Love Made Visible

One of my students from last year came by my classroom today, a tiny white box in his tiny brown hand. He smiled, just a little, and offered me the box.

"What's this?" I asked, honestly confused. It isn't any holiday I'm aware of. He's not even in my class anymore.

"It's a present. Open it."

When you're a teacher, you get lots of presents from little kids. I go home with pockets full of dried up dandelions, each given with love. It really is the thought that counts. But when I opened the box, I found an honest-to-God present. It was so nice, I wondered if maybe he slipped it out of his mother's jewelry box when she wasn't looking.

"But . . . what's this for?" I asked.

"Because you were my teacher last year." He was so matter-of-fact about it you'd think teachers get presents from all their old students every day.

As I hugged him, I remembered how challenging he was last year, how many times he blew up with rage and frustration, how many times he ran out of the classroom and had to be dragged back in. I remembered all those times I had to hold him and reassure him that everything was okay. "I love you," I'd whisper. "You're safe here."

He seemed to need more TLC than most children. I was willing to give it.




I didn't even know he noticed.

My A Game

When I started teaching at my current school, I was a little nervous about the open space floor plan. We don't have walls. We don't have doors. We may as well have microphones, because everything we say is broadcast to at least three other classrooms. My principal described it as teaching in a fishbowl, and that's how it felt at first. I was intensely aware of everything I said, especially if I said it in my mean teacher voice.

Over time, I've stopped focusing so much on what I say, and instead, started paying attention to what I hear: the teacher next door. In an open space school, I'm not just a teacher; I also get to be a student. All day long, I have the opportunity to learn from a master. I'll admit, she sets the bar so high, sometimes it's a real challenge even trying to keep up. But it's the trying that's making me better. Every day, I have to bring my A Game. I'll still never be as good as she is, but every day, I'm better than I was before.

Here are a few of the new and improved things I did this Christmas.




Classroom Project




Presents for Mom and Dad




Presents for the kids~handmade, personalized capes. Yeah, I would have done that on my own.

Practice What You Preach

Starbucks is big on Community Service. They say so right on their website:

We believe in being good neighbors.

Every Starbucks is a part of a community, and we’re committed to helping neighborhoods thrive wherever we do business. It’s a commitment rooted deep in our heritage and the belief that we can use our scale to be a catalyst for positive change.

Now, more than ever, communities are relying on the private sector to share resources and help drive meaningful change. At Starbucks, we’ve always valued community service, and our partners have been fostering this “culture of good” since we opened our first store in 1971.

But when I walked in today and asked them to donate 20 little paper cup sleeves so my kids could make these cute ships, they said something else.





They said no.

I wonder if they've read their website?

Where the Sidewalk Mends

When school was over today, instead of their usual playground fun, my son and a couple of his friends got down to work. On their hands and knees, they clawed at the gravel like dogs burying a bone. Pebbles rained down into holes in the sidewalk, patching the path till the surface was smooth—more or less. I asked them why they were working so hard instead of playing.

"So nobody's wheelchair gets stuck in there."

It's Grandparents' Week at our school and the grandparents we've seen run the gamut. Some are smoking hot grannies, owning the halls in tight jeans and high heels. But others are very, very old, making their way to their grandbaby's classroom only with the help of a wheelchair—and three sweet little boys.

Good Hair Day

I wasn't in my classroom five minutes this morning before my students' behavior had me in tears. In this case, it was a very good way to start the day.

One of my little princesses was having a hair emergency. This is more common than you might think among four-year-old girls. It's important that one look one's best for a full day of nose picking and Barbie playing. And this little girl did not have what she deemed an adequate hairstyle for her agenda. When Dad brought her to the classroom, it was evident that she had made her dissatisfaction clear on the drive to school. Apparently, very clear.

I wanted her to be happy, so I did my best to find a ponytail holder to solve her problem, but I struck out. I needed to move on with our day, so she was going to have to wait.

But not for long.

Another little girl in our class, let's just call her My Favorite, was paying attention. Without being asked, she took the ponytail out of her own hair and used the holder to take care of her friend. Gently, she smoothed her friend's hair into place and, without a word, returned to her seat.





I wish I could teach them half as much as they teach me.

