Testing, Testing, 1-2-3

The other day the school sent home a form we had to fill out for both kids as part of the Second Grade ‎MCPS “Gifted and Talented” Screening process. It was an odd collection of questions, and you had to ‎rate your child based on how often you had observed a particular behavior or trait (i.e. gets very ‎focused on one particular activity – frequently, often, never, etc.). It seemed hard to believe that this ‎form had much to do with anything so I stuck it in the mail basket of doom for a while and tried to ‎ignore it, but ultimately forced myself to fill it out the day before the deadline. Ranking your kids on ‎anything is NOT fun, but try ranking twins side by side on a bizarre set of questions and you’ll get some ‎real mother-guilt heartburn. I ended up filling it out at midnight, in a locked bathroom, while ‎obsessively checking that the kids were asleep. I know, I need some professional help.‎

Then there is the label for the program that is the reason for the form in the first place – “Gifted and ‎Talented.” Seriously, who came up with that one? I had to laugh out loud because it reflects a real ‎schizophrenia within the school system, and maybe educators in general, as to how and/or when kids ‎should be “labeled” and what to label them. On the one hand, MCPS conducts this stealth math (and ‎sometimes reading) tracking system, beginning as early as Kindergarten, where they start grouping ‎the kids by their supposed ability – first within the classroom and then ultimately by reshuffling the ‎kids for those particular subjects. But they don’t really want the parents to know that they are doing ‎this, and they REALLY don’t want the kids to figure it out. In fact, we were expressly instructed by the ‎teachers NOT to discuss it. So if your kid asks you why they go to “so and so” for math, and their friend ‎doesn’t (or vice-versa), you end up doing this whole dance and shuffle while attempting to avoid the ‎very question your kid is asking you. ‎

But come the end of second grade, and suddenly there is this test, and if your kid aces this test then ‎they are TA DAH, Gifted and Talented, Capital G, Capital T. And, of course, this is Montgomery County ‎so we all secretly or not so secretly think our kids are G&T, right?, and heaven forbid the test proves us ‎wrong. (Although of course, there is the fallback, well my kid is not a good test-taker). And what is ‎the grand prize for beings so fahbulous? Why, you get to go to a “special” school with all the other G&T ‎kids where you will be more “challenged” and you don’t have to keep slumming with the “regular” ‎kids. ‎

But how do you reconcile the G&T moniker with the bunches of studies that show that praising an ‎innate character -- such as smartness or goodness – in a kid, rather than effort, is self-defeating? ‎These studies concluded that children who are constantly praised as being “smart,” or I would imagine, ‎‎“gifted and talented,” have less self-esteem and, in fact, start to be afraid to take risks for fear that it ‎will prove that they are not as smart as everyone else thinks they are. Whereas encouraging hard ‎work and effort prompts more of the same. (Here is a link to a good article summarizing these studies = http://nymag.com/news/features/27840/).

The kids took the TerraNova standardized test a week or 2 ago. The first day, as I was ushering them ‎out the door and giving a kiss goodbye, I encouraged them to have fun and to "do your best." I ‎decided I didn't like that so the next day, I bid them goodbye with a "try your hardest" and both kids ‎responded much better to that, coming home excited to report how the test had gone. Words carry a ‎lot of power, especially coming from parents.‎

So for now at least, phrases that are banned in our house include "you are so smart" or "you are a ‎good kid." Phrases that are encouraged in our house - you worked really hard on that; you gave that ‎your best effort and you got to the right answer. But I also think that no matter how hard I try to ‎navigate a good path on one thing, I am just going to screw something else up with my kids. It is ‎always easy to blame parents for everything, right? Wait, never mind, don’t answer that. ‎

Get Outraged

I’m off to the PTA meeting tonight where the principal of the school is going to discuss the County’s budget crisis, the upcoming budget cuts, and how this will affect class size and staffing for next year. I have been all in a tizzy about the MCPS budget cuts, spending more time than I would care to admit researching what the class size “guidelines” are (don’t make the mistake of calling them “limits” or “maximums” because they ain’t). For all the free flow of information on the internet, it took me hours (and several emails to the superintendent’s office) to actually get a link to an actual document, and the news was not great. Unlike other states where the class size is built into teacher contracts, in Montgomery County they are merely part of the budget, another number to play with to try and cut down on costs while not paying the teachers any more money for taking on these huge class sizes.

