I'm Swamped! But What About the R.O.U.S-es?

I'm closed today.  I've got:

~ my OYT's 8th grade graduation to attend

~ teacher cards to write and gifts to wrap

~ my Transporter's last day of school and its associated activities

~ and Guilder to frame for it!

~ I'M SWAMPED!

~Tina, who hopes she does not get eaten by the eels at this time, but will watch out for the R.O.U.S-es...

©2014 All Rights Reserved

iPhone photo by me.  Goofballs.  Lovable goofballs.

Summer Homework?

Do you think teachers should assign summer homework? I'm talking about a list of tasks which, for OYT, going into 8^th grade, are the following:

- 2 book reports

- a short story

- a 20 page math packet

- 2 current event reports

-a science packet of undetermined length since we can't find it

-posting opinions on various topics to several school sponsored forums

I do understand the teachers' perspective – I WAS a teacher. Keep the kids brains alive during the summer. Review skills. Keep them in shape. However, the way this is being done is not fair to all the students.

OYT's school is the only one in the district which does this, but not all students get assigned this list – only those on the Silver Team. This means half the students in one school, in an entire district, are the only ones doing these tasks.

Now let's think about the population trying to complete these tasks. Not all of them have mothers who used to be teachers who nag until it gets done. Some are motherless. Some have mothers who work, some have mothers who have no idea that there IS summer homework.

So the students show up to school, some with it done, some not. More time is given to complete the tasks, so the summer homework really could have been saved until school started since this is what a LOT of the students are doing, some on purpose, some by default, some because of the reasons we discussed above. Meanwhile, these onerous tasks have been hanging over the head of kids who just want to be kids.

They want to ride their bikes to the pool and chlorine burn themselves, come home so tired they almost fall asleep eating dinner, and then do it all over again the same day. They want to run around the yard and bash each other with foam and rubber weapons. They want to go crawdad fishing, drive their RC cars, play their video games when it's too hot outside, and JUST BE CAREFREE KIDS. Old-fashioned, seemingly endless, glorious summer vacation. What are we gonna do today, Ferb?

But no. They have work to do, and are reminded that more responsibilities soon await. High school is almost here, then college, then LIFE. Let them be kids for the summer. Their brains will catch up. 

What do you think?  Do your kids have summer homework?  Did you have it as a kid?  What should be done?  Talk to me.

Q ~ Quality Teachers

These are the continuing adventures of a Swedish immigrant during her first year as an American. She boldly went where she'd never gone before...please come along on Adventures in America.

Note: this is not the post I was going to write, but I had quite the day yesterday. I've been undergoing a battery of tests at a specialty hospital for my asthma, and yesterday The Swede drove me to those procedures. We had an accident on the way – no big deal, rear-ended in rush hour traffic, no need to get anyone involved, but hey, it was an accident. Then I had two nasty procedures which you can look up on wiki if you'd like...a “tailored barium swallow” and a “bronchial provocation test”. Well, they sure succeeded in provoking my bronchials. I spent most of the rest of the day in bed. No energy to write.

What I came up with instead as I lay awake contemplating today's appointment (the fun never ends) was that I'd just make a list. Yes, these are their real names, and I'm using them because maybe they google themselves to see if anyone remembers them. I do. You shaped my life, some of it in hard lessons, some of it with love and great teaching, but regardless, you made me who I am today. Thanks.

3^rd Ms. Cummings and Mr. Barnett (team teachers)

4^th Mrs. Lougee (ESL teacher, yeah, not a good fit for me...)

5^th and 6^th Mrs. McGinn, Ms. Varoff (who married and became Mrs. Wheeler) Mrs. McCoy and Senior Ley. Open classroom.

All the rage in the 70's.

7^th Mrs. Brody, algebra. Finally someone who could challenge my math skills. No more sitting in the back of the room with busy work while the rest of the class learned something I already knew how to do. Not bragging, God just gave me a good math brain. That's what my degree is in.

8^th and 9^th Mr. Schultz and Mr. Calvert.  GT program, we had them for social studies and science, respectively.

10^th Mr. Yehle, band director. First band director who was a clarinet player like me. I loved band. And all the band nerds!

11^th Ms. Marylee Ruddle. I hated her at the time because she didn't give A's so she ruined my GPA, but she made me a writer. Thank you, Ms. Ruddle, for that and the love or art and poetry I now have. You were the best of them all in the end.

12^th Mr. Neerhof, Bible teacher. Influenced my faith tremendously, and helped officiate in our wedding.

I hope you have an accident free, breathe easy day. Back tomorrow with a story.

~Tina

P.S One of my minions, AJ, wrote an amazingly intricate pick-your-own-plot post for P.  You gotta check it out!

What Engineer's Do for Fun in the Morning

So guess what exciting and glamorous activity I'm doing this morning, while writing this blog? Yup, trying to help my youngest (who by the way no longer wants to be called “Yellowboy” (you can check out the nickname tab above to find out why it's his (FORMER) perfect name) with his math homework. I, a former teacher of 7th grade (his grade) know nothing, and my ways of getting the answer are WRONG, they must be obtained only by Mrs. BestTeacherI'veEverHad's method. Don't get me wrong, she is wonderful, and the reason he's taking high school algebra already. But it's a frustrating endeavor... 

Engineers on the other hand get to be heroes in the morning. He gets up, announces, “The hot water faucet won't turn off in our bathroom. I'm going to shut off the water to that sink until I can deal with it.” Ok, no problem. Well, yes there was. The thingamajig that turns off the water is no longer functioning, so he has to turn off the water to the whole house to remove the sink. Sigh. So many projects, so little time.

Here comes the hero part. The Engineer returns from his man-cave, his storage area of “this might be useful someday”. Half of our basement is this category. I'd take a picture, but he doesn't want me to. Just imagine a room 15x20, full of shelves, with boxes with labels like, “Pin-ball machine parts”, “broken appliances with good motors”, “old computer fans”...you can't really walk in there anymore. It's STUFFED. But! He returns from there with a BRAND NEW FAUCET that our former neighbor gave us. (Neighbor got rid of a lot of stuff that is now in the man-cave.) 

So The Engineer installs the new faucet, and we once again have water in the whole house and a working sink. He still leaves for work at 8:00. My hero.

I also have a bubble-wrap update. Some were wondering if it's working. Here's evidence: Note the ice making a backwards L shape where there is no bubble wrap.

I asked why he didn't cover the other part since we're not using that door. “I ran out.” This from the man who has reams of pink bubble wrap (remember how he saves all packing materials?) “Honey, we have lots of pink we could use. “I will NOT put pink bubble wrap on that door. I guess even eccentric engineers have their limits to how crazy they'll go...I just didn't know his line was pink. 

 ~Tina