Fifth grade spring concert night

Last night was Tim’s fifth grade concert. Because we’ve been so busy lately and because Tim wasn’t all that excited about it, I wasn’t particularly looking forward to it, but about an hour before it started I realized that if nothing else, it would be a chance to sit still and in silence for 90 minutes, and that was definitely something I could benefit from. I feel that way at church sometimes too: if I get nothing else out of the service – which never happens, but just if – at least I get an hour of quiet time to myself.

It was a moderately frazzling afternoon. Holly got off the bus complaining, as she often does. She’s not complaining about school: she’s just unwinding after being a well-behaved second grader all day. She wanted her friend Bella to come over and kept asking after I said it wasn’t a good day for playdates; she wanted a different snack from the one I offered; the usual kinds of complaints. I remind myself that this is how she unburdens herself emotionally after holding it together at school and on the bus, and it’s reasonable and healthy even if not particularly pleasant for me. Then the dog decided to go next door rather than come home, so I had to go retrieve her from the wilds of the weeds surrounding the pond; and then I went to pick up the dry cleaning Rick urgently needed for work today only to be told the shirts hadn’t arrived yet and I’d have to wait a half-hour. Naturally, I’d just cleaned out the car and didn’t have so much as a single section of newspaper with me, not to mention a book or my laptop: not a shred of reading material on me, which is rare. Instead, I waited around for a half hour, but the shirts never arrived, so the trip was wasted.

All of this was why once I stopped and thought about it, I was happy for the prospect of the ninety minutes of tranquility I could expect during Tim’s concert.

And I had that, but I also realized I had been overlooking how much I enjoy school concerts. At our school, the kids can start in the instrumental and choral program in fourth grade, so this is only our second set of semi-yearly performances. And this is the first one in which we’ve wrangled Tim into appropriate clothing. We’ve had a bear of a time getting him to wear anything except sweat pants and t-shirts for the past several years, whether the occasion is a concert, a church service, or a family party. In February, when Rick’s grandfather died we finally put our collective parental foot down and told Tim he had no choice but to wear a button-down Oxford shirt and pants with a zipper for the services; as a result, at least Tim finally has one decent outfit for special occasions, and back out it came for the concert. It was the first time Tim was not the worst-dressed kid on stage; I can triumphantly report that there are still two boys in the fifth grade behind Tim in terms of sartorial progress. They were wearing shorts and polo shirts. I glowed with pride at the mundane feat of getting my son to dress reasonably for once.

Even though Tim hasn’t had as much fun playing his trumpet this year as last, I really enjoyed seeing him in the concert, and all his classmates too. The girls all looked so pretty, with their swishy rayon skirts, their spaghetti strap tops and their hair brushed out shiny. The boys would have looked adorable to me if I wasn’t so envious as I noted they still almost all dress better than Tim: now that I finally have him in an Oxford, they’re wearing sports coats.

Almost every year, there are one or two chances to see each child in some kind of performance: class play, chorus, band. And every year, I find myself thinking that surely this is the cutest age. Oh, the Rainforest Play back in kindergarten was great, of course, but they’re cute just by definition then. As they get older, it’s almost more endearing to see them shed (most of) their self-consciousness to act like a toucan or sing an African hunting song. Last year, when Tim was in fourth grade, I thought they were at their cutest because they were still young but clearly so proud to be dressed up and performing in a band. This year they seemed even cuter to me, though, as they take on the physical manifestations and larger size of pre-teens but carry the sweet ingenuity of the children they still are. It was clear that the pride of doing an introductory reading or playing a trombone part meant a lot more to them than a pretty dress or a complicated hair-do. That will surely change, at least for some of them.

So the interlude of tranquility was wonderful, but the performance itself was even more so. Every year, I think the kids have reached their cutest point. Every year they surpass the year before. Only three more years until eighth grade graduation. God willing, we’ll be there and I’ll be once again thinking “Oh sure, the kindergarten rainforest play was cute, and the fifth grade chorale numbers were sweet, but this is their cutest stage yet.” And with any luck, we’ll have Tim in a tie by then.

Another chance to learn U.S. history, thanks to my fifth grader

Most parents know that asking their kids what happened in school on any given day tends to be a losing proposition. If they answer at all, they’re likely to tell us about a recess game or possibly a bit of lunchroom drama, but seldom anything from the classroom.

