Promises kept...

In spite of the remarkable odds,

they tenaciously overcame all the obstacles.

They let themselves be cheered on,

taught to succeed, groomed for greatness.

They learned, practiced. They whined, complained.

We celebrated small victories, smoothed bumps

that lined the long road ahead.

In the background, silent prayers whispered;

parents and teachers inviting triumph in.

Today, the news your teacher awaited

finally arrived. Congratulations received, knowledge confirmed;

to know how far you've come;

to know how far you'll go.

You promised to do your best.

I promised to bear witness all year

to growth: physical, emotional, spiritual, academic.

A promise worth keeping, working towards.

What are you keeping?  What have you kept?  What's worth keeping?  Check out Melissa at Making Things Up and find out about Six Word Fridays!

A prayer for mercy...

Dear Lord,

Today, I ask you to be merciful. I know that I have some bad karma coming to me for years of giving homework to countless students, invoking the same misery I am experiencing right now to hundreds of parents over the last sixteen years. I know I have it coming. Times three.

Tonight, as I am sitting here writing in order to distract myself from my middle child, I pray for either strength or a quick death. Frankly, I cannot take anymore of the whining and complaining or inability to find anything in the book bag that is remotely related to homework. If it is death, please, make it happen NOW. It has been slow and painful enough.

Lord, if in your infinite wisdom you enlighten modern science in the cloning of humans, can I please be first to have one? So I can send her to drop children at tennis at differing schedules? So that I can have another making a dinner that my children will inevitably hate? So that I can perhaps get a massage, or, at the very least, a decent haircut and color? Right now, I would settle for a decent night's sleep or a solo trip to the bathroom.

And while I have your attention, did the garage door really need to cease functioning today? I mean, it has been nearly 12 years since we got it, but did it have to go today? When the entire week is filled with mindless and meaningless things that MUST get done...and when I have trash that needs to go out and have no other way to get it out? Since it's already busted, can I, at the very least, get the earliest, most convenient appointment for repair, without paying an arm and a leg?

Please, dear God, I know that the events of the last few hours are minimal compared to the crosses some people have to bear. Please, let my love for my children overcome the frustration and the feeling of wanting to pull out my already thinning hair straight out of my head as I am carried away to the funny farm. Let me remember how much I love them and so wanted to be a mother. Let those thoughts carry me through the next 14 years of schooling that lay before us.

Thanks for your time. I know you are Almighty. I know that you have my back. Just send me a sign so that I know that I am already on the life raft on this turbulent sea of motherhood.

Amen.

Helpful back to school tips or how not to piss off your child's teacher before school starts

As many of you know, I am a school teacher. I have been teaching for sixteen (!) years. Throughout the many years I have educated children, I have encountered all kinds of children and parents. Just so you know, there can be a lot of "problem" children out there, but "bad" parents are by far the worst problem teachers have to deal with throughout the school year.

I have decided to share some helpful tips for all you lucky people who don't start school until AFTER Labor Day, as the good Lord intended.

1. Please do not disturb a teacher before school starts. This means refraining from introducing yourself to said teacher as she is head deep in opened and unopened boxes, when her room closely resembles Hiroshima after the bomb went off or in the full throes of the nervous breakdown that occurs when we realize the summer is over and school starts in a mere four days from now. This also includes sending emails telling her how gifted your child is, asking what supplies to bring. Bear in mind that any of these actions can remind her that the summer is over.

2. If you decide to come and show your child where his or her classroom is, please make yourself scarce. Teachers who need to move boxes, furniture and books do not tend to look where they are going. Once they gain some momentum on their hand trucks, they forge full speed ahead, rarely noticing if they are running over pedestrians. This is especially true of short teachers, such as myself, who usually pack hand trucks and carts to above my eye level, making a line of vision impossible. Consider yourself warned.

3. Please do not tell us how you can't wait to send your child to school, how the summer was endless and your child was driving you nuts because they were bored. You are not making a good first impression. More importantly, your child's teacher not only has to deal with your "angel." She has 36 other little "angels" whose mothers are desperate to unload come the beginning of school. For the record, we are not here to entertain. We are here to educate. You are not inspiring confidence in us when you relate your anecdotes. Truly.

4. We get the issues your child has with homework. We have kids too. We also have classwork assignments that we have to pull teeth in order to get done. You have our sympathy. It is an unpleasant part of parenting. Get over it.

5. Be truthful of your child's strengths and weaknesses. We will figure them out sooner rather than later. It would be nice to have a heads up so we can address it quickly and efficiently and help your child succeed. We like nothing better than to have a successful academic year and confident students, in spite of what you may have heard about us.

6. Don't schedule teacher conferences the first week of school to gossip about your ex-husband and his new girlfriend. Discuss what is pertinent to your child's educational and emotional well being. We don't like tattling from adults either.

7. Please refrain from blaming your child's prior year's teacher for all your child's academic shortcomings. Surely, uninterrupted TV and video games for the last ten weeks did nothing to strengthen their academic progress. The tons of junk food and soda did not help either.

8. Please, please don't put sodas, cookies, chips and candy in your child's lunch box and call it a lunch. Call it what it is. A teacher's nightmare.

9. Teachers are people too. We have many responsibilities and obligations, inside of the classroom and in our personal lives. Please don't get upset if we don't respond within five minutes of you leaving a message in the main office or sending us an email. We are teaching.