Changing of the Guard

Today is the last day of summer vacation.

More to the point, today is the last day I get to share all my time with my boy. He's been my shadow all summer long—like a puppy, following close on my heels. It's been indescribably sweet, and I'm savoring the last hours.



Good puppy. Sit. Stay!


I could get good and sad about this special time coming to an end, if it weren't for the fact that all my days are filled with special time just like this. Only the faces change.








Who says teachers aren't paid well? I'm rich, I say, rich!

The Blindside

It happens every year.

Just like the last shopping day before Christmas, or the psycho killer showing up the second the hot girl takes off her shirt, it always catches me by surprise. I know damn well it's coming, but then, every time, it blindsides me.

The last days of school.

You're right if you think the teacher is counting the minutes until that last kid is ushered away, heading off for a summer with mom or dad or the nanny. A summer with anyone but me. I am counting the minutes, and each one is a little harder than the last. Each one pushes me just a little closer to the brink.

I never know what exactly will be the tipping point, what will throw open the valve and unleash the tears I've been pushing back for days. Yesterday it was my little Latina child. She was working on her Pre-K Memory Book, documenting for posterity all the things she liked best about school. When we got to the teacher page, I prompted her to come up with an adjective to describe me. But she didn't quite understand the concept.

So I said, "What do you like about me?"

She looked me in the eye and said, "You heart. I love you heart." And then, a split second before I curled up and died, she added, "And you hair."



This is one of the other children I have to say goodbye to. Look at that face, and tell me how.



Tomorrow is the last day.

Send me luck. Or vodka.

The Eye of the Beholder

Due to an unfortunate playpen accident when I was an infant, I have the ugliest baby toe in America.

No, I'm serious.

It's repulsive.

Really.

You do not want to see this.



Okay, if you just have to.





You were warned.

So today, I'm having a picnic with the four-year-olds I teach. In the chaos of the moment, I forgot about my hideous appendage and kicked off my shoes in the grass. And that's when something truly amazing happened.

I felt someone caressing The Toe.

I looked down and saw that the hand touching my repugnant growth was one that belonged to my little Hispanic student. We'll call her Maria. Although Maria started the year speaking exclusively Spanish, her English is now nearly perfect.

And it was in that perfect English that she said words I never dreamed I'd hear, "You toe ees so preetty."

She was stroking my freshly painted toenail, a shiny sliver of salmon glistening atop my meaty, red pork chop. But she didn't see what I see. All she saw was the shimmering preety pink.

Why can't we all be four?

Too Good To Be True

Because I like living indoors and eating at regular intervals, I avoid blogging about any school related topics that could be construed as negative or critical. If you don't believe me, just see if you can find a single word in my archives about my previous aide.

Moving on.

But then, I moved to my new school. And there was Sarah. The words "new and improved" don't begin to cover it. Sarah, in a word, is perfect. She has an innate understanding of how a classroom, my classroom, should be run. I think it; she does it. Truth be told, she's smarter than I am and much more organized. I should be her aide. Sarah is in grad school and next year she'll be a full-fledged teacher herself. For a brief sliver of time, the kids in our room have had the rare privilege of two equally qualified teachers. However, through a fluke of bureaucracy, Sarah is not qualified to be a Pre-K aide.

Yeah. Moving on.

So tomorrow, she's leaving me. When something seems too good to be true and all that. I'm sure her replacement will be just fine; everything at this new school seems conspicuously better.

I just hope I don't hate her for not being Sarah.





Thank you, Sarah, for the best 16 days of my teaching career. I miss you already.
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Happily Ever After

It was last spring when my principal broke the news. Due to the shifting student population, my school would be losing one of our three Pre-K classes. Due to lousy decision making skills resulting in a complete inability to pick a career until my thirties, I had least seniority. I was being transferred, like it or not. As an elderly person, I did not embrace this sudden and involuntary change. Given the choice, I would have stayed put, surrounded by the comforting known.

Sometimes, it's a really good thing I don't always get what I want.

I've been at the new school seven days now, and even with my trusty Merriam-Webster Online just a click away, I couldn't possibly find the words to say how happy I am. Over the moon happy. Clicking my heels happy. It's 2:35 already? happy.

