It Just Takes One Bad Apple

Oh the last day of school, oh the celebration, free for the summer! It's a race to the neighborhood ice cream shop, a race we never win as my poor children must wait for their mother to gather her things, shut down her computer and pile books to sort through in September. And so we arrived to find at least thirty children on the sidewalk outside, eating ice cream and running joyously, celebrating the last glorious day of school.

A second grade boy saw us first, as we drove down the street across from the sidewalk. His friends joined in and then everyone, screaming and yelling, so excited to see the librarian coming to the ice cream store. I lowered all the windows to allow the voices to be heard, the unbridled screaming, "Ms. Lang! Ms. Lang! Look who is here, it's Ms. Lang!".

Never, not once in my entire life, have I been so well received. The cheers were deafening, the crowd growing, the children running along the sidewalk, following our car until I stopped at the red light. I waved, acknowledging my fans, those same children who only one week ago scowled at me when I asked them to be quiet in the library. My own children were shocked to near silence in the backseat, "Um, Mom, they really like you", said Mary, seeing her now famous mother in a whole new light. For this brief and shining moment I was the queen of the Last Day of School parade.

A car pulled up next to me, having just turned onto the street. The old man stopped and rolled down his window, his wife in the next seat. "Are you a teacher?" asked the old man, surely stopping to thank me for another wonderful school year, another glorious nine months of learning and growing.

Rather than bore this kind man with the details of my specific role I nodded and smiled, "yes, yes I am!". He turned to his wife, nodded and then smiled at me, "well then you make too much money, driving that expensive car", and he grunted, laughed, and sped away.

There's one in every crowd.

Once a School Nerd...

"Big plans for the weekend?"
"Um, yep, school auction", as I signed the sales slip at the local book shop.
The sales clerk smushed her twenty something face into a look of grim pain, "yea yuck, good luck".

Nodding, I returned the quirky smile, wished her a great weekend, and headed out.

Because you never really stray too far from who you really are, it seems I enjoy school now as much now as I did then. Like staying after in high school to help build sets for the school play, I happily volunteer to help with the book fair, and look forward to the school auction each year. In my old age I have realized that it was never as much about the academics as it was, and is, about the social circle, and being with people I enjoy.

Jack and I are lucky. In Chicago you don't just walk down the street to your neighborhood school; there are applications and lotteries and tests for kindergarten, and our daughters, after a mad scramble, found seats in an amazing school, not too far from where we live. They are learning and growing and happy, and we, in their school, have found a truly wonderful circle of friends, as well as a network of teachers and staff who we not only enjoy but trust, every day, with our two very favorite things on earth. To be forced into an evening of wild abandonment with these people is not too much to ask.

Back when I was happily building sets for Flowers for Algernon there were no school auctions. There was no fund raising; in picture perfect suburban Kansas City there was no need. Chicago schools, and Chicago students, are suffering and parents are being asked to make up the growing distance between what is needed and what is available.


Raise your paddle, support your school, and hopefully, enjoy yourself at the same time; once a school nerd, always a school nerd.

Back to School, Again

This week, for the second time this year, the girls went back to school.

After a seven day break, courtesy of the Chicago Public Schools and the Chicago Teachers' Union, my girls went back to third grade, back to friends and learning and wonderful teachers.


The truth is, I'm a big fan of teachers. In the three years that my girls have been in school, they have been taught by five amazing classroom teachers. We're lucky; my children go to a school with supportive parents, engaged administrators, great teachers and no shortage of glue sticks or pencils. Not every child in Chicago can say the same.

Was a strike the best way to create change in a system that desperately needs repair?



Explaining a union strike to children is hard, explaining a union strike to children without tainting either side with politics is even harder. Sending them back to class with the same respect for their teachers was my primary goal, not an easy task with strangers telling them on the bus that their teachers should be at work and not out fighting with the city. 

We rallied; we supported our teachers, we talked about democracy and fairness and negotiations. We learned even when there was no school, because it's my job too.