There has been a lot of email chatter on blogs and chat lists about the impending increase in class sizes and what effect that will have on Montgomery county’s public school system. On the one hand, we consider ourselves very lucky to be in such a fantastic school system with such talented and dedicated teachers, but you can only ride those coattails so long. Put 30+ nine-year olds in a single classroom, throw a bunch of boring worksheets at them, and you better step back because no matter how good the teacher is, you are asking for trouble. Not to mention you can say goodbye to any extra resources for music, arts, etc. Suddenly, that private school option, the one with the horrifying sticker-shock price, is looking like something you might want to reevaluate.

So I was getting ready to go to this meeting, guns ablazing with my list of questions about how this affects “me” and “my kids”, and then I went to a lunch presentation at work today about charter schools in DC. Representatives from a charter school in SE came to talk to us about an elementary school they have been trying to “turn around” this past year. Before they got involved, the kids’ reading levels were at 13% of the national standard, and the math levels were at 8%. This was a school everyone had given up on – certainly, no one was complaining about class sizes, and no one was acting like they believed the kids could or should do better. The executive director asked us, if we took one thing away from this lunch, that we be “outraged” that any child would be subjected to this pathetic excuse of a public school.

So I am distressed that class sizes in our school are likely going up, and very unthrilled that staffing is likely to go down. But I’m going to save my outrage for something more meaningful.

The March to Madness

Spring is in the air, the cherry blossom trees are coming to life, and the daffodils and forsythia are bursting out in bright flashes of yellow.   This should be a relaxing time to stop and smell the flowers, so to speak.  But with spring comes March madness.  No, not the sitting around watching college hoops kind of madness.  A different march of madness – more like a mad dash really – from the soccer fields to the baseball fields to ice hockey to tennis to ballet to choir to  horseback riding to the …. You get the idea.

Every spring I declare I am going to stop this insanity and sign up for one sport per kid per season.  Every spring, I immediately break this rule and sign them up for even more stuff.    What is wrong with me, I ask myself, as I obsessively check the carpool schedule for Jack’s soccer practices, hustle across town to get Alexandra to her soccer games and ice-skating lessons, and try to figure out how Jack is going to make it to his soccer game and his baseball practice at the same time.   (Answer: unless I bend time and space to my personal desires, which I’ve tried without much success, he is not).

There is a lot of discussion about how overscheduled kids are nowadays, and I agree, my kids are overscheduled, and I have no one to blame but myself.  But for reasons that I clearly need to spend more time introspectively pondering (if I had the time, that is), I am unable to say “no,” and to make them choose which of the myriad activities they want to do.  My internal thinking seems to be along the lines of “I don’t want them to miss out on an opportunity,” as if not being on THAT soccer team is somehow going to make the difference between becoming the next Beckham and playing on a JV soccer team their senior year of high school, if at all (the horrors). 

Obviously, I am very type A++++.  I know this about myself and I work on it, I promise I do.  But I somewhat blame this sports-overload on the various sporting leagues that run organized sports in Montgomery County too.   Why, MSI Soccer, do you make it so impossible to only have a fall team and then take a break for the spring?  Both their website and their emails constantly remind you that if you don’t register for the next season, you are going to lose your spot on your team AND THEN WHERE WILL YOU BE?  If you don’t get a spot on the BCC baseball team in Kindergarten, well you can forget your kid playing on the school team with his friends until fourth or fifth grade when most of the roster (and really more their parents) are forced to admit that watching their elementary school kids play baseball is worse, way worse, than watching paint dry.   White paint.  Matte, with no gloss.

