The long walk

I had a friend in high school named Heidi.  She was a friend with a strong personality; creative and smart and adventurous, so one day when she asked me if I wanted to walk with her to The Valley, I said, sure.  I was always ready to tag along on her adventures. Ushering at the Hollywood Bowl, going to folk dancing clubs, whatever she said, I went for it with her.  She lived on the very top of a hill between Thousand Oaks and Newbury Park.

Yes, let's blame the schools!

This cute picture of Tela, Leah, Emma and Sam has nothing to do with my writing today, but it makes me happy to look at it, so I put it up here first...to make you happy before you read

So, I have a friend on facebook who is a writer and she was tagged in a photo with another writer who happens to be be the previous owner of our house.  There was a link to her book, so I had to check it out...right? And it turns out that she has written a book on secular homeschooling.  Of course, next I had to read the pages Amazon allows the curious customer to peruse for free.  Now, everyone knows that as a Public School Teacher, I can be a bit prejudiced against homeschooling (mostly because we have to try to pick up the slack after the parents let the children play video games all day instead of doing lessons, and then they bring them back to school for us to 'fix'...I give kudos to the parents who do a conscientious job of teaching their children).  So I steeled myself to read without being defensive and to truly see her criticisms of public education as being valid.  But as I was reading, something was needling me...I couldn't quite grasp what was bugging me.  Her thesis was well-written, but...and finally it came to me.  The author briefly discloses her background: a bright child who did well at school and got good grades, but was unprepared by the school system to live an independent adult life.  She also mentions in passing that she came from a dysfunctional family with a suicidal, agoraphobic mother.  Now this is important because what I realized was that her criticism of public education was that it didn't prepare her for life.  But MY thesis is that her FAMILY didn't prepare her for life.  She blames the schools, and I am so T-I-R-E-D of everyone blaming the schools.  It is too easy.  She says she learned facts at school, but not how to problem solve.  So she has come up with the idea of secular homeschooling to teach her daughters the way she wished she had been taught.  She uses her family as the proof text.  But lookit here...whether as a teacher or as a mother, she is actively involved in teaching her daughters, they do not have the dysfunctional family she was raised in.  I have a feeling they would have been successful whether they had attended public school or homeschool...because of the family, not the education system. Her daughters are headed to a university now (public BTW) and I applaud the author for successfully educating her family.  BUT I don't think it is necessary to denigrate the public school system in order to validate her method of secular homeschooling.   Obviously there is room for improvement, and we are always striving to make that improvement, but public schools must be doing something right for someone, as our colleges and universities ARE graduating students into the workforce who are bright, competent, creative workers. Thousands of them every year!  The media loves to zero in on the students who are not prepared, but the glass really is half full. Teachers do NOT raise your children, we teach them. Parents have been given the job and want to be able to slough it off onto the shoulders of the schools. And, as a final note, the conservative constituents coalition started lobbying for accountability in the schools, which led to a demand for measurable progress, which led to a crappy set of testing (NCLB) and a drill and kill method of teaching that we, as teachers, hated.  Now, the pendulum is swinging back to more authentic teaching which includes value given to creative problem solving, cooperative learning, communication, and some other 'c' word that I can't remember at the moment...oh, yeah, collaboration.

It's June, it's June

Well, this is quite a month.  School was out on Wednesday, and now the days of summer will fly by faster than the speed of sound.  We are moving into the farmhouse next week, then preparing this house to be put on the market.  All exciting stuff.  Uncle Mike is in hospice in Santa Barbara and Aiden's anniversaries are coming up.

With a 2 year old, its all about distraction...

