Anxiety, of Course

Are there people who aren’t coping with a bit of anxiety right now? We already know I am and my child keeps chewing on her fingers. My wife seems impervious to it all though, so I imagine some of you must also be blissfully floating through a pandemic. An exaggeration, of course, but that’s what it feels like for those of us (me) struggling.

RR started virtual school this week. It’s an every other week thing but this is the first time she’s back at it since last spring. I checked in on her this morning and she was raptly watching her teacher lead but her brow was furrowed and she was crouched over the screen. Can she understand? Is her slow processing speed keeping up?

I still have questions about how the school is supporting the children who need extra help. They have added an additional teacher to the classroom but shifted away the support teacher who was working with her in the spring. RR worked so hard on her math and reading over the summer and I hope she is seeing the results. But what about school overall?

It doesn’t always work for me to wait and see and deal with each thing as it comes. That’s so often what I hear therapists recommending. Less planning, less problem solving. I have choice words for how that makes me feel. But in the meantime, I can pick back up on some of the other things they recommend, starting with a short meditation each day. RR is joining in (OOOHMMM, she says) and hopefully it will help us both.

Ten and Back to School

Is here the right place to say I cannot believe it’s September? Yesterday, we did back to school pictures in the pouring rain and dropped her off at school. At one pm. For three hours. This is a weird fall, from start to finish, and we haven’t even really begun.

Yes, we sent her back to school in person. She’ll have class at the school every other week and, on off weeks, work from home. She’s supposed to be working independently and we are supposed to be available for support and technical assistance. But this spring that was definitely NOT the case and I learned more fourth grade math than I was comfortable with. I hope this year is different since both of us have actual jobs that require actual work.

This is like breast-feeding and cloth diapering all over. The are you sending her to school I can’t believe you’re sending her to school did you know she was sending her to school back and forth is exhausting. I feel like I need to make excuses. But she’s in private school but the group is small but the safety measures are better than acceptable. It’s just a throwback to when she was a baby and I was less confident in what I was doing. I felt all this pressure. It’s like an old wound I’ve picked open again and it’s no one’s fault but my own. 

In other news, 10 is a weird, weird time. RR is on the cusp of so much but still has one foot firmly planted in little girl land. She still plays with her stuffed rabbits and reads picture books some nights before bed. But her demeanor is changing, her whole self is changing, and she is decidedly not a little girl anymore. Not really. It’s hard to negotiate as she flows fluidly from one self to the next and back again. Hard for me, anyway. She seems to be doing just fine.

This is the first time I’ve understood why blogs go silent (aside from the decaying art form of it all). Her self is more her own and the things I would have told you about feel forbidden. But here we still are and, here we’ll stay, for awhile anyway, since this is more about me than her most of the time. Here’s to a weird September.

Privilege

For as much time as I spend wondering if we’re qualified to homeschool our child, I spend time thinking about how privileged we are as a family. RR has comprehensive lessons provided by her teachers, not just math and reading but co-curriculars, like music, ecology, and art. She has multiple devices with which to do her work and multiple rooms in the house where she can do it. She uploads her work and gets feedback from her teachers. She still has a book club and her friends are all there (who also have fast enough internet) and parents to keep them on track with reading. As I reread that paragraph, I realize I haven’t done it justice.

RR’s teachers have not only replicated her school experience, they have enriched it. The personal attention is still there plus some. She’s getting individual attention from learning specialists whom she normally would only have seen in a group setting. Her teachers hold office hours, including the technology teachers, to help with anything that might go off the rails. At times her lessons seem like private tutoring. Not to mention the fact that she has two adults attuned to her every educational need.

Her workspace is large and well-lit, there is a whiteboard, printer, scanner, clock, calendar, chest of small plastic drawers stocked with pencils, art supplies, paper, notebooks, etc that the school provided. She has everything she needs for an optimal learning experience and she appears to be soaking it up. She has us. We have jobs that are flexible enough to allow us to be with her.