This is definitely true of my fifth grader, which is why it’s such a surprise to me lately when I browse through the pile of papers he sometimes removes from his backpack and leaves in a heap on the kitchen table. This isn’t his subtle way of asking me to admire his work; he’s just cleaning out his backpack to lighten the load and never seems to make it as far as the recycling bin with his old homework papers and tests. But it still gives me a welcome opportunity to look through his classwork, and lately it’s been so eye-opening to see how much he’s been learning, especially in social studies. His class has been studying the early years of U.S. history this year, and I honestly think he knows more about U.S. history at this point than I do. He knows specifics about the founding fathers and their individual approaches to government. He knows about all of those second-tier historical figures whose significance I tend to draw a blank on: Roger Williams, Patrick Henry. Today he went on a brief discourse about the sentiment behind Benjamin Franklin's oratory “We hang together or we will hang separately,” only he acted it out for me, pronouncing the first half but then pantomiming strangulation for the second part. It’s definitely not a quote I’ll ever forget again, after hearing Tim’s rendition, ending with “or…gaaaahhhk!”

I don’t remember learning anything nearly so substantive at his age. I went to the same school, but the approach was so different back then. Without the curricular benchmarks that characterize public school education today, it never seemed like anyone put that much importance into the specific content of what we learned. The classroom was much more process-oriented. We did a lot of writing, and reading, and discussion of concepts like what it means to be a civilization. Though process is important, I’m certain I didn’t leave fifth grade with the tangible body of knowledge Tim will carry with him. Some of it he’ll no doubt forget – every now and then I wonder how it is that we discussed the layers of the earth over the course of four consecutive grades in elementary school and I still can’t name them – but of course, American history will come up again and again in his years of education, so I tend to think what he’s learning now will form a solid foundation for future curricular units.

And he understands so much about what he’s studying. Sometimes I forget just how much historical detail he has assimilated. Last month when we were in D.C., we came across a poster that showed a picture of every U.S. president and identified them by party. “Wow, Millard Filmore was a wig?” I heard Tim say. I chuckled indulgently, ready to explain to Tim that it didn’t mean we actually had a hairpiece for president back in 1850. But Tim continued before I had a chance to say anything. “I’m just so surprised that seventy-five years after achieving independence from Britain, political figures were still identifying themselves with the Whig party.” Oops. My mistake.

Although to me it seems he’s learned an astonishing amount of tangible information about American history, I also remember how his social studies teacher described her approach to teaching when we met with her on Parents’ Night back in September. “What we talk about in fifth grade social studies is essentially two questions,” she said. “One, What is worth fighting for? And two, Why do people leave their homes? I teach the kids that one of those two questions lies at the heart of nearly everything we’ll study in social studies this year.”

I really like those two questions, as social studies guideposts but also as writing prompts and as questions for thinking about life. What is worth fighting for? What is worth leaving home for? It seems to me that Tim’s teacher is right: those questions lie at the heart of so much that explains who people are and why they do what they do. It’s a good way to look at what has happened, and to think about what could happen still. Tim still has years of school ahead to learn about so many things, some of which I knew and have forgotten and some of which it seems I never quite got to. I’ll keep browsing through his homework, because I’m finding there’s a lot I can learn within those tattered and marked-up sheets of paper.

Lunch/recess duty on a rainy Tuesday

One could argue that my having volunteer lunch/recess duty for both the second grade and fifth grade yesterday smacked of divine justice. After all, what I did back in September was subversive. Each parent who is available to volunteer for lunch/recess duty is urged to sign up for one regularly recurring day a month: say, first Tuesdays or fourth Fridays or whatever. Parents like me, who would rather have gum surgery than be lunch/recess volunteers but still believe deep in their hearts that school volunteering is the price we pay for the luxury of being self-employed and working from home, sign up first – and grab the coveted fifth days. The fifth Monday, the fifth Tuesday, and so on. Most months, there’s only four of each day; fifths of each one come along only a few times a year, and some of those months are bound to be during vacations. So we grab the fifths and consider our responsibilities fulfilled.

Rather like gum surgery, when I noted fifth Tuesday lunch coverage in my appointment book last fall, March seemed as far off as the next millennium. Eventually, though, it was time to pay the piper. And it served me right for my sneakiness that my day to supervise lunch and recess along with a paid aide and a few other volunteers fell on Day 2 of a massive three-day rainstorm at the end of the rainiest March in Massachusetts history. Little kids cooped up for lunch and indoor recess when it’s been pouring for days on end? Some might say I got just what I deserved.

Except I had a pretty good time. It turns out when you work by yourself six hours a day, immersing yourself in elementary school clamor for two hours is a fine diversion. Normally I dread the lunchroom. Our school cafeteria, though well-lit, spacious and relatively clean, always puts me in mind of that urban myth that pervades at universities all over the country about architects who designed the library without taking into account the weight of the books, so the structure is supposedly sinking into the ground by several inches a year. I’m convinced that the team who designed and built our school cafeteria neglected to think about the noise generated by 200 kids eating lunch together at once. The acoustics are deadly; the volume at times barrier-breaking.

