School Supplies, Therein Lies a Great Angst.

Last week I wrote about the end of summer. When I was younger, the year was divided into two separate, but unequal parts, Summer and School. Now that I drive one of those yellow buses part time, the year is again divided into those two parts.

Summer is fading quickly and School is approaching like a freight train, loaded with pencils and paper, that is late for a delivery to Walmart. School supplies, therein lies a great angst. 

When my children were in grade school, it made sense to get five, one-inch binders, in the five different colors that the teacher specified, because when the teacher wanted to teach the science lesson of the day, he, or she, simply would say, “Students, we are going to start our science unit for the day. Please clear off your desks and get out your purple binder, three sheets of paper and a pencil.” Simple and easy; no difficult directions. Each student took out his or her 2 and 3/8 inch, purple folder and was ready to study science. No student accidentally pulled out an English folder, or math folder, or last week's tuna sandwich.

I suspected that as the children progressed from elementary school, through middle school, and into high school, the lists of school supplies from teachers would become less and less specific.

I was wrong.

Littlest is a Junior and Middlest is a Senior at our local high school. This means that they each have over a decade of experience in a formal learning environment. They have figured out how they learn the best, they know what systems of note taking and keeping work well with their learning styles. Additionally, they are female--females with highly developed senses of personal style.

Yet, there are still teachers who want to dictate what size and color binders they should use and how many pens and pencils they should have on their desk at all times. Sometimes I think that some of these high school teachers are secretly “wanna be” elementary school teachers, but were unable to teach well enough to be entrusted with our most impressionable, malleable, and, eager to learn students.

In the past, the school would send home schedules a week or two before school started. This would allow time to correct errors in the schedule and then to figure out what items the teachers would require the students to have, and then to go shopping for them. At this late stage, most of the items in the department store were picked over and more often than not, Beloved and I would have to go to an office supply store and pay top dollar for some purple 2 and 3/8 inch binder.

This year, our local high school has developed a new schedule and rather than sending it home, in an effort to “go green”, they were simply going to hand out the schedules on the first day of school.

This  schedule is quite complicated and never-before been done by our high school. It is something like an eight day, six block, rotating schedule; honestly, I am not sure exactly what they call it. The best way I can describe it is to imagine watching the Olympic diving competition on television. The diver prepares to dive, the crowd hushes, and the television announcer’s voice quietly and intensely narrates, “Now the high school schedule is up to dive. This should be an eight day, 6 block, rotation, with a double gainer, and a half-pike.” The diver leaps off the board, executes a blur of twists, turns, and somersaults, before straightening out, just in time to plunge head first into the water. Finally, the exultant diver emerges from the pool, all wet.

As for myself, I am partial to that age-old standard dive, the belly flop.

Many students and teachers believe this schedule will be a flop, the administrators of the school believe the schedule will be graceful and score high marks.

My daughters believe that it’s all wet.

Either way, I foresee more shopping.

Oh bother.

The first week of school: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

My very first ever blog post was about confusing technological phrases. In that post, I mentioned that Eldest, who was then in High School, was taking Spanish as her foreign language. Now she is in college and is majoring in English and Spanish. She has the same professor I had when I went back to finish my degree. The professor doesn’t know Eldest and I are related, and that is a good thing. She is also taking English Literature with the same professor I had in college. He knows she is my daughter, and that isn’t a good thing, but I hope he doesn’t hold it against her.

 Middlest, who was a freshman, was taking Latin. I originally thought it was so she could talk to Latvians, but apparently since Latin is a dead language, she wants to talk to dead people. Some time ago she took the National Latin Exam and won some sort of metal; it was either gold, silver, aluminum, or latinium. This year Middlest has elected to continue with taking Latin, and in addition she is taking Spanish, starting in Spanish 2, rather than Spanish 1. When her teacher explained something to her, another student stated they already knew that. The teacher replied that they had a Latin Scholar in class who hadn’t taken the first year of Spanish and needed a little extra explanation. Some of the students responded, “What is a scholar?” Middlest, as she related the story, simply shook her head, put it in her hand and said, “Oh heaven! Bless their poor souls.”


Littlest was taking French and continues to do well. About her teacher for Advanced Placement World History, we are a little suspect. She asks questions like, “Does anyone know where the glossary in the textbook is?” and “How would I use the table of contents?” These questions both exasperate and worry Littlest. She is concerned that if “the teacher doesn’t know the answers to these simple questions, what is she going to do when she has to teach us about Ibn Battuta and his impact on the world view and his insights into lifestyles of the peoples of the early 14th century?”


Littlest was thrilled to announce that after 7 days of classroom instruction, her History teacher is giving a quiz. When I asked what period of history the  quiz was going to cover she replied, “The past week and a half and all she has talked about is class room rules and the difference between taking a regular history class and an Advanced Placement history class. She has yet to teach us anything, so the quiz is going to be less of a history quiz and more of a current non-event quiz.”

Eldest wants to be an engineer.

Recently, I confronted sexism, gender bias, or whatever you want to call it, at least in some small way.  I was at open house at Gates Chili High School, where Eldest and Middlest are students.  The plan for the evening was to follow the girls’ schedules, spending ten minutes in each class. Beloved followed Middlest’s schedule and I followed Eldest’s. Eldest is a senior and is taking seven Advanced Placement classes this semester. I do not mean to brag. Actually, I do mean to brag. She, like her mother, is beautiful, intelligent, and driven. She does not even have time in her schedule for lunch. Which I do not understand at all, since lunch was my best subject in school.

Perhaps, those of you who are parents have experienced the babbling of an infant that in a moment sounds like intelligent speech. I am not referring to the approximations of saying words that sound like mom or dad. I am talking that surprising moment in which it sounds as if an infant has spoken a complete sentence. For Eldest that first sentence came as she was laying next to her car seat, pushing it back and forth, looking under it as if it were an automobile on a lift. At that moment she said, “How’s it work?”

The intervening years have been filled with pens torn apart, unused 35mm cameras dismantled, even rewiring a bathroom. The most wonderful thing for me?  Sometimes she even lets me help.

At this open house, I followed Eldest’s schedule diligently. Going to all of her Advanced Placement (AP) classes, until I arrived at the one class she is taking that is not AP, “Principles of Engineering.” The teacher began to talk and I eagerly listened, until he said, “This is an excellent class, if your sons want to become engineers.”

I was dumbfounded, stupefied, flabbergasted, and so angry I had to consult a thesaurus to find words to describe my emotional state.  My daughter is many things, but a son is not one of them. She is taking seven AP classes, not even taking lunch. She has her college application process started and wants to do three years at Roberts Wesleyan College and two more at Rochester Institute of Technology. She wants to be an engineer. And she is not male; she is a beautiful young woman.

If the high school teacher not acknowledging that my daughter, who is most definitely not a male, could want to, and actually become, an engineer was not bad enough, a few days later she received a letter in the mail from the BSA. I tried to think where I had seen those initial before. Was it “Beautiful and Stunning Americans”? No, BSA is the Boy Scouts of America, and apparently, the local Boy Scouts of America are holding a series of meetings to explore what it means to be an engineer. The only connection with BSA that my daughter has is her scouting for a boy. I do not wish her to find one too soon however, so she will not be attending these meetings.

I did not realize becoming an engineer was so complicated and had such gender bias. I hope that when Eldest finally becomes an engineer she will give me a ride. I really like trains.