The Politics of the Bus Stop

It's only 6 miles to the Catholic school, but the Nodlings still ride the Catholic school bus with half a dozen other kids from a 10 mile radius. By definition, this means that they don't ride the public school bus. The other thing they don't do is wait at the public bus stop.

This has a very curious effect on them from an otherwise very pleasant neighborhood: they are somewhat isolated from the other neighborhood kids. They don't have the shared experience of going to the same school, riding the same bus, or standing on the curbside with their peers on a cold January morning.

The bus stop is also where the Moms and occasional Dads are forced to congregate making idle chit chat. It's the place where play dates and casual invitations get made for when Johnny comes home from school or soccer practice lets out. Unless you're otherwise involved in common activities or have the benefit of a tight neighborhood community, you're just another wave-across-the-yard face in a suburban island enclave.

Now there are a lot of great things about Catholic schools and the community they develop.  What they lack in convenience, they make up for with depth. Earlier this year, I had the privilege of seeing my eldest son, Wynken, graduate from St. Mary Marvelous. They had a week long graduation celebration the likes of which I have never seen at any level - elementary, high school, or college. Everyone from the Kindergarteners to the eighth graders to the staff to the parents joined in with laughter, tears, reminiscences, and a deep sense of connectedness.

The friendships parents make once they start having children tend to be the parents of their kids' friends. Left to their own devices, kids in a neighborhood will play together in shifting packs that resemble floating crap games with looser rules. Kids are good that way; it's the parents that tend to have the hang-ups. But at the end of the day there is still a little bit of the you-don't-go-to-my-school division even at the kid level.

But that's changing, perhaps by Design. With a Catholic high school tuition being out of our reach (see Forty Percent of Awesome) Wynken is headed to public school. In addition, a new family with 5 kids has just moved in next door.  We've only known them a week, but all the Nodlings and the neighbor's kids have flowed back and forth between the two houses non-stop. Woo hoo!

Not only do they have 5 kids, but the ages match up perfectly with the Nodlings. And in a stunner, their oldest is a boy with Asperger's -- just like Wynken -- and they will be going to the same school. As we struggle to deal with our new reality of a boy with social and executive functioning challenges, God has seen fit to put this family in our lives.

How cool is that?

Did I Pass?

I have passed seventh grade twice, fifth grade thrice, and third grade four times. And I'm doing it all again.

That is to say, I've successfully completed these grades once for myself, but they (you know who you are) are compelling me to do it again and again.  It seems inevitable, that my children will come home with a project.

I hate projects.

And because almost all the Nodlings go to the same school ... they're the same projects over and over again.

Now of course the children do their projects all by themselves. Of course they drive themselves to the store to get their supplies. Of course they do all their own research without asking for assistance, and of course they are all wizards on the computer the way the school system requires them to be these days. (Of course they all have their own computers and printers -- silly you, for asking.)

Harumph.

That being the case our oldest, Wynken, is the latest Nodling to have a project -- and not just any project: The Seventh Grade Science Fair. Da Da Da DUM!!

I hate the Science Fair most of all. I studiously avoided it growing up by focusing year after year on either 1) dinosaurs, or 2) salt crystals. (Hey, look -- dinosaur salt crystals!) It's not that I hate science (it's rather interesting), it's that I hate Science Fairs: the pressure of competition, the stupid poster boards, the flimsy models, the lame ideas (are seventh graders really supposed to come up with an original idea?), the awkward reports, and so on.

After having Science Fair Idea Block for a couple of weeks solid, Wynken actually found a cool looking (and mercifully simple) topic called Hero's Fountain. Hero (or Heron) was an ancient Greek mathematician and engineer who did a lot of cool experiments.

Hero's Fountain is a "standalone fountain that operates under self-contained hydrostatic energy".  Huh? Wha-?  Basically it's a 3 tier fountain where you pour water in the top and gravity makes it go down and come spurting out the top again (almost) endlessly.

He came up with the idea and the hypothesis, did research, built a model, conducted the experiment, and typed up the analysis.  I made it pretty.

