It’s not like we didn’t KNOW this day was coming. There is red everywhere you look, and hearts, and candy, and the media likes a good sales holiday as much as the stores all do.  You know that it is St. Valentine’s Day, because it’s when you’re supposed to really think about, indulge in, and enjoy LOVE in all its gaudy aspects.

The cynical part of me really despises this holiday. I look at all the build-up and see yet another religious holiday that is dressed up for the commercial benefit of our economy, of our sales and purchases and how they can be pumped up a bit more.

But there’s a part me that just loves this day, too. I work with kids. So I receive lovely little notes, with hearts, and sometimes candy, and I can enjoy that a great deal. There is sincerity, amid the chaos of the world, and it often comes from small people.

I went to PennDOT today to get my photo taken for my driver’s license.

Now, I know, and you know, that driver’s license photos are always unflattering, right? But PennDOT is kind and wise, or maybe just kinda wise. They let you see your photo before it is printed on your license. You can do it over if you don’t like it. As much as you want.

My first try was awful. I’d tried to smile, and it just looked like gas, or something, and WHOAH, HELLO DOUBLE CHIN! Yikes! I asked her to do it over.

The second try was better, but also looked bizarre. Who is that crazy lady, was my first thought. Then I remembered, oh yeah, that’s me. The smile was kind of rictus-looking, but the chins were a little less obvious. The hair looked okay for a crazy lady.

On the other hand, a few nights ago I went out to a party* with Drob, and I got all dressed up. I even put body makeup on my boobages. Glittery boobages! I borrowed a swanky sexy red dress and did my hair and put on makeup. I can’t believe there are people who actually do that every day! Ok, not the dress, but the rest of it. Everyone told me I looked great (hot, beautiful, pretty, awesome, etc.) That was nice. Should have gotten my driver’s license photo done that night. Of course, that isn’t possible, and there’s something wrong about getting your driver’s license photo taken when you are stumbling around, having had too many mojito’s.

Still, and anyway, it’s good to know that I can clean up nice from time to time. I had the worst headache ever the next morning, but I don’t regret it at all. It’s not like I made out with random strangers and puked on my shoes. THAT would be a crazy party.

*Fundraiser for school! Does that count? Yes, it does, because I got kinda drunk and danced around in a distinctly undignified way.

We’ve decided Enough is Enough!

We’re moving to a small farming community in a rural area. Our new community is cooperatively raising chickens and ostriches for meat. We’ll be helping to grow an all-organic garden for the family’s consumption. I’ll be home schooling the kids, but mainly they’ll be schooling themselves along with the other children who live on the communal property. There are about 5 families already doing this who have kids close in age to Carla and Annie.

Reading books and doing hands-on projects around the farm will be their education. We’ve simply had it with the complexities of life in the city, and dealing with education in a school environment. We’re tired of the daily grind, running around, with meetings at work and school.

Done! We are done with all, and we look forward to our future life of simple, hard work.

UGH! So much anxiety lately, so little posting to the blog.

Yesterday I actually spent about three hours working on a self-evaluation document for work. I hate how much anxiety I feel about my job. I love the job itself, especially when things go well. I’ve been doing this job for over a year now, and yet I still don’t feel relaxed at work.

Part of the problem is the work environment. I feel like I am being covertly judged by the other staff members at all times. I feel as if they don’t like what I am doing but won’t say what it is that they want me to do differently. I feel like every staff member has a different opinion, a different set of rules. Each teacher’s rules are fine for them to use, but not mine. It’s very uncomfortable, this sense that all is not right with the job.

And yet, when I sat down and wrote up my own self evaluation, I think I have been doing a very good job. If you look at the facts: kids are happy and safe. Parents — with perhaps one or two exceptions — are happy on the whole.

So what I suspect is that I am just insecure, and that other teachers are by and large NOT unhappy with my work. Again, with a notable exception. It’s crazy, but true — having one vocal critic can really undermine my sense of confidence.

I am not about to say to them that they can’t do things their way. Although I am sometimes tempted to do so. What pisses me off is that they seem to be saying that every teacher gets to have their own way of doing things, except that MY way happens to be wrong.

It’s hard to develop confidence when there is nobody helping you reinforce your decisions. When I try to find out what the rules are, I’m told that you have to make up your own. That seems really, really stupid to me, but I am game to make up my own rules if that’s what is wanted.

Except that I HAVE my own rules and certain people come along and give me a hard time because my way of doing things, my style, and my rules aren’t apparent to them.

