thisnewday

Got up pretty early again this morning but think I'll stay up and see what the day may bring. It's the first day of school around here, as well as my grandson's first day at the high school. It's not the one nearest me, where I walk, but in the village a few blocks north of where I now live.

I did advocate for him to live and attend school here, during the week, but his mother wasn't hearing that--even though her laxness, with him and his little sister, has contributed to the poor performances that the two of them have turned in over the past couple of years.

So, I guess I'll just hope for the best and do what I can from here. Which is why I'm up and ready--for almost anything--this early morning. Because, ya just never know...

LPK
Dreamwidth
9.5.2018

From the minute we got out of the car at Little J's school, I knew from the universal "oohs and ahhs" that our project was a winner. If I'd been less than enthusiastic about the concept of craftwork as an adjunct to the grade school reading experience, and exhausted by the logistical hurdles surrounding my helper, we were both elated at the response to our completed project.

LPK
LiveJournal
1.18.2012 (b)

There are two sayings that've come out of helping my grandson with his school work. One of them, it will be obvious, relates to math and the other to his outside reading.

The one for math is a sendup of Tom Hank's surly manager in A League of Their Own. In our version, the surly grandfather, irritated by his grandson's resistance to learning addition and multiplication fact families, makes the grandson recite, "There's no crying in baseball and no guessing in math."

The one for the similarly-resisted outside reading says, "If you've got the time to do it now, now's the time to do it."

And it's that second one that's sort of leaning over my shoulder tonight. Little J and I have been working for weeks on a series of book reports which, I guess, are supposed to elicit a variety of creative responses to his outside reading.

But if the point of this reading program is to get kids to read, these book reports have done just the opposite. They've taken time away from the actual reading and placed a huge disincentive at the end of each completed book.

Now, I can look at each one of them and say, yeah, I see what this one is intended to do in terms of sharing the experience and interesting others in a given book.

But right now, I don't really have the time or resources to promote anyone's interest in reading except my grandson's. And the best way to do that is to just do that.

Read broadly, to find out what he likes, and then read. Read, read, read.

LPK
LiveJournal
1.13.2012 (c)

At the end of a difficult week, in which he was twice made late for school by the so-called "responsible adults" in his life, our grandson racked up five awards at the monthly ceremony held for the entire third grade of his K-8 school. Among them was the "Principal's Award" which is given to the outstanding student in each of the (4) third grade classes.

But while his grandmother and I are ecstatic over his accomplishments, we are also deeply concerned that the lack of the most basic, everyday support for his efforts will slowly errode his motivation and ultimately turn him away from strategies and goals which could help assure his success in school and in life.

Among the decisions recently made, by those legally responsible for his care and well-being, is the decision to remove him from the home where he has resided for most of the nearly nine years of his life. Unfortunately, because we are only his grandparents, we have no standing in the eyes of the legal system to challenge such decisions.

So it now seems our sad duty to passively witness what seems inevitable, unable to intercede on behalf of this precious child except in the most egregious circumstances, should they become known to us. And so we wait and watch and listen. Hoping, ironically, that the time never comes when circumstances may empower us to act...

LPK
LiveJournal
1.7.2012 (a)

Somehow I didn't see the summer ending this way. But the sudden turn in weather has been impossible to ignore. Two days ago, we had the second rainiest day ever recorded for Central New York. And the suddenly-cooler nights, drawing down the warmth of following days, have driven home the reality of it as well.

So the tan that burned its way into my too-fair skin, a few short weeks ago in spring, has already begun to fade. And those last few times, that should have been ours to wade up over the sand bars at the west end of the lake, have instead been lost to unacceptably high bacteria counts and subsequent beach closings.

A year ago at this time, I wrote about being on Verona Beach for the very last day of the season, about the little boy and I watching the lines of bouys being dragged up onto the shore, their corkscrew-shaped moorings pulled out of the sandy bottom. Now I'm thinking that, even if they say the water is OK, we won't risk going in again this close to the start of school.

But what's also different is that, instead of looking ahead to next spring and the beach days presumed to follow after it, we've focused more on the coming days of fall. A week or so ago, I asked Little Jay to take just a minute each day to think about school, to think about being a bright little kid in a brand new class and about the fun things he might be doing.

Following a terse re-statement of his well-known and deeply-held conviction that "School is NEVER fun," he walked away.

A few minutes later, he came back and said, "Two plus two is four."

"What?" I said.

"Two plus two is four," he repeated. "You told me to think of something about school and that's it," he said. And, having thus made his point, he again walked away.

Not exactly what I'd had in mind. Which, I suppose, one might take to mean that beginnings won't necessarily be the way that you pictured them either...

LPK
LiveJournal
8.25.2010

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