Strange things happen at this new school that I hope I never get used to. Things like the principal going out of her way to make sure I have what I need to be happy, even on a Saturday. And a teacher wishing me a "winning" year, and handing me a lottery ticket. Or an aide showing up out of the blue, wondering if I needed anything done. Then there's the (handsome!) counselor stopping by just to read to the kids.

The Lunch Lady isn't even mean.

Weird, right?

And then there's Sarah, my aide, who is sweet and smart and hard-working and reliable and agreeable and cooperative and very possibly perfect. If I had to, I would pay her myself just to have her with me every day.

But I haven't even told you the best part yet. Every once in a while, just for a second, I see him.





And, well, I just don't have the words.
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Look Moms, No Hands!

When a Pre-K teacher meets her new parents at the beginning of a school year, there are certain questions she can expect: What time should I pick him up at the end of the day? Can she have a teddy bear for nap time? That sort of thing.

But this year I got a question I wasn't expecting: Can you touch the children?

The first person to come up with a sadder or more disturbing question than that wins the deed to my house! Hell, I'll even toss in the dog, because I know nobody's coming up with anything to top that.

Can you touch the children. In Pre-K.

sigh . . . .

Unfortunately, she didn't just pull the question out of thin air. She asked because her sister's kids go to a popular new school in our area that has a strict no-touching policy. Because I'm sure if some creepy pedophile does happen to get a job there, he wouldn't think of breaking policy. Well, I was going to defile that kid over there, but damn the luck! There's a policy!

There are bad people in the world, it's true. And there's nothing that should be more jealously guarded than our children's safety. But denying a child a comforting hug, a deserved pat on the back, or a reassuring hand to hold, in my opinion, has the potential to cause more harm than it prevents.

As for my Pre-K kids, I started the year by giving them each a beautiful little welcome gift ~





Bubbles



Sidewalk Chalk



Rainbow Marshmallow Twist



And a big hug.
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Houston, we have a problem

Here's a riddle for you:

What do the Houston Chronicle and Houston Nutt have in common? As of this minute in time, they are the only things Houston that Google finds more interesting than Houston Teacher Beats Student.

Houston Teacher Beats Student!

Holy Headlines, Batman! What could be more delicious than a teacher, the epitome of noble trustworthiness, completely losing her shit on tape? We're gobbling it up, salivating all over our front row seats as a human being self-destructs before our very eyes. Boom! One minute, a highly respected and effective educator, the next minute, a horrible monster, the target of international ire and disgust.

Maybe you haven't seen the video yet. Maybe you can't bring yourself to watch, to see a child brutalized by a trusted adult. I understand. It is gut-wrenching. Don't watch if don't think you can stand it. But I hope you'll listen.





From what I've read, the victim, 13-year-old Isaiah Johnson, was making fun of a mentally challenged girl in his classroom. The girl became angry and threatened to hit him if he didn't stop. Isaiah provoked her and encouraged the fight. And the teacher, Sherri Davis, snapped. “You want to hit a girl? Hit me!” But by this point, her thought processes were choked off by rage. She was reacting, not thinking, propelled entirely by her reptilian brain—her fight or flight response.

People are quick to say that teachers should be patient, should be in control at all times. And of course, in a perfect world, that would always be the case. But Sherri Davis doesn't live in a perfect world. She lives in the real world, where real children cause real stress. And in one horrible moment, she lost her head. All logical thought was gone, replaced by irrational, animal instinct. You want to believe a teacher is immune, but we're not. Sometimes we snap.

I'm not excusing her behavior. She has been fired and justly so. A teacher has to learn coping mechanisms to handle the stress of the classroom. One teacher I know says you should always wear clothes with deep pockets, and shove your hands way down in them the minute you start to feel anger. Another uses the STAR treatment: Stop, Take a deep breath, And Relax. Jim Fay, of Love and Logic, encourages teachers to adopt a special empathy phrase to call up when blood pressure begins to rise. “Oooh, I wish you hadn't done that,” one might say to the child who is misbehaving. It's not designed to remind the student of his misdoing, but to stall the teacher (or parent) just long enough to get back into thinking mode.