One of these people told me recently that she doesn’t care about her evaluations because she doesn’t care what anyone thinks of her. She says she knows she’s bitchy and so what? If she’s bitchy to someone, it’s because they deserved it. Nice attitude, huh?

If I could try to cop that kind of attitude, what would it sound like? Here’s a fantasy conversation:

Bitchy Staff Member: Pann, OMG, you CAN’T let the kids DO that!
Me: Says who? I’m the teacher here. BUTT OUT!
Bitchy Staff Member: I would never allow that! This is ridiculous!
Me: Get out of my classroom, I don’t give a shit what you would allow or not allow. This is my group. Bugger off, bitch!

Hmmmm…… maybe I should try that!

I am so glad today is Friday. I am feeling really down, and I don’t really have any particular reason why.

Just feel all heavy and wiped out and pointless. I realized that I have an all-day work day on Monday — when the school where I work is closed but it is part of my job to provide childcare from 8:30 AM to 6 PM. These days are long. They are tiring, for me and for the kids I care for, including my own.

Carla isn’t going to be there all day, though, because D is taking her to see a specialist. She’s reached the age of “it’s time to consider what to do.” Her issues are mainly relating to the way that she is able, or not able, to pay attention. We’ve met with our pediatric nurse practitioner, who is wonderful. The nurse agrees with our assessments, and with Carla’s teacher’s assessment that Carla almost certainly has ADHD.

ADHD, or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, is a poorly named disorder. If you aren’t familiar with it, it sounds like a label for kids who have ants in their pants, and don’t ever pay attention to anything. You know, those lazy kids who just spaz out all the time.

That’s certainly not the case. Sometimes ADHD has hyperactivity as a symptom, and sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes there are kids who can’t ever focus on anything, but not always. It’s really a cluster of symptoms, relating to one’s attention and activity levels, but it really does vary from case to case.

In Carla’s case, she has what they call the “inattentive” variety. This doesn’t really sound right either, since when she wants to, she is GREAT at being attentive. She can focus for hours and hours on something that she’s passionate about– say, making incredible art, or reading a whole book that she likes. She loves writing and will do that in a focused and determined way. But when something is the kind of task she’s NOT interested in, well, then — yeah, she’s a total space cadet.

Her mind is busy doing something else. It’s kind of like when you’re using a computer, and you KNOW you just clicked on something, but apparently the computer wasn’t ready to do what you asked. That’s how Carla gets — she just doesn’t respond sometimes. And it’s not easy to re-boot her, either!

“Huh? What?” she might say, coming back to reality, touching down from her little world of her own mind. “I spaced out,” she’ll admit. She even went so far as to tell me that spacing out is her super power.

In a way, she’s absolutely right. People with ADHD often have the ability to do INCREDIBLE things. They have a tendency to be bright, engaged, interesting, creative, and when they turn that super power focus to the “ON” position, well then: WHAMMY! What amazing success comes from that!

Unfortunately, life often contains things that don’t automatically trigger her WHAMMY attention. She might not be that interested in the math lesson — either she’s already mastered it or maybe just doesn’t care. Whatever the case is, she tunes out and misses a lot of stuff as a result.

Her teacher sees this happening even more when Carla is doing some class work with a partner– her partner is already finished and she’s just finally starting to put pencil to paper.

So anyway, we’re on to the investigation phase of what can we do to help Carla. I don’t think it’s easy– but there are routine, behavioral things that we do to help her and then there’s the medication route. Unfortunately, she’s anti-meds. Because they taste yucky.

It is hard being a parent.

Carla also has a problem with bed-wetting. She’s 8 and a half. She’s getting BIG. To still be wetting the bed these days is really getting to her. It’s every damn, night, too. I would be lying if I said I don’t mind washing sheets every day. She’s too big to wear a pull up– even the “deluxe” kinds that are supposed to be so great for big kids.

Her appointment on Monday is for the bed-wetting issues, but I think it all ties into the ADHD. People with ADHD have something different about the way their brain is “wired.” I believe that when she is asleep, her brain’s attention to body signal is pretty much zilch. That is my theory as to why she wets the bed: because her brain is somewhere ELSE.

I wish I could go to this appointment with her, but I am confident that D will be extremely competent at asking the right questions, getting good information. He is really on the ball, and understands Carla’s attention issues quite well. Nevertheless, I do wish I could be there.

As usual, writing has helped me somewhat. When I started this post, I just felt really dreary and dreadful. I am still down, but I feel a little bit better. (If people were to leave me little nice comments, that would help, too. Hint. Hint.)

Well, shoot, it turns out there ARE cats out there for whom a life of ease at our house is in fact, quite adequate.