We are so very lucky.

School Continues

We had barely a three day disruption in school for RR. The teachers turned from a completely in-person curriculum to an online, Zoom-based, set of lessons and meetings. They have done a remarkable job considering that Montessori for fourth graders still relies heavily on hands-on work. Strike that, it’s not even considering, it’s just remarkable. Impressive.

We’ve had a full week of lessons, including PE and literature circle, geometry and foraging hikes, geography and reading circles. She has talked to her teachers and seen all of her friends. She’s starting to FaceTime with other friends in her class as parents loosen up previously tight online restrictions.

I mentioned crying in the last post and if there’s anything I could cry over, it’s this. It’s profound gratitude for her teachers and her school. It’s a heart swollen with the love and kindness from her school. It’s the lucky feeling I have as I watch schools struggle to keep from capsizing.

She’s going to miss her first overnight trip away from us and it’s a milestone taken by this virus. She was excited and apprehensive and when the videos came showing what she would have done on an ecology trip to the Chesapeake Bay, and she watched with regret. I’m glad she’s not missing a graduation but it was a first that she’ll have to wait a year to have. 

I wanted to write, “assuming we go back to normal”, but we will right? Soon.  

For Posterity

I usually start posts in a note to myself and then work on them bits at a time until they are ready to go. I probably delete 50% of them for being too something. Too short, too long, too whiney, too radical, too whatever. The one I was working on seems so inconsequential that I didn’t bother to finish it before dumping it. Everything seems inconsequential.

I read somewhere that journaling is a way to keep yourself sane during a pandemic. Moreover, journaling is important work during a pandemic. I assume so that someone someday can read it during their own pandemic and think aha, here is what we should have done. That family, they were doing it right. Except I’m not entirely sure if it’s possible to do it right. Also it’s probably no one will ever read this but you, Reader, and since we’re going through it together, it won’t do us much good.

But let’s commiserate anyway. Here’s my part of it. Homeschooling and working is rough. I think we’re lucky RR’s school is still providing lessons for the children (and remarkably well-done lessons) and I, in particular, am lucky my wife has been able to pick up the homeschooling so I can focus on work. RR, for her part, is an excellent distance student who grows more, and more bouncy during the week so that today, Friday, she is off the walls. 

Spring Break is coming. I’m afraid the teachers will stop work for a week. We can’t take RR anywhere. I’m going to go insane.

We had to cancel our Spring Break trip to Disneyworld and while it’s not the end of the world, it’s a disappointment. I’m feeling it heavily, not because I was dying to stick on a pair of mouse ears, but because it meant a road trip, an adventure, time away from work that was truly time away. And now, nothing. More of the grind. I’m sure that’s also how her teachers feel. It’s hard on everyone.

I want to cry over this but I’d want time alone to do it. That’s in short supply but, when I have it, I find I can’t cry anyway. It seems so futile. It also seems painfully self-indulgent. Put on big girl pants, work, love my family, persevere. 

On the humorous side, our desks are in the basement where there is a support pole for the house. RR, twirling around it, said, “I need to stay on the pole, mama” and I wonder if this is a sign of the future. 

Observation

My childhood self would have very much liked to be in a Montessori school, I think. Ours in particular. We had the chance to observe RR’s classroom and it was a revelation. All of the children were focused and working on different tasks, a lesson on finding areas was going on in one corner and another on geography in the quiet ecology space. Even my child, the one full of vim and vigor, was settled on her knees, deep into square roots.

I’m sure there are days when the volume is louder and the kids more antsy. Just as there are days where a stillness falls over the room. But I imagine the sheer number of places to work – carpet, tables, comfy corners for reading, a laptop area, even outside – mean that the kids have just enough room to spread out. And by kids I mean all 30 or so of them. It’s not a small class. At one point, the sun came out from behind the clouds casting warm light over the entire classroom, leaving the kids with little halos of sunbeams.