Then you’ve got the debate of whether it is better to diversify and try lots of different sports (what most of us were forced to do growing up), or OH MY GOD, your kid is in second grade and you haven’t picked what sport he or she is going to “major” in yet?  The various travel clubs add to this debate by basically insisting that your kid commit to only playing that sport if they join the club, because you know, all of that time they spent getting your 8-yr old to learn to do that fake-out scissor kick move is a big, big INVESTMENT that needs to be protected.  Heaven forbid your soccer-playing future phenom break his arm playing ice hockey for MYHA, that would be a truly selfish act and would let down your kid’s travel team and then they might not make it to that championship game or whatever it is you are supposed to care about if your kid plays some club sport.   (And don’t even get me started on the god-awful ice rink times you are subjected to if you stupidly let your kid “try” ice hockey). 

This sports-centric MoCo world is all new to me.   You should know that I was no athlete in school – my “team” in high school was the debate team, and let’s just say Dave learned a lot of Latin in high school.  I’m sure a psychotherapist could have a field day with that confession.   But I do know that I somehow need to take a deep breath and find a better way to not get sucked into this insanity.   

The other day I was watching Alex’s ice-skating class at Cabin John when loud, fast-paced music came blasting across the speakers behind me.  A column of girls started dancing across the ice in a synchronized pattern, swooping and turning in time to the music.  I inquired what was going on and found out that a synchronized skating team (DC Edge) was practicing.  I chatted with the coach and found myself picking up an informational sheet from her table, learning that they practice twice a week and get to travel as far as Boston to compete.  I was intrigued, picturing how much Alex would love it, especially the fancy costumes, and was about to put the flyer into my purse when a voice in my head spoke up.  Lisa, put down the flyer and step away, step away from the table.   I slowly set the sign-up sheet down and took a few steps backwards, turned and then fled.  Baby steps, baby steps. 

Important Newsflash from CSES Second Grade

This just in from the Second Grade teachers and Principal:

Dear Parents,

There have issues recently in regards to pencil grips in the classroom.  The second grade teachers, along with Mr. Palmisano, have discussed the concerns and have come up with what we feel is an equitable solution.  We are sending all pencil grips home today with students. Two pencil grips with the student's initials written on it in permanent ink may be returned to class on Monday. . . Thank you for your help and cooperation in this matter."

Allow me to translate this into non-school speak.

Dear Parents.

We have about had it with your second grade kids.  We can't believe how late spring break is this year.  Although we are complaining about the pencil grips, we are really more pissed about the fact that your kids keeping teepeing the bathrooms and writing in poop on the walls.  We deeply regret ever suggesting that a ".6" teacher is the equivalent of a full-time third teacher, at least when it comes to your kids.  We are planning to sell our souls and do whatever it takes to get a third teacher next year for this rowdy bunch, because otherwise the third-grade teachers are all going to quit.  We are even considering putting all 60 kindergarteners into one class size of 60 and borrow those teachers, because we are pretty confident that the kindergarteners will still behave better.

Now we are all going to go drink a bottle of scotch."

The second grade teachers.

Good Fences Make Good Neighbors

In the last couple of weeks there have been several posts on the neighborhood chat that have really made me think about what makes a “good” neighbor.  First, we got into a flame war about a gang of teenagers roaming the neighborhood playing an air gun rifle equivalent of paint ball.  Although the discussion quickly devolved into a debate about whether air rifles where legal or not (there being way too many lawyers involved in any debate in DC), the central question was really something different:  how do neighbors resolve their differences? Do you pick up the phone and call the police, or do you step outside and talk to the teenagers, reach out the parents and attempt to resolve the dispute in the neighborhood?   Surprisingly, this was not an easy question for the neighborhood to answer.