But yesterday it didn’t seem so bad, and neither did the indoor recesses I supervised, one in the fifth grade classroom and one with the second graders. When I arrived in the fifth grade room, the teacher had just started showing an animated film about the build-up to the American Revolution. I was amused at how the kids seemed glued to the screen. Maybe it was the Disney-ish visuals, but they appeared compelled by the movie. And they knew their history, too. When a slim African-American woman was asked who she was and her companion replied tartly, “Only the first-ever African-American to publish a volume of poetry!” at least half the kids called out, “Phillis Wheatley!” When Benjamin Franklin’s apprentice described how his mentor’s lightning rod had saved his life during a storm, the audience cheered.

The children had use of two connected classrooms; those who were not watching the film were in other room talking, reading or playing games. I dropped in there to see what was going on and found my son and three other boys batting a beanbag ball back and forth with their hands. “Hi, Nancy!” yelled one of Tim’s best friends, dispensing immediately with the typical classroom formalities of Mr. and Mrs. I was pleasantly surprised to get such a warm welcome.

The second graders were a little less resourceful in their use of indoor recess, but they won me over anyway by making me feel useful. Two boys were tossing a nerf football when it arced up to a high shelf and got stuck behind a folded blanket. They asked me to get it down. Only in a roomful of second graders do I have the honor of being the tallest person in the room, but I felt terribly useful as I climbed onto the chair one of them brought me and fumbled around until my fingers located the nerf ball. They cheered when I tossed it down. And that wasn’t the end of my usefulness. I used my well-honed mediation skills to head off an imminent fist fight over Legos (“The fact is, Jeff, even if you think the red one was in your pile and Ryan says it was in his, there’s five hundred others just like it in this bin”) and solved another child’s problem by proving myself able to sound out the word toboggan. A useful lesson for me: If you want to feel clever, strong, physically capable and generally important, go spend an hour with a classroom full of second graders.

Plus I got presents. While the boys played with Legos and nerf footballs, the girls were coloring. And to my great surprise, many of them gave me artwork to take home. One made a flowered bookmark for me. Another made a picture of a pink cat, and a third drew a sketch of herself throwing up. As I mentioned, it was pouring outside, so I can’t say any of those gifts survived beyond the school parking lot, but I was delighted with my haul.

So maybe next year I’ll be more generous and sign up for a real commitment, not the Cheater’s Fifths as I like to think of those fifth days. But maybe I won’t. I wouldn’t want the novelty to wear off. And once the kids grow tall enough to reach their own nerf balls down from the upper shelf, I might find myself far less in demand during indoor recess.

Reading Judy Blume's Blubber 25 years later

I didn’t expect to be writing two blog entries about Judy Blume within two months’ time, but my 7-year-old daughter is on something of a Judy Blume tear, and reading the early chapter books with her has brought up a lot of interesting issues. In my last Judy Blume-related post, I wrote about my surprise in finding out that certain details had been updated in recent printings of the books: kids listen to CDs rather than records and they film with video cameras despite the fact that the book in question was written in the 1970s.

This time it’s the subject matter itself that is inspiring our contemplation. Holly and I have been reading Blubber, a novel published in 1974 for middle readers about what happens when scapegoating in a fifth grade classroom runs amok. At 7, Holly is probably a little younger than the target audience for this book, but I have no objections to her reading it. The characters are pre-pubescent; more importantly, the subject matter is timeless.

Or so I thought. Scapegoating and bullying continue to be hot topics in my children’s classrooms, but I’m finding the theme to be not quite as timeless as I would have expected. What has changed is not the way kids can treat each other – meanly, ganging up, siding with the stronger against the weaker – but the likely results. Over the weekend, we read a chapter in which the “mean girls” ambush and partially strip the scapegoat character, Linda Fischer, whom they dub “Blubber,” in the restroom, and then another chapter in which they destroy her lunch while calling her names. By the end of that chapter, the ringleader is threatening physical abuse, and in the words of the frustratingly passive narrator, Jill, “You could see she wasn’t fooling around anymore.”

I’ve stopped several times while reading to ask Holly for her perceptions on what’s going on. She understands what it means for kids to gang up on each other; she knows about ideas like being left out and being called names, not because it’s happened to her but because unlike in “Blubber”’s era, adults talk about this at her school openly and frequently. While bullying may be a timeless theme, the Judy Blume who wrote the book back in 1974 probably could not have imagined how much adults’ response to it would change. Although in Blubber, it’s apparent that telling a teacher or other adult about the abuse would be futile, Holly knows that at her school any form of meanness is taken seriously by the adults in charge – and unlike in Blubber’s world, the kids talk often about how to avoid behaviors like name-calling and teasing. The idea of pulling down another child’s pants in the restroom is unheard of to them: keeping your hands to yourself is of paramount priority at their school, and what the girls in this book do would be considered sexual harassment by today’s standards.

