Assessment

All the middle schools we have applied to have had some kind of visiting experience to assess the applicants, combining something sort of like a tour or Q&A with something substituting for an interview (because ten-year-olds don’t interview well). In one case there was a tour and lunch with a faculty member, in another case there was a collaborative small-group activity and a Q&A, and in a third case the applicant tagged along with a host student in that day’s classes. A fourth school, however, hosted a whole fake school day for prospective students; all the regular students had the day off, and all the faculty were there to observe the visitors. 

Jordan loved the classes. In science, they did architecture. They grouped the students into teams and dumped a bunch of plastic straws and paper clips in front of them, saying something like, “Here you go, folks: Build something. And try to make it strong. Strong means it can hold up these big hardware nails over here. The record so far is 47. See what you can do.” Jordan got totally into it - when I picked him up he bubbled for five minutes about how they chose a triangle for the base because it’s the most stable shape, it had a kind of a saddle thing at the top to hold the nails, etc, etc. It sounded like a blast. In social studies they discussed current events that they knew about, and made a newspaper front page out of them. In language arts they read and discussed myths, and then wrote their own myth, something about why there are a lot of colors in the rainbow. As an educator I thought this sounded like a great way to spend a day; it seems like they must get a ton of information about the kids this way, much more than you could get from an awkward conversation over lunch. Jordan was extremely impressed with the experience and had a lot of fun, too.

This school is the only one whose application processes involves a parent visit. We had that this week. They asked us a lot of questions about how we see Jordan – three quintessential words to describe him, that kind of thing. It was a good conversation. I think we are pretty thoughtful and articulate about who our kid is. The kicker, though, was when they showed us the myth he had written. It was a whole page packed with text! He had a ton to say, and he got it onto the paper! They didn't invite us to read it, but they said it was a "wonderful piece": they said he had characters, details, and showed excellent comprehension of the reading. Really? Really? Wow. This is such a huge, dramatic change from where he was a year ago. It also suggests that they did a great job of making the activity meaningful and interesting for Jordan, because if he isn’t into it, he doesn’t write. I was amazed and so was Dale.

It took a bit for the emotions to set in (I didn't start blubbering in the interview) but for the whole rest of the day I felt overwhelmed with relief, pride, gratitude, and I don't know what else. The minute I got to work I wrote a thank you letter to his teachers. I think the team of them (and it is quite a team) are really making it happen for Jordan. He is becoming a person who can express himself in writing. I thought he might have to live without that, and I was trying to adjust to my own sense of loss, because writing is a wonderful part of life. Now I feel that no door need be closed to him… especially if he can go to a school with teachers that will support his continued growth.

Nerds

I need to step up my game on describing Jordan in a way that I can do in front of him. I tend to describe him as a nerd, and to many people (especially kids) that term is pejorative. I mean it affectionately. So what do I mean? I mean that he is intellectual; that he has strong interests in non-mainstream activities (especially music and fantasy); and that he acts his age rather than being falsely mature. I do not mean that he is socially awkward or shy; quite the contrary; he is gregarious and socially savvy. I also don’t mean that he is gawky or physically awkward, although I do mean that he is not majorly into sports. (Why do I perceive sports as incompatible with nerdiness? Do we think that making good use of your body is incompatible with making good use of your brain? Terrible. But there you have it.)

One evening at a social dinner Dale asked Jordan how he would describe his group of friends. “None of us is trying to be someone else,” he said. “We all have something wrong with us and none of us minds at all.” I love it. They are authentic with each other. Dale winced at his sense that they all “have something wrong with them,” but I liked it; I think it means that they do not hide their flaws from each other, and they accept each other in full knowledge of their eccentricities. Because the fact is that we all have eccentricities… it’s more about whether we are ashamed of them or feel able to let our freak flag fly. Apparently he and his friends feel safe with each other. To me, this is another positive quality of nerds. But instead I am going to teach myself to say things like: Intellectual, musical, imaginative, social, authentic, acts his age. It’s a start.

Applied

The private middle school application process is now complete. We have applied to schools A, B, C, and D, and maybe it is weird that I’m not telling you which is which but we are still in the application process and this is a public blog! (If you care to know I’ll gladly tell you non-publicly.) We have attended tours, open houses, visit days, parent interviews, focus groups, and informational sessions. We have completed four different applications, including questionnaires, essay questions, transcripts, IQ tests, standardized test scores, and teacher recommendations. We have also completed and three distinct (and extensive) financial aid applications.

All of us like all the schools. All of us have the same favorite, and the same pair of second-favorites, and the same one we like the least but still better than our neighborhood public school. I call that a successful process! Jordan can especially see himself at School A, which he perceives as being full of kids like him. When he said that to one of his teachers, she asked, “What are you like?” and he said, “I make friends easily, I get along with a lot of people, I am kind. I hope it is okay to say that but this is how I see myself.” I think this is a very nice way to see yourself. I also think he would fit in very well with the kids at School A, though I would describe their similarities differently (I will try to articulate that later).

