the power of money. Teach its value, talk about priorities, necessities, need vs. want, show vs. substance and how to say the word no once in awhile. Then tell them that if they want to play on the dirt, they will have to pay for it.

You Have 2 Minutes To Convince Me You're Not Who You Are

2008-09-28T16:11:06Z

I have not given high school debate team coaches enough credit. Who knew how much was involved in a debate that has nothing to do with the actual topic? I’ve underestimated the potential of little kids who can convince me of anything; and to think I’ve accused them of being liars with their pants on fire. I should have given more time to observing what was good about their pitches, regardless of what they said. I learned this week, that when all else is sort of equal, other things take precedence when evaluating the success or demise of participants.

First of all kids, for the love of God, wear something that shows devotion to your school. A lapel pin, t-shirt, band uniform, or at least school colors somewhere, although avoid the urge to paint them in halves, across your chests or faces Debates are not Packer games, and girls especially, your reputations are on the line. Oh, and don’t wear high contrast stripes because the vertigo one can feel when seeing them on television detracts from the point you are hoping to make. Stoic, subtle, funereal=perceived acumen.

Debate team members probably know this, but little kids can reap the benefits of these lessons, too. When you grow enough to stand behind a lectern, lean in when you are making your case. Make it look as though the point you are making right at that moment is one you are willing to fall on your microphone-sword for, it is just that important.

Take everyone in with your eyes. Swivel-head your expressions so that all can see the splendor that is you, kind of like Elvis used to do. That leaves the impression you are singing to each person, message passed through the genuine, emotional connection between your eyes and theirs. Look at your opponent when you take him on so the pundits, or school newspaper reporters see that you aren’t afraid to look someone in the eye before you kick him in the knee. Perfect choreography and clever assemblage of words and implication. If you can’t look your opponent in the eye, look only at the moderator, or straight ahead at the audience in their underwear, but we warned that it only makes you look grumpy, mean-spirited and as though you are trying to keep from ripping your opponent’s heart out and eating it.

On the bright side…Don’t worry about factual accuracy. By the time people check out all the questionable statements, it will be over and forgotten; so say what you want and if it is a lie, repeat it over and over and over again. Interrupt the flow of words from across the stage with utterances of, “That’s not true” or “That’s not what I said. “ Smirk, pretend you are writing, or look confused at what the other debater is saying and don’t agree with any part of anything your opponent says. Argue every point, even if you have to bring into question your opponent’s sincerity after he says he is happy to be there, or who arrived at the venue first in anticipation of this possibly campaign ending collision of preparations. Express your exasperation loudly and often, except don’t sigh or check your watch while you’re doing it. Eventually the listeners will surrender to your reality, especially if you have almost two years to create it.

When the debate has ended, sprint around the podium to be the first to extend your gracious hand for all to see. Cuff the fingers of the other around his forearm as you shake into him the fear, and resurrect the hidden belief that he really is as inadequate as his parents and teachers always told him he was. Curtain drops. Mission accomplished.

Congratulations.

How to Save Wallstreet One Cookie at a Time

2008-09-24T23:19:57Z

Hey Mr. Paulson! I hear you are open to ideas as to how to address this sticky wicket that is the world economy. Here’s how we do it in our school districts. Feel free to borrow any of these as an answer to the question, “Where the #+!# are we going to get more money from?”

Schools generally have to start at fundraising. This creates a one-for-all mentality that can sometimes raise thousands of dollars. New playgrounds have been funded by the non-stop dedication of residents and organizers. This kind of effort is massive and calls for buy-in by a large block of the school and community. So, Mr. Paulson, you could make a big thermometer and stick in on Wall St. Try to get the populace to donate money for a bailout and use a red marker to color in the rising red line of goal achievement. What would entice us, though? Schools have found that candy bars have always been good sellers, but be sure to get healthy ones without nuts if you really want to move them. You can market them as energy bars. Stockbrokers and CEOs can go door to door with their blackberries to take orders. Yeah, we know. It’s hard work.

Well okay, try this. Start carving off the turkey. Cuts have to be made, we get that one too. Start with the non-people; start with things like paper, hardware, chairs, big display boards and bells. The next piece to be plated will have to be power usage. Get those coffee pots out of there, and keep the doors closed or open all the time depending on the ever-changing New York weather. No more AC either. It has really paid off in the elementary schools. Sure, it gets hot but little kids hardly even notice unless they have PE or recess outside in the bright sun on a heat grabbing blacktop playground. It’s only for six or seven hours. Also, hot buildings increase the number of early retirement requests by women over 50. Get rid of them and hire new ones at half the cost. Now that’s economics. You can also stretch the people you have by making them work two jobs instead of one, in the same amount of time they are used to working. Have some of the big mucky-mucks serve in two different places. They can work half the day at Goldman Sachs and half the day at AIG, for example. They can have little offices in each, but no refrigerator, Mr. Coffee or fans. That cuts out a whole salary! If you don’t think it’s possible, ask a public school music or art teacher. You could probably even talk someone into taking on three places. Spend every other day in each building. While it may be seen as token leadership, at least you can say it’s there.

The third and most controversial cut will have to be people. This is done by attrition, and over time. Someone retires or quits and no one is hired for replacement. Someone ends up doing two jobs instead of their already impossible one, but times are tough so we do what we have to do. Teach kindergarten music in the morning and social anthropology in the afternoon. Likewise, you could have employees work the stock market in the morning and oh…say custodian in the afternoon. You’ll be whacking away at that turkey carcass like a Benihana table chef! Along with the employee cuts, however, go the programs they were in charge of. Wow, it sucks to be us. However, things will improve, or as our standards lower, it will at least seem like they did.

Can I have a Warren Buffett bailout with a side of tax cuts, please?