But Sherri Davis wasn't thinking, and she'll pay for her one minute lapse for the rest of her life.

It bothers me to see an adult lose control in such a brutal way. It does. But what bothers me a whole lot more are the abusers who carefully choreograph their cruelty. The adults who put great thought and planning into the pain and humiliation they inflict on children. Adults like the parents, teachers and principal of Itawamba Agricultural High School in Mississippi. Last month, they put their narrow-minded little heads together to hatch a clever plan to discriminate against a handful of students. In order to protect their children from the discomfort of interacting with the weird kids, the lesbians and the learning disabled, they staged a decoy prom for seven losers and a secret prom for everybody else, the normal kids, who will no doubt follow in their bigoted parents' footsteps, growing up to spew hate for another generation to come. Normal kids like the girl who told Constance McMillan, her lesbian classmate, “I don't know why you come to this school because no one likes your gay ass anyways.”

I'm probably in the minority, but I'll put my kid in a classroom with a teacher who would kick a bully's ass rather than kiss it any day. And I think the administrators and teachers involved in the Itawamba secret prom scandal should suffer every drop of the same shame and punishment Sherri Davis will.

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Teach Your Children Well

Katie* is a perfectionist, which isn't usually much of a problem, because as luck would have it, Katie is practically perfect. She's the oldest child in my Pre-K classroom, easily ready to move on to Kindergarten where she will spend another in a certain endless progression of years at the top of her class. Her hair, yellow and sleek as corn silk, flows down her back. When she runs, I expect to see a camera crew in hot pursuit, capturing the lustrous beauty for a Baby Breck commercial. Her skin is peachy perfection and her eyes, blue as the sky. Another teacher at my school calls her Jennifer Aniston, but when I tried to find a childhood photo of Jennifer Aniston to give you an idea of Katie's beauty, turns out Jennifer Aniston was no Katie.

I like being employed, so I won't post her actual picture, but this may very well be her sister. The homely one.



Katie's special talent, as if she needs one on top of all her other natural gifts, is art. The spectrum of artistic abilities in my room ranges from mad spastic scribbling to, well, Katie. She has an unusual eye and the intense focus to stick with a project until she reaches the goal she's envisioned. Which brings us to the problem.

Katie is a perfectionist.

When Katie's hands won't produce a perfect replica of what her mind has created, she falls apart. I try to assure her that her work is wonderful and she should feel proud, but she's too busy flogging herself to hear.

This is a picture of her most recent hysteria-provoking failure.



Did I mention this is Pre-K? And this, in case you haven't seen Pre-K work lately, is AWESOME! The butterflies had just emerged in our Science Center, and I'm telling you, she nailed them. She even tried to spell it, in perfectly formed little letters. But when she was finished, she threw the paper on the floor and kicked it, crying hysterically. It wasn't good enough. She wasn't good enough.

I got my Googler warmed up and tried to see if I could find some answers to Katie's problem. Lurking in the text of the very first website, I discovered something I hadn't expected to find: myself. Each of the ten traits they listed had my name neatly typed all over them, from the tendency to be particularly self-critical to the low self-esteem to the oddly paradoxical penchant for procrastination.

It made me wonder: Am I teaching my kids more than I intend? If so, I'm sorry Katie.


*Katie is not her real name. Her real name is much more beautiful and perfectly suited to her.
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Memorandum

To: All Teachers and Staff
From: The Principal
Date: April 02, 2010
Re: Parent Contact


We know that emergencies sometimes arise which require parent contact throughout the school day. However, if a parent does not answer her phone, please leave a detailed message. Do not hang up, leaving the school's phone number looming ominously.

Should you choose to disregard the above policy, and said parent calls the school to find out which limb her child has broken, please do not leave that parent on hold for 12 minutes and then fucking disconnect her. If you do, she may hurt you, and we will not stop her. Because you really have it coming. Really you do.

Thank you and have a nice day!
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Passing the Hat

Go ask your child what he learned in school this week. Go ahead. I'll wait.