Every month when a bagillion dollars comes out of my account, I think of this classroom and these teachers. The kids with their work ethics. And, of the gorgeous grounds over which they have the independence to roam. It hurts, the money, but we are so very lucky that we can do it at all. Very, very lucky.

Tales of a Fourth Grade…

You might have filled in the rest of that title but I can assure you that our fourth grader’s life is nothing like that of Peter’s in Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing. For starters, we actually know what Peter’s life was like. With RR, it’s vast and unknowable. That’s right, it’s the return of the Iron Curtain.

Isn’t it cute how we mused over this phenomenon three years ago and yet here we are? The Curtain opens to reveal tidbits of information and then drops with a decided thud. For example, with one week of fourth grade down, we know that she has done Tables A, B, and C. Unfortunately, that is as opaque to us as the mating habits of swallowtails which, to be fair, RR probably knows all about and just hasn’t mentioned. We also had this conversation yesterday before the close of The Curtain:

RR: Don’t judge Britt, Mama
Me: Why would I judge your teacher?
RR: For language she told me to look up the word “dic”
Me: Why would I judge her for that?
RR: You know, mama.
Me: Because dick with a k means penis?
RR: I think it means saying something.

And that was it. The end of RR’s part of the conversation anyway. And by the way, I’m not sure why I would be the judgey one here. If anyone is going to use profanity in this household, it’s me. Anyway, what I learned from this conversation is that she obviously needs a spelling lesson.

Apparently when The Curtain opens there’s a backlog there. We learned that in third grade Ecology lessons the children sat under the trees and observed the plants in the breeze. Now though, they have to take notes instead and you can imagine how popular that is. I mean, I have to imagine it because that was the end of the conversation.

To use her words here, I’m not judging her. It’s an eternal exercise in patience for her mothers. And we could probably use it since it looks like it’s us and The Curtain, BFF4LYFE.

Literary Circles

You guys, I prefer to write in coffee shops or other public places where the bustle and noise help me zoom in and get less distracted that I would at my desk on a lunch break or in my house with dinner cooking. Coffee shop times have been few and far between this summer and I’m finding myself with lots to say but no reasonable place to get started.

We got the school supply list last week and along with the usual Montessori things (don’t forget your slippers and mug), we also have some fun and random things like, Three Colors of Acrylic Paint, Your Child’s Choice of Colors and Library Card. Which are great and lost. Also, asking my child to choose three colors will be a herculean effort as her mother and I try to corral her while she extols the virtues of Cadmium versus Pyrrole Orange.

Speaking of herculean efforts, we will also be trying to explain to RR the value of a Literary Circle and of books themselves as more than just vehicles for visual art. These small book discussion groups feature books that look good to me but are, at a glance, possibly torture. I imagine that, for RR, torture in the Montessori tradition involves book clubs. So, because she is no help at all in choosing her torture devices, I put them here in case one of you has read one and thinks a rising 4th graders with a large vocabulary but slow reading speed might find it at all interesting:

Brown Girl Dreaming
Hello, Universe
Inside Out and Back Again
Crown: An Ode to the Fresh Cut
Joesephine: The Dazzling Life of Josephine (also in Brazen!)
Babe Didrickson Zaharias: The Making of a Champion
Merci Suarez Changes Gears
Hurricane ForceL In the Path of America’s Deadliest Storms (this one is out)
Freedom Over Me: Eleven Slaves Their Lives and Dreams Brought to Life
The Five Ancestors: Snake
Savvy
The Night Diary
When You Reach Me
Turtle in Paradise
The Seven Tales of Trinket
The Heart of Everything That Is

Any recommendations welcome!

4th Grade

Believe me, I know. Fourth already? There’s nothing like the passing of another birthday for your child that makes you reckon with the passing of time. Her ninth birthday is looming and I can’t count the number of people who have said “I can’t believe it, nine already? She was just a baby!” Don’t I know it.