Yesterday was Easter.  What does one do on Easter? Play bells at church and have an Easter egg hunt.  We were enjoying a lovely potluck breakfast, especially my favorite classic Lutheran potluck recipe, the one with cool whip, cottage cheese, dry orange jello, coconut, pineapple and mandarin oranges, while the youth group was hiding eggs for the little ones.  They were smart and hid eggs in front for the big kids and on the playground for the little kids.  What they didn't know was that Alice has coveted that playground for months.  Every time we go by, she begs to play on the brightly colored plastic slides and toys.  So yesterday when the gate to the forbidden garden was finally open to her, she could care less about eggs.  Even eggs with CANDY in them.  ALL she wanted to do was to play on the toys.  And it was cold (later in the day it became warm and beautiful, but at the moment of the egg hunt, there was a very chilly wind blowing.) So after helping her put half a dozen eggs in her little basket, Abby tried to get her to leave.  No.  Not happening.  Pitch a fit! Scream at the top of your powerful little lungs.  Abby, with her 36 weeks pregnant belly, tries to pick her up, but she is juggling toddler, diaper bag, and Easter basket, so I carry the Screaming Siren out to the car.  She is not just crying, she is flat out screaming...and I walk through the church with her to the parking lot.  Oh, look, an airplane flies overhead.  Instant silence.  Smiles.  Waves at the airplane.  "Hi plane, hi!" Her chubby little hand is waving at the plane and all the trauma from 3 seconds before is gone.  Abby puts her smiling in the car and drives off.  Scott and I shake our heads and go home.

Always thinking about Aiden

When Aiden was in preschool, he had lots of friends (and a couple of frenemies) but one of the boys we heard about a lot, was, let's say, Mario.  Mario didn't speak much English, but boys have a common language that does not require words, and so they were able to play and develop a friendship.  I had his big sister  in my class when things went to hell in their family.  Drugs, money, guns...you know how it is...We got involved with trying to help the mom and kids and when Mario was in second grade he was in Scott's class.  I knew that the baby in the family was named Aiden, but what I just found out was that Mario's mother told him he could name the baby and so named him Aiden, after his good friend at school. I love that our Aiden will be remembered in that family for all of little Aiden's life.

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Wine trip to Pismo and Paso Robles

We joined Marc and Sonrisa for a day of wine tasting, picnicking, swimming and fine dining.  And then came the animals... 

Alligator petting at Peachy Canyon...this alligator was rescued from a crack house by the LA Sheriff's dept.  Luckily, he found a good home with Zoo to You, and this caretaker who has had him for 16 years.

First stop was at Grey Wolf.  We tasted wine and then played with a lemur!

Scott on the patio at Hearthstone

What a perfect day we had! Three hours from Tehachapi to Arroyo Grande, we started at Laetitia. We sat in the sun in a pair of comfy adirondack chairs and waited for Marc and Sonrisa to arrive.  We already felt so lucky to be here in this place at this time, satisfied just to be sitting in the sun waiting for friends looking forward to a lovely picnic. Warm enough to swim overlooking the ocean and dinner at Ventana Grill, couldn't have asked for a better day.

Reagan Library

It was quite a fun day, all in all.  It only took 30 seconds of being in the library before I was called an idiot by a man walking by.  Mind your own business, man! But after that, we ignored the Reagan propaganda and enjoyed the history. The lunch was delicious, and our table mates were interesting and compassionate (Gita really got their attention when she told the story of meeting Matthew, home from Afghanistan,  in Texas this weekend.  The ladies at the table all cried.) We walked down Air Force One!  and the best part was the Spy Exhibit.  Shoe phones and hidden cameras.  The ice pick that assassinated Leon Trotsky in Mexico.  The umbrella that poked ricin into the spy in London.  A submarine CANOE! Hidden cameras and secret tunnels. A laser maze, which I totally failed at navigating.  I was crawling through the secret tunnel when I heard someone laughing hysterically, you know the kind of laughter where tears flow, and I thought, " That is my mother laughing!" and when I crawled out of the tunnel, I discovered it wasn't so secret after all.  She was watching me on a hidden camera. I began reading spy novels in high school, and devoured Helen MacInnes, John Le Carre and Ian Fleming books with gusto.  So to see all of those gadgets and to play spy was fun.  BTW, Gita was Mrs. Peel and I got to be Agent 99.  And then there was the young woman who came running to the elevator our little docent led group was getting into and pushed her way in, followed by a red faced security guard screaming "Did you just flip me off?" The young woman, who looked a little sketchy, claimed innocence, "I was waving at my mother" Stunned silence as the elevator door closed.

Sorry about the terrible quality picture.  I had to take a picture of my phone with the computer to get it on here.  This is me, the idiot.