10. If we call you with a concern, we are not picking on your child. We truly have your child's best interest at heart. But when push comes to shove, you are ultimately responsible for your child. We know parenting is hard. Most of us have children of our own. We share the same anxieties and insecurities in our own parenting. As teachers, we know your child in a way you will never know, just as parents know their children in ways teachers never know. We get it. But we are here to help.

11. The way to a teacher's heart is through kindness. There are only so many scented soaps we can use and necklace sets we can wear. If you think we have really touched your child's life, write us a letter. Let us know what we did right so that we can do it again and reach another child. Keep in touch with us throughout the years. We love to hear how our students are doing in other grades, as they get older.

12. Be enthusiastic. Your child will pick up on it. It will make all the difference between having a good year and having a phenomenal year!

Getting busy (in search of knock offs)

This weekend was the weekend. Older two boys at Grandma and Granddaddy's.

Mommy and Daddy getting busy...

...getting rooms cleared out, furniture moved, rearranged, purchased, lugged home and assembled.

All to surprise the boys that rock our world.

But of course, we hit road bumps. Like damaged, still in the package sofas. Discard collecting agencies that don't collect furniture or do collect furniture but aren't open.

Other, more mundane road bumps: neck pain, back pain, furniture dropped on toes, cuts, bruises, strained arms and legs...all kinds of shizz.

After all is said and done, rearranged and assembled, comes the decorating. For boys. Whose idea of decorating is hand drawn Quidditch fields in frames. Seriously. (And for those of you scratching your heads at Quidditch, it is Harry Potter's signature sport, which does not exist for Muggles, who are non magical people...)

Mom wants to rebel and turn at least one little corner of her world into a snapshot of a Pottery Barn catalog. Except, I haven't lost my mind yet. Seriously, $80, clearance price, for a fabulous surfboard shaped corkboard? Seriously.

Where is the Pottery Barn knock off, people? Every store on Earth has a knock off, no?

Which got me thinking...movers and decorators are not necessarily an overpriced luxury.

People with kids and bad backs (because of the kids) need their services.

If only they had knock offs....Oh wait, that's what we are, aren't we?

Homework: A teacher's vengeance for sending your kids to school...

I have a confession to make. I hate homework. I hate assigning it. I hate checking it. And most importantly, I hate supervising it's completion at home.

Before I had children, I was always cognizant of parents. I thought I tried my best to send home the least amount of homework possible. Every once in a while, I would send home a project (hey, I saw that cringe from all the way over here!) to spice things up. I would wonder why parents couldn't control their children long enough to complete whatever I had sent home. After all, didn't I get them to complete a multitude of assignments during the school day?

And then I had kids.

And my kids ended up in advanced classes. With lots of homework...

Yes, Virginia, God has a REALLY sick sense of humor...

I will let all of you giggle and smugly think that I got what I had coming to me. Because I did. Boy, am I paying dearly!

It's like spending five years in prison for every homework offense, and there are literally HUNDREDS of offenses.

Let me tell you that it is infinitely worse when these teachers are your colleagues and friends. Because you can't mutter obscenities that could be repeated in the classroom the next day. Because you must defend the teacher's right to assign the homework to your spouse in front of your children while you silently seethe at their gall. Don't they know that you have expounded all your energy on other people's children, getting them to understand new concepts and complete a multitude of work?

But the absolute worst is actually getting these intelligent children to sit and finish it. A simple 20 minute assignment can turn into HOURS, (yes, HOURS) of torture for child and parent. Because you know that they can finish it in half the time assigned for it if THEY JUST SAT AND STOPPED COMPLAINING.

And my children, they are complainers...of the worst kind. They whine. Endlessly, tirelessly, eloquently, infinitely, loudly. Oh, yes, dear readers. I AM paying DEARLY.

They play all kinds of tricks. First, they MUST go to the bathroom and spend at least 20 minutes in there. I don't think that they have intestinal problems. I think that they are hiding.

Then comes the taking out of the homework assignments from the book bag. This ceremony can take at least 10 to 15 minutes, depending on how bad they want to prolong the agony. Then, the pencil sharpening. Again, it can take forever.

Next, they move on to the big time: what to do. Clearly, these children who can read several levels above their respective grade cannot be forced to understand what their assignment is. After several rounds of "But the teacher never said what to do" or "We've never done this in class", they grumble on their way back to the dining room table, determined to have the last laugh...and they usually do.

I understand, now, all too well, the vacant look and emotionless voice that comes out of parents' mouths when describing how little Johnny reacts to homework. I wonder how many parents stalked me and talked themselves out of running me over in the teacher's parking lot.

I am ashamed of what I have forced other parents to endure.

Of course, I have realized the error of my ways. It is too late for my two older sons to be spared this punishment. But I am trying to make amends. I am trying to make sure that when Joshua starts Kindergarten, I will have paid up for my mistakes. Really, I am...

In an effort to make up for my sins as a teacher, my students (and parents) have been relieved of homework assignments this week because of the BIG TEST. My students let out a collective yelp of victory this afternoon when I announced this.

I am willing to bet that many a parent let out an even louder yelp this evening and is praying that this week goes by REALLY slowly...despite of the testing...