Yeah, that's what I thought. It's in there, I promise. But it's trapped under thick layers of video game cheats and plot lines to every SpongeBob ever aired. The stuff they learn in school gets mired in mental quicksand, unless it's tethered to their heart. The limbic system of the brain controls thinking and learning; emotion is its on/off switch. If we want to make kids think, first we have to make them feel.

Today my school had a fundraiser — Caps for a Cause. The kids were invited to donate money in exchange for permission to wear their favorite hat to school all day. The money would be going toward the relief effort in Haiti. But these are little kids, few of whom have crossed Piaget's invisible line from concrete learning to abstract reason. An earthquake? In Haiti? We may as well be speaking French as we try to explain what that could possibly mean to a bunch of kids in Arkansas. So we got concrete. The day before the event, we showed them a video of who they would be helping, and why — just graphic enough to give their little limbic systems a good jolt, but not raw enough to disturb them.



Five minutes later, every child in the building understood. They went home, carrying the children of Haiti in their hearts. And they came back the next day, determined to help. The $350 we collected isn't much, I suppose, in terms of what Haiti needs. But our kids learned something invaluable — we all matter; we are all powerful; we can change the world. All we need is the capacity to care.










It's not too late. Have you done something to show you care?
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Hair like Jesus wore it

As a Pre-K teacher, I am intimately, passionately aware of the need for rules and procedures. A classroom absent rules and procedures is filled instead with chaos, confusion and high blood pressure. Rules and procedures are our friends. But as with real friends, quality trumps quantity. Particularly with the younger set, the fewer rules you attempt to establish the better: Don't hurt each other, keep it to a dull roar, and if you really must play with your wiener, please go do it in the bathroom. I went to a workshop once that suggested boiling it down even further, to just one succinct rule: You can do anything you want, as long as it doesn't cause trouble. I thought of this today, when I heard about Taylor Pugh and his terribly troublesome hair.



Taylor Pugh's hair has earned him several weeks of in-school suspension. As you can plainly see, Taylor's hair has been very, very bad. It is not following the rules. That's because where Taylor goes to school, just outside Dallas in a place called 1947, students are expected "to adhere to the code of conduct." And his hair is not adhering. The district categorizes Taylor's hair as "distracting" and therefore disruptive to the learning environment. I am not making this up.

I couldn't agree more that hair can be distracting, disruptive and downright annoying. Several of my little girls wear so many beads and barrettes that my room sounds like Tito Puente's percussion section. I also have a little girl with flowing blond hair so enchanting that some of my boys will stroke it during class or tug it in line. And you should see the ruckus when the boy who normally wears tiny plaits shows up with his hair loose, which turns out to be a fabulously fluffy fro. Even I can't keep my hands out of that! I'm 45 and hair even distracts me. So I suppose we should just borrow some hair nets from the lunch ladies and get back to work. We can't have these four-year-olds distracted from the rigorous academics of Pre-K.

A school board member asked if Taylor's "parents value his education more than they value a 4-year-old’s decision to make his own grooming choices?” If you ask me, they do. It's just that their definition of education, like their son, doesn't fit inside a tidy prefab box. It appears they include radical concepts like thinking for oneself and challenging antiquated ideas that don't make sense. They also seem to be including the lesson of generosity and love, since Taylor plans to eventually donate his long locks to a charity that makes wigs for cancer patients.

Meanwhile, what is this school teaching Taylor?





PS, Hey Taylor, I like your hair. It's pretty, and I bet it's really quiet, too.
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A Time to Love and a Time to Hate

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And so it begins—indoor recess season. Help me Baby Jesus.

In Pre-K, the children must have two thirty minute gross motor periods a day. They need it. And really, don't we all? If I ran the world, every single person would get outdoor recess every day, rain or shine. CEOs and CPAs would hang the closed sign on their office door, skip outside and climb on a jungle gym for twenty minutes. Then they'd have some animal crackers and a tiny carton of milk, topped off by a bedtime story and a nice little nap. Now wouldn't that be lovely? I speak from experience when I tell you—yes, it is lovely indeed. In fact, next to 2:35, recess is my favorite part of the day—having actual conversations with other teachers on the playground, breathing in some fresh air, getting a dose of Vitamin D, saying hey to Mother Nature.


Two teachers at my school at the start of recess.


The same two teachers, thirty minutes later.