And on Wednesday Mary and Kate stepped into school just as enamored with their teacher as they were way back on September 4th. Me too.

Looking Back With Appreciation

With 34 days left in the school year, 34 days until Mary and Kate symbolically step to second grade, I found the time to sort through the pile of accumulated kindergarten work gathering dust in the dining room. The time was easy, two days at home with a very sick child (our seventh round of ilk this year) allowed me ample hours to comb through the basket of paperwork that I had let sit for almost a year. Nestled amongst the artwork were poems and stories and things quite difficult to read. Mary drew a lovely picture, stamped October 2009, with this caption: SML the FLWR. This morning Mary correctly spelled compute and pollute and schedule in preparation for today's spelling test.

Until the home basket excavation, I had really no idea how far from kindergarten they had moved. Sorting through the accumulation gave me a very good feel for the progress made over the course of the year, and a sense of awe in seeing what my children had accomplished. Handwriting became something I could read without the teacher's help, and artwork grew detailed and more realistic. In the early months faces had eyes, a nose and a mouth; by May they included ears, eyebrows, eyelashes and yes, sometimes wrinkles.

It occurred to me, as I reached the bottom of the basket, that this is teacher appreciation week. More than flowers or chocolates or an apple shaped pendant could ever convey, I am appreciative of the incredible teachers that have brought my girls to this place; amazing people who took them from shapes to multiplication, from simple sounds to words with vowels, and from smiley faces to wrinkled looking mothers. For people who are endlessly patient and know that a child can move from flr to schedule in one year's time, for those who expect the very best from every child, I am so very thankful.

"If you can read this, thank a teacher."

-Anonymous

Appreciative, Then and Now

There are those who subscribe to the commonly held belief that cooks don't bake, and bakers don't cook. I am a believer, and in that I consider myself a decent cook, good not great, it follows then that I don't bake, or at least I shouldn't. But Monday night I was up late, buried in a lemon blueberry bundt cake, elbows deep into a cinnamon crumble coffee cake, chopping pineapple and cutting strawberries, way past my bedtime. Tuesday was the Teacher Appreciation breakfast at school, for reasons unknown I was left in charge of the bakers.

Aside from my want to someday be one of those moms who can whip up cupcakes for the entire class in minutes more than the actual required baking time, I have a genuine affection for teachers, and a need to thank them for choosing to spend their days with my children, exposing themselves to every kind of childhood illness imaginable, understanding just how precious these children are to the parents who dropped them off that morning. Two little girls who like school more each day than they did the day before, their teacher has provided them with a wonderful place to learn and grow, and I believe, without a doubt, the kind of beginning to education necessary to foster lifelong learners. For that I am forever grateful.

Mrs. Unruh scratched on almost every paper I handed in "write more! write more!". She kept me after school, as I remember, every day for talking out of turn; she was challenging, tall, and sometimes scary, and she encouraged me to do what I loved. Mrs. Grow, tired of hearing me yell out "gadzooks" every time I needed an expletive, suggested I create a dictionary of my own words. Mrs. Willingham, in all her sing song glory, taught me to recite poetry and to remember to always send a written note. And Mrs. Chamberlin patiently showed me book after book, imploring me to explore behind the cover, to read things on the other side of the library, and to discover characters beyond Ramona, Encyclopedia Brown and Henry Huggins. Maybe the best way to thank the teachers is to remember them, even when you are old, and to know just how greatly they impacted the person you became.

The lemon bundt cake was beautiful, perfectly shaped and covered in a pretty yellow glaze. The crumb cake was brown, spotty, lumpy and reminiscent of what I assume an underground sewer eruption might look like, at the street level. Confidently I sliced a piece of the lovely bundt, it was gooey, a beautiful yellow mess, a molten like somewhat raw cake, probably not edible, at least not safely. The hideous eruption was wonderful, moist and unsightly, tasty and not full of food borne illnesses. But of course I knew, as Mrs. Chamberlin taught me, you can't judge a book by it's cover.