A friend of a friend recently found herself needing to find a home for her cats. We took one of them, and we’re in the process of nursing her to better health. Saffron, the cat in question, is a small calico cat who is very, very skinny. The friend of a friend had to find her a new home because her (soon to be) ex husband was not taking care of the cats. So Saffron is clearly in need of some TLC. Wouldn’t you know, that Carla and Annie are VERY attentive cat mommies?

As for Mini, well, you snooze, you lose, Cat Lady. She’ll have to find another family for Mini – maybe one where the psychological profiles of the other cats are more suitable. Ahem.

Meanwhile, JOY of JOYS, we are being sued AGAIN by our City of Brotherly Love. I think they have figured out that suing us is a good way to collect “court fees” for cases that get dismissed and never even come before court. I am livid, though, at the accountant who this time caused us to get sued. Apparently, he did NOT file the taxes he’d prepared, as we’d thought. Grrr. Bad communication is not acceptable for CPA’s — if he wasn’t going to file our taxes he should have at least told us so.

At work, I’ve been working hard to help this one little boy. He’s so emotionally volatile – he will go from fine to SCREAMING BLOOD MURDER. When I talk to him about why he’s so angry, he tells me “it’s because my parents yell at me all the time. They’re just always mad at me, because I cry.” His parents are divorced, and there’s a step mom who seems really nice. I have met both his parents, and they both seem plenty nice as well. I have never seen them say anything even in a harsh voice to this kid. I suspect that his parents might be angry, but not at HIM. But little kids don’t always see things that way — they often think that everything is about them.

My heart? About a thousand little pieces on the floor. Not sure how to help him, other than to be kind, and listen, and remove him from the room when he’s getting upset with other kids. It is really doing damage to his friendships that he can’t resolve minor conflicts without screaming and crying. I’m not sure what to say to his parents, other than to report the facts — that he gets upset easily and is having trouble controlling anger. I wonder how his parents would take it if I suggested a nearby therapy-for-kids practice that I know.

When you work with kids, I think confidence is really crucial. They have to be able to feel secure knowing that you, The Teacher, knows what is supposed to be going on. Kids do not care for ambiguity.

When are we going outside? they want to know. Soon, Later, I don’t know — these are all unacceptable answers. I usually glance at the clock and state definitively 2:30! or, sometimes, I answer “Right after snack.”

Can I take of my shoes? There’s got to be a rule.

Consequences of breaking rules, have to be consistent, reasonable and fair.

I know all of this. But recently I had a thoroughly frustrating day, because I kept on second-guessing my answers. Was I capable of resolving disputes properly? Which technique should I use? Did I give adequate transition time? Was I making my expectations clear? Should I allow Rita to cut up a pipe cleaner? Can Jenna have another cookie? Everything seems to be so significant. I wasn’t confident in my own judgement.

This was the result of having two separate meetings with parents in which I felt criticized. The most recent meeting was on Monday. I felt like instead of having the parents be an ally to helping their children’s behavior in school, it was as if the parents thought any issues their kid had were entirely related to negligence or poor judgment on my part. Then after getting that awful meeting over with, I had to step back into the classroom and provide a structured, balanced, comfortable day for a group of kids. It’s hard to do that with roiling emotions!

Much of this internal dialogue is nonsense, of course. I DO have good judgment. My program IS good, and most kids do great with me. I was meeting with these two families because their children’s behaviors were outliers. In other words, their behaviors had fallen outside of what I expected from them. Parents don’t like to hear that, and so they were defensive and hurtful toward me.

I know this, and I know I need a “thicker skin” as one peer recently pointed out to me. My own feelings should NOT make me have a bad day. The good thing is though, I don’t think the kids knew I was having a bad day. My discomfort was real, but it was internal.

So another day ahead me, and I am trying to feel confident again. I am learning so much, every day, from the classroom environment. Getting kids to behave is a tricky business. I firmly believe that if you provide an environment that meets children’s needs (emotional / artistic / social / physical, etc.) then you will see the behavior that you want. Bad behavior is generally the product of an environment that is missing the mark for that particular child.

We all know that some children have different needs, needs that fall outside of our initial expectations. And parents often REALLY don’t want to hear from me that their child is someone who has “special needs” because of the negative associations with that term.

I do try to be sensitive to that. After all, my own daughter (Carla) is a kid whose behavior at times has been outside of what was expected of her. Specifically, she has a lot of trouble focusing. As her parents, we are working with our pediatrician to find out what we can do to help her. Being defensive about it would be unhelpful.