I have lots of things to say about fourth grade but this post is really about the passing of years and the ending of third, in particular. RR attends a Montessori school and the children are grouped into classrooms spanning three grades. She has progressed in the same classroom since she was 5, with the same teacher, and the same children. This year’s crop of first graders has been a particularly enjoyable experience for RR, who is young for her age and happily plays with and teaches the smaller set.

Her teacher has been a compassionate, attentive, kind, funny person who has taken RR’s same traits and helped them flourish. She’s one of the most calm and thoughtful people I’ve met and I know for certain that we can thank her for helping RR’s personal space bubble evolve, nurturing her drawing skills, ensuring she could read and write beautifully, and teaching her to channel her frustration at learning new facts into curiosity and enjoyment. You guys, Montessori has been the right choice for RR since the beginning. I’m sure you know how it feels to just know you’ve made some parenting decision solidly right.

But today it ends, friends. Today is the day she rises up to fourth grade. The last day of school. The last day in this classroom with this teacher. I’m not great with lasts as a general rule but I’m a wreck. Somehow this artificial moment makes me feel like my little girl is gone, replaced by the person who has been glimmering in the distance. I’m thrilled with that person’s confidence and maturity, I’m not so thrilled to be saying goodbye to my baby.

I know, I know. You’re right, of course. You always are. This IS artificial. She’s still the same person. It’s a ceremony is all, a last day, a bookmark. But I’m a cryer, happy or not, and I’m an emotional disaster. I need all your tips to keep from crying. Cause I have a day to get through and no real confidence I can get through it in one piece.

RR and the Earrings

It turns out that third grade math facts are RR’s latest challenge. I don’t quite understand a “math fact” and I’m told this is the way of it these days. All the parents are out of the loop. I don’t think that’s it, at least in the Montessori context. From what I’ve gleaned from our parent-teacher conference and RR herself, math facts are the sight words of the numbers world. I didn’t ask for further clarification since I was pretty sure that this would be the teacher’s lightbulb moment. Aha, so this is why RR can’t put two and two together!

Things RR can do are many and significant. She is an excellent speller, a great reader, she is kind to the other children, her art skills are first-rate, she is a leader and a teacher herself. She’s also super good at using her graph paper to draw pixelated My Little Ponies and using the empty spaces in zeros to build her own tiny artistic snow globes. The Montessori works for manipulating numbers make sense but she doesn’t make the leap from those to basic addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. It doesn’t help that I’m no math pro myself, including the rarified air of single digit addition.

In addition to RR’s general eschewing of numbers as a thing that are a reality, she is also hugely indifferent to money. We’ve tried tying the cost of things she wants to the concept of saving and spending. We’ve tried handing her coins, letting her pay at a register, and counting change. It appears the only thing she has any investment in are pencils, markers, and paper and it feels wrong to charge her for use of those things.

The school has a tiny shop, Maria’s, where the kids can purchase snacks during the day. The kids leave class with a buddy, traverse the open campus, make their purchases, and meander back to class. While an account is an option, we’ve never given RR one in part because she doesn’t want anything and in part because math! money! skills! We have given her a dollar here and there only to find out she never spends it. In fact, she usually has no idea where it is until we go through her change purse only to find out she never remembered she had the dollar in the first place. She’s basically been on the same dollar for two years now.

The other day we set her on a mission. Go, we said. Go to Maria’s and buy something with these two dollars. Don’t forget to tell us what you spent and how much you had left! So she went. She bought:

• One (1) Gin Gin, a small, single, piece of hard ginger candy: possibly for $50 or for five cents. Very difficult to say and the witness (RR) was unreliable. Candy uneaten, possibly given away.
• One pair of earrings made of pull tabs from coke cans: cost undisclosed.
• Gave fifteen cents to a younger friend, purpose unexplained.

You guys. We gave her money to spend all for herself and she used it to buy me a gift and delight her friends. She excited to bursting when she handed me the earrings and I put them on. Also, she learned nothing of math. This is my child. Competent, wonderful, and thoughtful. But really, really, shitty at math.