It’s a relief to think that the previously cloistered world of pre-teen bullying has been rendered generally unacceptable, although it’s hard for me to articulate to Holly the reasons. It’s easier for me to keep repeating “They wouldn’t be allowed to do that today because a teacher would find out and help Linda” than “The administration would intervene not only to protect poor Linda but out of fear that Linda might return to campus with a loaded semi-automatic.” Bullying is simply a dirty word on today’s elementary school campus, for reasons good and not-so-good: because bullying is mean, and because fear has developed around the bullied. Dave Cullen, author of Columbine, argues convincingly that it’s actually a misnomer to refer to the anti-bullying movement as a Columbine issue since in fact his extensive investigative reporting revealed that bullying wasn’t a problem for the Columbine murderers, but even if that was a misrepresentation by the media, it still helped all of us to open up this issue for general discussion in the classroom arena.

And no matter how much anti-bullying instruction we give our kids, there are some ways in which they’ll never get all of it right. My son, who is in fifth grade just like the characters in Blubber, told me proudly that he and his recess buddies have started making an effort to be much nicer to a boy who was often left out because he was clumsy and inept in their playground football games. “Now we pass to him all the time, and when he throws it, we make sure we don’t intercept it so he gets the play and feels like he’s doing really well,” Tim reported. "And we cheer for him." This is great news…sort of. Tim and his friends are doing what they sincerely believe to be a nice thing, and it’s hard for me to point out to him that the boy in question might eventually start to feel patronized.

I wish I knew what happened to Linda “Blubber” Fischer after fifth grade. Maybe she lost weight, became pretty, and no longer had a problem with mean girls. Maybe she stayed fat and pathetic, and the teasing and bullying continued right through high school, in which case I imagine her becoming a woman with low self-esteem and a sad adulthood, possibly subjected to domestic abuse. Or maybe she endured middle school and then went to a progressive private high school like the one I attended, where middle school’s outcasts were celebrated for their differentness.

Aside from the bullying, there’s a minor plot point in Blubber that is also alien to Holly: the protagonist’s mother is shown smoking a cigarette at the kitchen table in one scene, and talks about trying to quit smoking in another. “Back when this was written, it wasn’t all that strange for parents to smoke,” I told Holly. “People knew it was unhealthy, but it wasn’t as unusual as it is now.”

“I saw a man smoking when we were in Boston yesterday,” Holly contested.

“I know, but he was by himself outside. Wouldn’t it seem weird if you were at a friend’s house and the mom was sitting at the table smoking?”

Until we had that discussion, I hadn’t given much thought to how much the idea of smoking in a typical suburban household has changed, but it was interesting to contemplate – and much simpler than the question of how bullying has changed. My kids’ school demonstrates a zero tolerance policy toward pretty much every kind of behavior exhibited in Blubber, and for that I’m grateful. Now it’s just a matter of eradicating the intent behind it, and the way girls still find it possible to gang up, scapegoat, or generally make each other unhappy for no good reason other than that they can.

First day of school

The first day of school was wonderfully satisfying for all of us. I wish I could replay every day this year the scene in which Tim told me all his news. He was exuberant, which is so unlike him. He was gasping and his tongue was tripping over the words as he tried to tell me all the highlights of fifth grade so far -- most of which simply seem to involve the kids having an increase in autonomy and responsibility.

I wish the enthusiasm and sense of novelty he was experiencing today could never wear off -- he is just so thrilled about being a fifth grader, which in Carlisle means more variety in teachers, classrooms and classmates than the elementary grades have, as well as the option of "homework club" after school and the freedom to leave campus at the end of the day under their own steam. As far as Tim is concerned, the most exciting part of the whole curriculum is the daily planner each student received, in which there are spaces for them to record their homework assignments, due dates, completed dates, etc. To see him brimming with excitement, his pale face beaming and his dark eyes flashing, just delights me to no end. Over a daily planner, no less. As Rick said, "Imagine when he gets his first PDA!"

Meanwhile, Holly kept interrupting him to interject tales of her first day of second grade, most of which involved how much she adores her new teacher and how happy she was to see her two first grade teachers during the day. I feel so fortunate that they are both happy in school. Yesterday I was replete with anxieties all day, anxieties about a new school year, ranging in magnitude from whether Holly's new book bag would be too heavy for her (it's not) to the potential for violence on campus to the likelihood that I would forget to pack a snack or lunch money to the daily challenge of getting out the door on time. Everything was worrying me yesterday. Tonight I know they are both happy to be back at school, and it is enormously reassuring. My children see school as a place they are cared for, nourished intellectually and emotionally, and granted a degree of importance, and that makes them see it as their home. I so hope that there are children everywhere who are just as lucky as they start school this fall.

Running Streak Day 753 - I did 2.5 miles in the bright sunshine of late morning.