An Idea Few People Will Like

2008-09-21T14:31:00Z

What kids don’t need.

Competition that allows parents to get involved: These include science fairs, best costume contests, poster contests and anything else kids do in a home where winning becomes the goal at the expense of the experience. Halloween is a huge day for kids, but turning it into a competition changes the focus and provides another opportunity for some kids to feel uncomfortable, some victorius and many left out of the experience. Kids don’t need any help loving Halloween and let's face it...nobody likes science fairs except the kids with the cool experiments that involve explosions, something gross or candy.

Contests: If there is a contest, there is a parent who will do just about anything to win it. It becomes every contest they never won or yet another in a long string of victories. This can involve milk caps, labels, box tops and other things corporations have suckered us all into in attempts to increase their profits. These items become desired, or we adjust our shopping habits to help our children “win”. This also goes for the sales of things. October brings a slew of merchandise children are asked to sell, create, or push in order to raise money for the school, a trip, or who knows what else. In every employee lunch room you will find open order forms with a pen laying across it, trying to guilt people into buying stuff they would never buy otherwise (I’m talking to you, scented candles). How do you tell a fellow worker that you won’t buy a candy bar to help her child get to Italy to be in a concert, even when you are working two jobs to be able to afford a few more frozen pizzas?

I remember my father, who was a doctor, taking my Girl Scout cookie sheet to the hospital, and came back with a couple hundred dollars worth of orders. He signed up for 60 himself. I knew it was he who deserved the patch for most cookies sold to immediate family. I think we cold just be honest and make these contests for parents.

External incentives: Children don’t need awards to do good works. Children can get extremely excited about doing something good for others. They like to keep track of how many cans they bring in for a food drive, but have no idea who brought what. Children have big hearts and don’t yet realize that people think they should get some kind of reward for everything they do. Adults screw everything up when they take what could be a perfectly altruistic, goal oriented event and cheapen it by turning it into another contest. Kids aren’t the ones who need them. “But,” you will say, “they LOVE contests!” That’s because we have them. Kids also love accomplishing a goal or doing something just for fun. Children don’t need stickers on math papers, stars, points, or prizes. They just want to learn stuff and think of themselves as a smart kid. You might say, “But kids love to get little rewards!” That’s because we give them.

We have made them important.

There are schools that give parents the option of forgoing the fundraisers and pleas for contributions by just writing a check for some block amount. If not that, then really go for it. Send out emails every few days asking for donations of even 5 bucks. Mid-year start asking for $25. Do this for the whole year. It has worked pretty well for politicians. I would bet after a year of this, parents would gladly do the block check thing.

While some fantastic and important things have been done through fundraisers (many of which I have benefited from), I can’t help but think about the big city school I left many years ago. It didn’t even bother having fundraisers. Few people had funds. The playground there was a slab of blacktop with hints of bases painted on. Fences were high and every staff member on duty had a walky-talky in case a fight broke out. I left when we started doing safety drills to get kids into the school quickly in the event that gunfire broke out in the neighborhood. I think about that place every October when the fund raising starts. Maybe sometime, schools will have fundraisers for other schools. That would be a great service project for anyone fortunate enough to be looking for one. The reward would be intangible and unforgettable.

Retire, Aspire. Sarah Lit the Fire!

2008-09-13T15:33:00Z

I’m trying to figure out how qualified a teacher would seem to be for a vice-presidential run after retirement. It might be kind of awesome. Cheney set the grumpiness bar a bit high, but we have our days when nothing goes our way. We think we’ve settled a fight between the bully and the hothead but just when the dust around the line in the sand settles, there they go again. It can make a person really angry. We do have the “So?” thing down, though. That has been our answer for years to statements like, “I don’t want to write in my journal.” or “It’s too cold to go outside for recess.” We definitely have that one tight. What teacher hasn’t thought something was a good idea, put in a requisition slip for funding or wrote a seven page grant request, got rejected but still got all the money?

Let’s see, what else. Oh, there’s the executive decision thing. I actually counted how many decisions I make every day and it came to about 30 an hour which would be 210 a day and after 35 years that equals 7,350. Some of these made the difference between empty bladder and wet, smelly denial-pants. You have to know how to read people if you’re a teacher. Kids will lie through their teeth. Very good for those long, drawn out negotiations which, from the start, you know you will win anyway.

Leadership. I figure that most teachers of retirement age have governed a population greater than that of Alaska, albeit stretched out over a longer period of time. Clearly to us, 20 months of Pied Pipering a state of 9000 people ages 0-80 and living 350 months with 30 six year olds in close physical proximity from early morning through the afternoon just simply can’t compare. It’s like comparing bee-bee guns to high powered AK47s. The teachers get this one, hands down.

International experience. Teachers come into contact with actual people from many countries of the world. In one school year you may come to know Pakistanis, Central and South Americans, Thai, African, Japanese, Iraqis, Russians, Texans, Aussies, Brits and Mexicans every day. We actually learn about their cultures and beliefs and most teachers are very well traveled, credit or no credit.

Grit. The teaching profession eats nice teachers up and spits them out. Those who make it through even five years are tough as nails and ready to shoot a moose at any moment with very little prompting. They would even eat it raw, that's how tough we are. Moosimi with wasabi. Yum. Many of us have really cool glasses too, and 3 ½ inch red high heels, although it’s hard to walk across playground woodchips in them.

So teachers, thanks to this election cycle you have another option after you retire other than taking gourmet cooking classes or subbing in a system you worked hard to retire from. You don’t have to travel with a bunch of old ladies to Alaska to view it from a train or hook up with some RV owner who thinks it a good idea to travel cross-country for the rest of his life. Go get some yard signs, canvas, phone bank and get involved. When an opening for village president comes along, jump on it. You’ll have a whole year or two to prepare for your nomination.

What a country.