Just when that debate had cooled off, another one flamed up.  Turns out someone in the ‘hood called the Montgomery County Environmental Division to complain about a neighbor’s landscape contractor dumping their yard garbage (limbs, woodchips, etc) on their lawn.   Supposedly, the complainant never talked to their neighbor, otherwise they would have learned that this had been a hard year, in which one member of the family had been hit by a serious illness and they were struggling to keep their heads above water.  A visit from the County’s environmental division was probably the last thing they needed.

                I am sure most of us were forced to analyze Robert Frost’s “mending walls” poem in high school, and we remember the line “good fences make good neighbors.”  Tortured English paper essays aside, it is too easy to forget that this poem is not about erecting barriers between each other.  Rather, the neighbors work together to build the stone wall, talking to each other and working together to find mutually-respectable boundaries.   Sounds like maybe we all need to read this poem again.  It is too easy, in this day and age, to sit behind our computers and hide behind our cell phones and avoid the difficult conversations, not going outside to mend the walls together.

 Just a year after we moved into the house, we got fed up with weeding the natural “grove” in the front of our yard, and asked our landscaper to put some wood chips down.  The next day, I awoke to orange day-glo cheap chips scattered around the front yard, crossing over into my neighbor’s au natural section of the yard.   Our neighbor could have been furious; instead, he knocked on my door and explained to me that he and his wife had gotten married in the grove, showing me the very spot where they got married and pointing to where the deer liked to congregate.   Since then, we have worked together to plan out the grove, discussing the removal of dead trees and coming up with a plan to replace them with new trees.   Each spring, we got outside to mend the “stone wall” together.

So, next time you are tempted to take the easy, anonymous way out and call the “authorities,” rather than having that difficult conversation with a neighbor, ask yourself, what would a good neighbor do? I think the answer is self-evident.

Won’t you be my neighbor?

We quickly outgrew our house in AU Park when the twins were born.  That small third bedroom went in one fell swoop from the “tomorrow “ room to a room stuffed full with two cribs, a rocking chair, a changing table and no room for much else.  We started looking for a bigger house, our search expanding in concentric circles, like sonar radar, as we realized our budget was not going to get us the space we wanted or needed.

We briefly considered moving to Virginia but that Maryland aversion to crossing a bridge had already set in.   We told our patient realtor, no matter what we are not going outside the beltway, as if that were the magical line between a reasonable and nightmarish commute.  (Turns out the line is MUCH closer in).  Tulip Hill, Bannockburn, Bradley Hills, Kenmore,  too expensive, too small, too old, too boring, too much work.

Finally, we found ourselves one weekend crossing that dreaded Beltway, passing over a stalled river of cars,  taking a left and then a right and then turning into a neighborhood we had never seen or heard of before.  Carderock Springs.   Gone were the red-brick colonials with white
picket fences.  In their place, 1960s styled modern houses, with more windows than walls, surrounded by towering trees, natural landscaping and not a power line in sight. 

One step into the open house and we knew we were home.  (The other family who bid on the house had to be persuaded but ultimately saw it our way).   The raised ceilings, open floor plans, with the
light pouring in from all the windows.   A gate in the backyard fence that opened to the elementary school  field!  Brick colonials were forever ruined for us.   A few months later, we moved in.

We thought we were buying our dream house, but what we didn’t realize at the time was that we were buying our dream neighborhood.   Where neighbors are your neighbors in that 1950s/60s old-fashioned sense of the word – lending cups of sugar, looking out for your kids, stopping by to help when they hear you are sick, chatting at the school bus stop when you should be hightailing it to
work, hanging out at the neighborhood pool until it is so dark you can’t see your toes, let alone where your kids are. 

 
At a time in our lives when supposedly it is harder to make and keep new friends, we have made close friendships with so many Carderock families, ever expanding that circle of people that we consider an essential part of our “village.”  Over here in Carderock Springs, we are rockin the suburbs.  Wanna be our neighbor?