The New Girl In Town

I have a very yummy - and natural! - kettle corn giveaway here!

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Growing up, I moved around a lot. Well, somewhat a lot - I know people who moved way more than me, but ... point being we moved six times before I hit the fourth grade. Generally, I was fine with that. I always loved exploring new places and meeting new friends and the like. I'm lucky that way.

It was slightly different when I moved to that new school in fourth grade though. While my parents are by no means poor, we are absolutely not conspicuously wealthy either. The Catholic school they sent me to? Wow.

The conversations - at fourth grade - were about the pool at the country club, the boating they did on the weekend, the designer jeans, etc etc.

And me? I had no country club. I'd never been on a boat. And jeans? Ha! My conservative mom had never bought me any. I honestly didn't own a pair.

As I started to see the lay of the land, I began begging my mom for some of these things - not realizing the cost of a country club membership or how far out of reach that would be. We never did join that country club. And we never got a boat.

On the plus side, we became really good friends with a couple people who had a boat who invited us on it regularly. And I became good friends with a couple of girls who also didn't do the boating thing (by choice) where it wasn't a focus.

Since it was the 80's, once I convinced my mom to buy me some Jordache jeans, I eventually learned how to roll them up properly so that I fit in. Mostly.

But oh that terror in my heart, the fear that seized me and froze me when the girls would start to talk and then just ... look at me. Waiting for me to contribute. And in the fourth grade, I didn't have anything to contribute.

It was the hardest time I ever had fitting in, and my mom didn't get it. I was reminded of this struggle when reading Girl in Translation recently by Jean Kwok (which I highly recommend reading - loved, loved, loved this book). In the end, I found my place in that school and in that town, but it was so different from anything I'd experienced prior to that.

And honestly? It was probably a very healthy eye-opening experience. For me to see the difference in people so starkly, to see the focus on wealth and learn how to deal with it when I ... wasn't quite in their league, I think made me a far stronger and happier person.

It allowed me the happiness to buy a house that we can afford rather than stretching. And it allowed me the courage to finally quit my job to stay home with the wee ones - a far more important job, anyway.

What lessons has your childhood taught you?

This post is a part of is Silicon Valley Mom's Blog book club. Go check out what this book inspired in other moms. I received a copy of the book to inspire my post (and highly recommend it), but this is not a review, nor did I receive any compensation for writing this post.

Say That Again?!

So I had Mister Man’s teacher conference recently. Granted, his “real” teacher went on maternity leave in December, so this is a long term sub. A repeat long term sub. Subbing in a special needs preschool.

Needless to say, I’m not her biggest fan, although she’s a nice enough person. None of the other moms I’ve chatted with are enamored of her either, which makes me feel a bit better. Communication is somewhat lacking, and that which does come home is rife with spelling and grammar errors.

But I digress….

Every season (fall, winter and spring), a progress report is sent home with each child letting the parents know how they’re doing in a variety of topics from doing five piece puzzles to recognizing letters of the alphabet to cutting shapes with scissors independently. Essentially, it’s a scorecard of how the “normal” progressions are coming with each child.

For each topic, there are four levels: not yet, emerging, yes and mastery. I don’t think they really use the first topic and that it’s there to make parents feel like their children are all making progress. Emerging makes total sense.

Then there’s “yes” and “mastery.” In my mind, those two are essentially the same, so I scanned through Mister Man’s winter report (spring comes out in a couple weeks) trying to determine which skills he has circled as mastery vs which are yes to see if I can figure out what he’s doing differently between the two. Unfortunately, I see no pattern.

My curiosity isn’t something to say that Mister Man should have mastery for everything or that he’s the greatest kid or anything like that, but my assumption is that the school wants every child to get to the mastery level on as many areas as possible, so if I can do something at home to help him along, I’d love to do so.

I added this to my list of questions for my fifteen minute conference with the teacher. Fortunately, I had a list. I talked to a couple of moms who went into the conference without a list, had the teacher ask if they’d read the progress report and then simply read what the progress report said. Needless to say, they walked out of there feeling like they’d wasted their time. There were no additional insights, and every question those parents asked (if they asked any) was met with the response that the teacher would have to confer with the team. And unfortunately, the school is located about 25 minutes or so away for most of these moms.

For my conference, I came in with that list and I started asking questions to better understand what’s going on with Mister Man and how he’s progressing throughout the year, etc. When we got to my question regarding yes vs mastery, I got this response:

Teacher: Well, mastery is really kind of an end of the year thing.
Me: (jaw dropping to the floor and brain blowing up and ceasing to function – which was probably a good thing, now that I think about it) Uhh, ok. So why does he have some mastery items on his progress report now then?
Teacher: Oh, well those were there from the fall, so I just left them at the same level.

Excuse me? You’re grading kids based on what point in the year it is? And a child can’t make any progress until that point? What is the point of a progress report if the only progress it shows is that of the calendar moving?

Even my husband (a schoolteacher) was appalled but very glad that I let it go the way I did. Really, had my brain not overloaded when she fed me that line of bull, the conversation probably would have taken a decidedly negative tone, which is not the aim in parent/teacher relations.

The one are she was most concerned about Mister Man was that he was confusing “b” with “d.” I didn’t bother to ask her what she was doing to address that. Instead, I had a conversation with him the next morning about the alphabet.

Me: I hear b and d are confusing you sometimes.
Mister Man: Yeah, I can’t remember which one is which sometimes when I’m looking at them.
Me: Well, what’s the first letter of the alphabet?
Mister Man: A!
Me (realizing I asked the question wrong): Yep, and of b and d, which one comes first?
Mister Man: B does!
Me: That’s right. And because b comes first, it gets to have the line first. Since d is second, it gets the line second.
Mister Man: OHHHH! So b goes like this (finger gesture drawing a correct b) and d goes like this (again with the finger drawing).
Me: Yep. Does that make sense to you?
Mister Man: Uh-huh, that’s easy to remember.

And he’s figured out the difference between the two ever since. Really, was that so hard? And that was her biggest (academic) concern? Can you tell that my enthusiasm is boundless knowing that he’ll be in the exact same classroom next year but with all new kids (since everyone else is moving to kindergarten except him)?

Here’s hoping that the “real” teacher comes back from maternity leave. Or that Mister Man finally gives up his nap and can handle afternoon school without losing impulse control and sanity. But I will say again that he is making progress. We were at a playgroup today where he actually played with the other girls there rather than being off in his own world and demonized by the girls for not fitting in.