Jordan is very perceptive about the social environment at the different schools. At one point he said, “The kids at [School B] were nice, but I wonder if they are mainly nice at first. I think they are kind of like [name withheld],” naming a kid he knows who is a major “cool kid” (and not Jordan’s type). I think he totally hit the nail on the head…that is exactly my impression of the kids at that school. And this is nothing anyone would have said to him; he detects this kind of thing with his finely tuned social radar. Another exchange we had, after a visit to School C in which I asked him to reflect on all the schools he had visited:

Jordan: I liked [School C] fine. I think [School A] is a lot like SJCS.
Me: In what way?
Jordan: They are both open to ideas.
Me: What do you mean by that?
Jordan: If you have a suggestion about how something could be better at the school then they will consider it. Because they think other people might have really good ideas. Including kids.
Me: And you think [School C] is not so much like that?
Jordan: It seems like they feel like they are already very good the way they are, so they do not need to be open to ideas.

ZING! He is so right: School C is more polished, whereas School A, like SJCS, has a more community-based feel to it. I think it is fascinating that he picked up on this. It’s nothing that any adult at School C would have said.

Now we wait and see who admits us, and who offers us a financial aid package that makes attendance feasible for our family (if anyone). My fingers-crossed guess is that School A admits us and gives us financial aid we can maybe sort of live with, School B admits us and gives us next to no financial aid, and Schools C and D don’t admit us because they get a million applicants for about five spaces each.

E.T.

My great-aunt E.T. passed away yesterday at age 94. Her given name was Ethel, and she went by Et for a long time, then E.T., and yes, she kept a plush E.T. doll in her house. She was a slice, a real one-of-a-kind person, and I am so glad I got to know her a little bit while we lived in Maryland. She lived in a big white house with a tiny white poodle. The dog's name was Snooky (long before the reality TV Snooki) and she had taught Snooky funny tricks. She would say "Snooky, sneeze and sing! Sneeze and sing!" and the dog would dutifully achoo twice and then howl musically. E.T. loved musical theater and the golden age of Hollywood; she had a large painting of Katherine Hepburn in her living room. She also had a large purse, and whenever I saw her she would say "I have something I want to show you," and extract said thing from the depths of her bag, usually a magazine clipping. E.T. had a variety of medical theories that seemed fairly wacky to me (raw foods, that kind of thing) but who can argue, when she lived to be 94?

One of my favorite things about her was that she would tell the most fantastic stories about some weird thing that was going on in her life, and I would be sure it was an elaborate fantasy or delusion, but it would turn out that every detail was completely true. One such story was about a frightening black mold that was growing out of her ceiling; personally I was sure that she was imagining this, but when I went to her house, lo and behold, there it was. I also loved how her conversation would wind around through the most astonishing range of topics, and I would be sure we were out in la-la land, but if I tried to rescue the discussion she would not allow interruption, and darned if it didn't all come together eventually. She was as sharp as a tack and very funny, and her unusual theories and wild speculations were perhaps not so wild after all.

Other guys

Dale drove a minivan full of fifth graders on a school outing, and rather than the car being full of Jordan's regular friends, it was other boys. These fellows have quite a different style than Jordan and his friends. They sat in the back telling dumb blonde jokes and dead baby jokes. Remember dead baby jokes?

Q. How do you get a dead baby to float?
A. Take your foot off its head.

Q. What’s worse than a dead baby nailed to a tree?
A. A dead baby nailed to a hundred trees.

Niiiice. They also recapped horror movies they have seen, including Silence of the Lambs. Dale was stunned. Jordan is nowhere near this level of crudeness. He and his friends are more in the fart and pee zone. When they get together they play Minecraft if we let them, Magic otherwise, and spin endless imaginative yarns involving enchanted creatures and magical powers and confrontations between various souped-up characters. They do not watch a movie like Maze Runner, or read the book. And I would not have it any other way. There is no need for additional cynicism or violence in their imaginative lives, especially since they don’t want it.

But the other boys’ style is more what adult friends of mine remember from fifth grade. The dumb blonde jokes, the horror movies, the works. Girls, too. I don’t remember fifth grade that way, but I don’t really remember much. And I guess whatever happens this year, more exposure is around the corner in middle school. I am not ready.

Jordan had been referring to these guys as the "popular guys." They are the cool kids. I am trying to poke around with Jordan’s language, because “popular” ought to mean well-liked, and I don’t think that’s what he means. Jordan first said a better word would be “well-known,” but then agreed that everyone knows everyone; he settled on “in charge.” In other words, they wield social power, independent of whether people like them. I think this is an astute perception. I wonder why things are this way.