With this dual perspective of mine (as Teacher, as Parent), I would have thought I could be sensitive to how parents feel about having their child’s needs (be they “special” or “different” or “typical”) pointed out. Yet I feel bad, because in the meetings I had with parents, I am not sure if I managed to communicate what I wanted to say. I tripped over things, misspoke, put things in a way that angered the parents, and triggered their defensiveness. I am disappointed in myself, and frustrated as well. I feel like I blew an opportunity to bring in these parents to a sense of “let’s work together”.

Sorry to be so vague. I am having trouble getting my thoughts organized today, and don’t just want to recount the whole details. Not a great blog entry. Sigh.

Hello world.

It has been slow around here, with the blog, hasn’t it? I hope I haven’t lost too many readers. (Not likely, since I think I’ve got few enough to start with anyway!) I am going to try to blog more frequently, and with brief posts that capture some of what I am going through.

In the spirit of JUST WRITE SOMETHING, I am also planning to participate in NANOWRIMO. Know what that is? It’s the National Novel Writing Month, which is November. I will attempt to write a novel of 50,000 words or more in November. Yeah, that’s a lot of words.

I also want to try to go to the pool twice a week, and swim for 45 minutes.

Which one of these goals is more likely to be acheived, I wonder? Perhaps both??

What is bringing about these ambitions? I don’t honestly know, but I think they are partially attributable to my desire to NOT have this be another autumn in which I get depressed. I also am motivated by my recent weight gains to DO SOMETHING.

I happen to be of the opinion that blogging about weight loss is very, very boring. I could lose 45 pounds, but I still would think that the most interesting parts of what my life is about are entirely unrelated. How I look in a tight fitting dress is really irrelevant. I like being funny, thinking up creative projects, having fun with kids, and eating yummy foods. So who the heck cares what I weigh, and if I lose any weight or gain a few pounds?

Folks, the truth is that it comes down to my health. I am looking around on my family tree and I wince at what I see. My dad, along with his three sisters, are all diabetic, and overweight. They may all have heart problems, too, and at least one of them has had cancer. I am the youngest of the group of first cousins to which I belong. Many, many of them are very overweight. So when I noticed my belly kind of sticking out above my jeans, I was kind of alarmed.

Hello belly? Where’d you come from? Genetically speaking, I don’t have too much of a chance of avoiding getting fat. But I don’t have to take that lying down. I will take that doing laps in the pool instead.

I bought myself a bracelet today, a cute little beaded thing on elastic, which I could have easily made myself. It wasn’t expensive. But I bought it because I decided that wearing something on my wrist would be my visual reminder not to gorge myself on things that will add to The Belly. It will remind me to schedule pool visits into my weeks. It will remind me, in November, to write, write, write.

Meanwhile I’ve been utterly obsessed with the election. If you just asked yourself “What election?” then I would like to know what rock you are living under. Those who’ve been reading this blog for much time at all will know I’m a Swing State Liberal Voter. I keep checking the polls and seeing blue. I am happy about this.

Today I even listened to some conservative talk radio. I was DELIGHTED by what I heard. They were attacking Barack for association with Ayers, a so-called terrorist. Hah! The McCain campaign has NOTHING to stand on, and all they can come up with is lies and distortion. I love that. Then this silly conservative talk show put on some mock campaign commercials in which they hightlighted the issue that Obama is pro-choice. Yup, he sure is. And so is the majority of the citizens of this country, who believe in a woman’s right to access to reproductive healthcare of all kinds. Obama WISELY leaves the decision about when a human life begins to the realm of religious leaders.

Finally, this financial crisis is pretty scary. I hate to admit it, but I don’t really get it. I mean, what I get is that greedy investors overdid it, and made some stupid moves, and now we’ve got an economy that’s really zarked. That much I’ve absorbed. I’ve listened to NPR. I’ve listened to This American Life, and Marketplace. And smart people who get this stuff have talked to me about it. Why doesn’t it stick in my head? I know enough to be scared. My mind keeps coming back to the idea that the day could come when I need to grab my family and head off to live in the country, growing my own food and clobbering Bambi in order to survive. Could I do that? I honestly do not know.

So that’s where I am this lovely October day. With some dirt under my nails from having put some Shooting Stars bulbs in the ground, a plan to write a novel in 30 days, and the hope that I can get my body back under my control, I am smiling at the on-coming season and hoping it treats me well. I think it will, if I will treat myself well. And if the world’s economy utterly fails after Nov. 4, at least I’ll have a novel-in-progress to distract me.

Homework every day.