And I'm dead serious when I say I think they need it every single day. I'd take them out to dance in the rain if I didn't think I'd lose my license. Come on, kids, grab yer galoshes; we're gonna make mud pies! That, would be awesome. But of course, that's crazy talk. Last year I got stopped mere inches from the door, by the school nurse of all people. Behind me stood an excited queue of kids, bundled up to experience the first snowfall of the season. But this is Arkansas, and there are laws in place down here protecting children from the menace of Nature. Southern children, as well documented by science, cannot endure temperatures below forty degrees and will die sudden and painful deaths upon impact with precipitation. So we were sent back to our room, me properly chastised and them thoroughly crushed. What was I thinking, taking kids out to play in the snow?! What kind of reckless monster am I? So indoor recess it is, if it rains, snows or is deemed too cold to go out—too cold being a ridiculously subjective term which I shall not discuss further for fear of angering the school district gods. While I thoroughly enjoy being outdoors, I'd rather not end up living there.

I'm sure there are a thousand perfectly peachy ways to handle indoor recess, but for the life of me, I can't seem to find a one. How does one manage allowing twenty four-year-olds to be physically active for thirty minutes in a confined area while still maintaining even the illusion of control? Yes, I admit it, I am a card carrying Control Freak and I cannot allow my classroom to turn into a mosh pit. Not unless they're willing to lighten up a bit on their Victorian attitudes about alcohol on school grounds. Seriously, just a little nip would smooth a lot of rough edges on a rainy Friday.

It's tempting just to let them watch a little TV—educational TV, of course. They'd be happy, and more importantly, they'd be still. But again, that pesky drive to remain employed clears its throat and shakes its self-righteous little head at me. Bitch. Okay, okay . . . gross motor it is—active, yet controlled. Go when I say go; stop when I say stop. I've got it! Musical chairs! Perfect.

Or not. I don't know what sadist invented this horrible little game, but I'm guessing it was Darwin. As it turns out, the whole object is to make every child in the room lose, one by miserable one, until they are all dejected and crying. In order to accomplish this goal, players must aggressively muscle their way into whatever chair they can wrench away from their weaker, slower and more polite friends. The eventual winner holds no special talent or athletic ability, aside from being the meanest badass kid in the room. Yay for you! You're gonna make us so proud in juvie! Or Washington.

Damn it's gonna be a long winter.
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The Deep End

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I love my job. I love my students. I love my hours. And I could pin June, July and August down and kiss them full on the lips. But as a teacher in the great state of Arkansas, my salary leaves a bit to be desired. With each passing year of service, the dollar signs inch ever so gradually away from the poverty line. But without my master's, by the time I retire my salary will still be in the same tax bracket as your average paperboy. Of course, we won't have newspapers anymore by then, so a teacher's salary may be in a class by itself.

Surprisingly, we're doing fine. Our ends are always neatly dovetailed. Jesus thought he was all that with his loaves and fishes trick? He should see what I can do with a bag of pasta and a can of beans. We don't need more money. Still, I've decided to go back and get my master's. Honestly, it probably has more to do with my ego than my wallet. It rubs me wrong that other people in my building are making more money than I am for doing the same job.

And so, last week, school began—both the one where I am the teacher and the one where I am the student. Immediately, a strange inverse relationship became evident between my confidence levels in each role. As a teacher, I'm kicking ass. Already, I have my new group well in hand and foresee a very smooth year. As a student, however, the tables are most assuredly turned. Other than mandatory "professional development" sessions, I haven't been on the receiving end of a lesson plan in a solid decade. It's daunting. I feel like I've just jumped into the deep end of the pool without my floaties. Meanwhile, all around me, everyone is kicked back on a chaise, slathered in Hawaiian Tropic, margarita in hand. In each class, I sit smack dab in the front row, biting my fingernails and trying to remember to breathe, while my classmates all look more like customers in the waiting room at Jiffy Lube than grad students. Maybe I'm mistaking apathy for confidence, but I really wish just one of them would do me a favor and quit acting so damn comfortable.