Now I know that everybody says that you should let your kid do his own project and let his work stand on its own, etc. I get it. I do. Individual achievement. Learning (sometimes by failing). Helicopter parents need not apply.  BUT (you knew there was one) since Wynken has an executive brain function deficiency despite being a near-genius (more on that later), he would still be formatting the title if I didn't intervene. (And I want my computer back.)

This meant that even though I wasn't "doing" the project, it took up a lot of my time (and Mrs Nod's). I had to (literally) stand over him to get him to keep typing, look up stuff, (STOP looking up stuff), get supplies, use the hacksaw and the hot glue gun, and make sure he was following the already-laid-out-for-you outline provided by the teacher.

When it came time to make the display board, he showed me the Wikipedia image of Hero's fountain he wanted to use and we discussed what information he wanted to attach to it.  So I took those things and combined them with a little Photoshop magic into an infographic. I admit, it was a little over the line (but just a little).  It's hard not to want to help your kid, especially when he struggles. And he did work hard. It just took forever.

We went from this:

Wikipedia image of Heron's Fountain

To this:

Wynken's image of Heron's Fountain

Here is the actual fountain he built:

So ... did I pass?

99 Pounds Of Books

Good Gravy! I just  came from Wynken's Back To School night for middle school.

They made us switch classes just like the kids do, but every 15 minutes. It was quite the whirlwind. After 8 classes I can see that the fact the middle schoolers only get 10 minutes of "recess" is not going to be a problem. The sixth graders are going to get quite the workout going up and down the steps to all their classes.

I've seen the books these kids have and it's enough to give them scoliosis. They've got eight 300-page textbooks and a half dozen workbooks, plus binders and folders for papers. These kids look like something out of (pre-)Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles -- small kids with giant backpacks that weigh a 99 pounds.

The books are so ridiculously heavy that they even go so far as to give each middle schooler two complete sets of books so one can stay home and one can stay at school to reduce the burden. Good grief! Why not just give them all a Kindle and be done with it? Or an iPad? (Ooooh, iPad!)

All I can say, is that I'm glad I'm not in middle-, high- or any other kind of school anymore. Who wants to be young anyway? Not anybody with a lick of sense.

Dread Nought

It's coming: the thing they dread.

The thing that wakes them up in the night moaning.

School.   (Or if you're my wife, Football Season.) 

Too bad! Like the setting of the sun, like fall after summer, it comes whether you are ready or not.

Be glad, therefore and embrace your chance to learn, to broaden your horizons, blah, blah blah, because your parents are doing a little happy dance regardless.

Out of Whack

The Christmas interlude is thankfully over and the Nodlings are headed back to school tomorrow. Since they attend a Catholic school, they actually get "Christmas vacation" and not some generic "Winter break".

We've had a good time, but the downsides are starting to show. The kids' schedule is seriously off-kilter. Too many late nights, special treats, candy and desserts, sleep overs, and celebrations have started to take their toll. Although we settled them down early, sleep does not come easy for the Nodlings.

We've noticed that the kids do best with a regular schedule, regular meals, regular expectations. It's almost too much for them to handle so much freedom. There is a direct correlation between their attitudes and their adherence to schedule.

Although they may grumble in the morning, I'll bet the Nodlings are secretly relieved to be going back to school. Their parents are not-so-secretly relieved.

Magic Beans?

Every once in a while the Nodlings do something that I can't explain.

Wynken is a night-owl (like his old man) and it is very hard to get him to actually settle down and sleep. Many is the time we've put the kabosh on a midnight book-fest. Requests, rewards, threats, and punishments are of small duration and even lesser value.

Wynken came home from soccer practice in time to head out to his Cub Scout meeting (which he thoroughly enjoys). I, for my part, came home from work early to take him to the same. Only we didn't go.

"I have Terra Nova testing tomorrow, so I need a good night's sleep." (Terra Nova is like SOL testing.) I just checked on him and he is asleep!

What kid does that? No thanks, no fun for me, I have a test tomorrow.

Blynken and Nod-girl also followed suit. Amazing. What kind of crack do the teachers use at school with Terra Nova testing?

Give me your magic beans, you must give them to me!