It’s easy stuff (not like the 5th grader’s homework that I saw in After School.) But with my daughter, it’s like pulling teeth.
She acts tired and discouraged. She says she has a headache. She glazes over, trying really hard but at the same not actually doing anything.

Apparently she does this in class, too. I find it so discouraging, too. I wish I could help her more. It seems like she’s developing a very negative attitude about homework. Focusing is hard for her, though when she LIKES something, she does it quickly and easily.

All I’ve ever heard from her teachers prior to this year, or nearly all, is how bright she is. How great to have her in the class. How imaginative, intelligent, engaging, creative. Suddenly she’s dreamy, spacey, fidgety, unfocused, etc. Is this the same kid?? Her current teacher, Ann, does in fact love having her the class. She’s described her as a lovely person, very bright, with a lot going on in her head. But she isn’t keeping up with the other kids. She falls behind and we have to do the work at home.

Which is tough, since I’m the After School teacher. And I’m busy with a dozen other children until about 6:00, when we rush home, make dinner, and by the time we’ve eaten, we’re all exhausted. Not a good time to have a homework showdown.

Today and yesterday, we had off from school due to the Jewish holiday. This is a pleasant break from regular life, and so today I am lucky to have the leisure to sit with her and coax, prod, nag, remind her to keep working. It is beyond frustrating. It’s torture!

I’m a teacher, only I don’t have to teach all that complicated stuff like where do babies come from, and how did the world get here in the first place. Of course, if I was asked to teach such delicate and apparently controversial matters, I’d be only too glad to check all the facts, and find appropriate books for children to learn all about the science behind such things. I’d be interested in seeing what theories were supported by fossils, and layers of the earth, and astronomy and all that sort of thing.

Instead, I am focusing on teaching kids how to unwind after a busy day at school, how to bake cookies, muffins, or pizza, or how to sew a pillow, or how to make an origami fortune teller, or encourage dramatic play, or, or, or, or. You get the idea. I’m the After School Director — and it’s my job to see that the kids are safe and comfortable until their parents are able to pick them up. And at the wonderfully crunchy school where I teach, I don’t think anyone would even think about teaching so-called “Creationism.”

I was so appalled today to read the following:

An avid hunter and self-described “hockey mom,” Palin, 44, is beloved by conservatives for her strong opposition to abortion and her support of teaching creationism in school.

Republicans also rallied around Palin when she was attacked by pundits for failing to put her family first, given that she has a four-month-old son with Down syndrome and her unmarried, 17-year-old daughter is pregnant.

Ok, when did Republican come to mean “doesn’t believe in science anymore”? I mean, really? And if Republicans are so against having the government be big and control people’s freedoms, why is that they want to limit what a woman chooses to do? And to make people’s kids be forced to learn some religious bullship in place of science? And what’s with this pitbull woman who cares more about unborn embryos than about what happens to kids after they are born?

Being a mom of two children, and teacher to many more, I know how much kids really yearn for someone to listen, lead, and share with them so much of every day life. And I remember fondly how completely having an infant filled up my days and nights. It wasn’t that I didn’t have a career (I did, and continued to work even as milk would sometimes trickle down my blouse — s’cuse me!). It wasn’t that I was someone whose only interest in life was to care for my infant. It just really takes a lot of work to raise a baby. My babies didn’t have “special needs” but they did need my special loving attention, practically 24/7. Even if I wasn’t with them, my body sure know what it was supposed to be doing.

So, If Palin is so gosh-darned happy to be a hockey mom, why would she want to move to Washington, D.C.? The hockey is certainly not so choice there. When does she plan to pump milk for her baby? Or does she even bother now? Apparently, she isn’t much concerned about the welfare of her children once they leave the womb. Or maybe her preggo teenage daughter can just quit school and be the new mom of the house, it’s good practice and all.

Meanwhile, she’s so proud of her daughter’s DECISION to have a baby! Guess what? There’d be no DECIDING if Mommy had her way with the country, right? All the preggo teenagers would just up and marry their boyfriends and fill the world with little cherubs for our social services system to help care for. Too bad those same social services are being run down, de-funded, and dismantled by the Republicans. Of course, the number of teen moms will only go up and up, since Abstinence Only Education leaves teens in the dark about how to protect themselves should hormones ever cloud their judgment about sex. But really, who ever heard of teens having bad judgment? That’s just crazy talk!

So. Science? Out the window. Facts? That’s history! Real Education? Bah! Don’t be ridiculous!!

Tomorrow is my first day of After School. I think I’ll teach the kids about what we can do to save the unicorns from becoming extinct.