What do you do when kids in your car tell awful sexist jokes? (Or racist, or whatever.) Dale said nothing, wanting to observe, and not wanting to make things even more awkward for Jordan. I get that, but I think that if it had been me, I might have been too angry to drive safely. I think I would have declared, "You will not tell rude jokes in my car," and would have steeled myself for their backtalk and eyerolling. I am sure I will be given the opportunity to respond someday… this was the first time, but it surely will not be the last.

Resolutions

I did it! I kept my New Year's resolution for all of 2014! Or close enough. I resolved to blog at least twice a month and 50 times in the year, and while there were two months in which I only posted once, I totaled a fabulous 54 blog posts. This is great for my own reflection, for keeping a fun family archive, and for including relatives and friends in our lives. I hereby renew this resolution for 2015.

Two other resolutions: First, throw an annual work party. I remember fondly that Lillian used to do this, and Joe, and Dale's bosses, and I think it is great stuff for group identity and getting to know each other. Joe used to do it on Einstein's birthday. I have decided to honor Piaget instead, and I will honor the day of his death, because it is in September (his birthday is in August which is not good with the academic calendar). And this year, I will also have a half-birthday party in February, when there will be lots of PER visitors in town for a conference.

Second, declutter 12 small but important areas of the house (one per month) - i.e. a certain drawer or shelf. For this I need to make a list. Perhaps on the monthly calendar in the kitchen.

Challenge overcome

For Jordan's second middle school application essay he had to respond to the question, "What is a strategy you use to overcome a significant challenge?" He was very resistant to answering this question: he could not think of anything, and got blocked and mad, and we both had to walk away from it. But a few minutes later he was ready to try again, and worked with me to write the following response:

Learning to ride a bike was a significant challenge for me. We tried with training wheels, but that wasn’t helping at all; I could ride, but I had no idea how to balance. Because my bike had gears, Dad could only put on one training wheel, so I always leaned to one side, which sometimes was the wrong side and made me go very slowly. After a lot of practice I was getting faster, but not any better; I had to slow way down at the corners and I still had no idea how to balance. 

One day, Mom and Dad made us learn how to bike. They said that they were going to take off our training wheels and our pedals, which would let us put our feet on the ground and walk while sitting on our bikes. This did not sound super exciting. We were going down to our nearest playground, which is one block away from our house. My little brother Aaron wasn’t liking the idea of learning how to ride when he’s heard horror stories of people falling off and getting seriously hurt. For some reason this made me feel better. Sometimes feeling that I’m not the worst one, I’m not the person at the bottom of the team, it makes me feel better. It doesn’t make me feel better literally but it makes me a little bit more confident. Mom also was bribing us with candy: whenever I coasted for a couple of seconds, or made a certain number of laps, or something else I had not done before, Mom would give me a half a Hershey bar or some other small piece of candy. Before we had started without bringing any materials, but after we started getting into it, which was only two days (Aaron spent half of the first day arguing), Mom brought cones and crackers. The cones were for going in between them, kind of like a slalom. Sometimes I would have to go through the cones and run over the cracker. It was pretty hard.

At first I didn’t exactly like the idea. I just wanted to have one of those easy days, without any homework, just a nice calm day, a day open for anything. I was considering learning riding a bike to be like homework, so I didn’t exactly like the idea. I don’t remember exactly how I felt but Mom says I was really mad. But since I am really good at keeping feelings in, it doesn’t exactly look like I’m super super mad, or sound like it for that matter. Meanwhile, my little brother Aaron was crying loudly against the fence. He is almost the complete opposite of me: he is pretty sensitive to his own feelings, which makes him show them to everyone else. But I still have tons of fun with him.
For learning how to ride a bike, one strategy that we used was biking with training wheels, but that didn’t work. We overcame the challenge by taking off our training wheels and pedals to learn how to balance, because pedaling is pretty easy. Another strategy was bribing us with candy and challenging us with cones and crackers, which made it feel kind of like a game instead of boring homework. Another part of my strategy is to keep my feelings in, because if I let them out then they kind of get a hold of me and make me simply not do it instead of not wanting to do it but doing it anyway. They make me feel reluctant even if it’s fun.

Because of all this, riding on the bike became fun! It was actually fun in the first place, but it’s never fun if you don’t think it’s fun and you don’t want to do it.

This essay talks in terms of a specific challenge, rather than how to overcome challenges in general, but I think that is appropriate for a ten-year-old. It was hard for him to see the strategies involved, but I think we got there: employ a good technique, make it a game, improve your attitude.

I could write a meta-essay about how he (and I) overcame the challenges of writing this darned essay. I tried to make it easy by using a helpful technique (letting him dictate), and projecting a cheerful attitude. But before he was ready to write he had to get through his own emotional response (about being required to do something he didn't want to do, especially a writing thing). Eventually, we actually had fun with it, and I think he experienced some of the satisfaction of articulating something about yourself through reflective writing. But it's not fun as long as you don't think it's fun and you don't want to do it.