Here's a tidy example of the disparity between me and the rest of my classmates. Just last night, one of our professors expressed her concern that she had packed our syllabus a bit too full. A concern, I am not ashamed to admit, that I shared. So she offered to lighten the load by dividing the reading list among us. One group would read this stack and the rest of us would read that one. Before I could even get the sigh of relief out of my mouth, a twenty-two-year old named Jennifer chirped, "But I think we'd get a richer experience if we all read ALL the books, don't you?" Thanks for your input, Jennifer!

So I'll keep treading water, keeping my head above the surface until the doggy paddle comes back to me. I may never become Michael Phelps, or Jennifer, but I'm not going under either. Wish me luck.
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What Not to Wear (in Pre-K)

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School uniforms give me pause. I can see the (alleged) merits of kids dressing for success. Uniforms may lead to a slight increase in standardized test scores. They may increase student focus on academics. They may decrease gang activity. They may alleviate issues of jealousy and competition. They may be cost effective for parents. They may be the out a parent needs when her little princess discovers her inner ho (as a few of my Pre-K students already have). So, okay, I'll bite: school uniforms might be a good idea. Bill Clinton, who is so smart he may actually have two brains, said, “If it means . . . that our young people will learn to evaluate themselves by what they are on the inside, instead of what they’re wearing on the outside, then our public schools should be able to require their students to wear uniforms.” Hard for a yellow dog like myself to disagree with Bill. But standardized testing is bad enough. Do we really have to standardize dressing? I've taught in schools with uniform policies and haven't met a polo yet with magical powers. Even with Bill's seal of approval, I'm still not sold.

In theory, I do like the idea of suiting up for the task at hand, like a full body string around the finger. When I go to work, I put on teacher-y clothes: a modest skirt, flats, pearls. Nothing like a little Ann Taylor to give my brain a sharp nudge: Hey, you're the teacher; quit screwing around. But when I get home, I leave a smoking trail of discarded clothes and jewelry from the front door to the heap on the floor where I left my boxers and wife beater the night before closet. If my husband's home, I'll yell mid-transformation, "See, I'm cute." Then, poof, Cinderella at 12:01. An evening of hard liquor and heavy Facebooking has a uniform all its own.

But Pre-K? Their job description is pretty much: play, pick your nose, play some more, tattle 27 times, take a nap. What's the proper uniform for that? Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of conformity in the classroom. I lovingly explain my expectations. I want my students to behave. I give gentle reminders about the rules. I am a complete control freak. But even though I require a nice goose-step down the hall, I don't see any reason why it can't be done in some cute Gymboree.

Even in Pre-K, the seeds of fashion sense are germinating. Most kids have a style. Sometimes it reflects the parent's taste, but usually it's the kid's. Like my five-year-old, who just recently decreed all shirts without hideous commercial characters or garish text "boring." I blame the world around him, where ugly is the new black. Don't take my word for it. Take a peek at a random day on my playground . . .

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...


...


Sweet fancy Jesus. My eyeballs are vomiting.

Thank God, I have medicine. My daily dose of Christina . . .
















Ahhhh . . . I love that kid. Stacy London would, too. Tragically, she's moving to a new school for Kindergarten. A new school . . . with a uniform policy. I hope she doesn't read my blog, because I would not want to be the one to break that news. The poor child, this quite possibly could kill her. Great idea, Bill.


So, where do you weigh in on the uniform debate? Inquiring bloggers want to know..
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Feeling The Love

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You know that scene in How the Grinch Stole Christmas! where his heart grows three times its size? Here, refresh.





That's me, right now. Except not so dead.

There are moments when you can actually feel love, physically. Right in your heart. It barges in unexpectedly and grabs you, and it won't let go until it bursts out through your tear ducts. I'm having one of those moments right now, as it suddenly dawns on me how very near the end is.

There are only fourteen days left until school's out for summer. I know, I know. I've been counting down for a month now. Eager to say goodbye to those one or two kids who drive me to the box of wine every night. Anxious to have my freedom and nothing but time to enjoy my own child. But here's the crazy thing that happens every stinking year. Right about now, just as the frozen margaritas and neighborhood pool start singing their siren song, it hits me like a Mack truck: Dammit, I love these annoying little buggers. Every last one of them. Even that one.

And I only get fourteen more days with them.





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