Oh...There are Rules?

So, we had a few staff changes at school this year, and this is actually one of the things I LOVE about education. 

Change. 

All.the.time! 

When they told me I would be in the cafeteria with Brad during Kindergarten lunch instead of outside, Brad and I high-fived and began making immediate plans for where we'd hang the disco ball. Brad's office is downstairs, and I make it a point to enter the building through his door, because it's like coming to work by way of a dance party. Why shouldn't lunch be a dance party then, right?

It took many minutes and Deb shaking her head at us before Brad and I realized neither of us knew if there were actually rules in the cafeteria. Are there rules?

It turns out there are.

It turns out I'm not super good at believing in them.

My hubs emailed me that picture yesterday not realizing I had just spent an entire day going over hallway rules, playground rules, cafeteria rules, library rules.

That's me. In the summertime. It's the first book I picked up after the last bell rang in June, actually. 

I wanted to post it, because I think Deb will get a kick out of it. And she'll shake her head at me and my ineptitude with rules.

Clearly, Mrs. Park's Kindergarten class is a good spot for me. Today we learned to Be safe. I'm sure I'll figure that one out one of these days (hopefully before the snowplows come and make fantastic hills to not play on). But Mrs. Park taught us another rule today, and it is probably the only rule I'll ever actually love.  

I do so love this one.

"Be Kind," she said. 

If you've never been in a kindergarten class when they are teaching this rule, you are missing one of the more beautiful things in life. This audience gets "be kind." Oh if you could only see them practice this. Some of them are scared and some are sad on the first day of Kindergarten. Others are confident and bold. No matter. Once they know that the rule is to Be Kind, they all turn...Kind. 

How do they do that? 

How do I get adult people to do that so well? 

I bet Mrs. Park knows...

I plan to get this sign for my little cubby. I think it's a really complete list as far as rules go...

How To Ensure Your Privacy In Facebook

Some of us love our Facebook, some of us hate it, but most of us are on it.

So what do you do when one of your students sends you a Friend request? It can feel like it oversteps your professional boundary, but they're so cute...you don't want to reject them! Here's how to set up your privacy settings so that you can accept their request and still keep your privacy.

 First Create A Friend List and put your kiddos on it (their parents too if you feel like it)
(If you can't see these screenshots, just click on them...)

Go ahead and add people to the list.

  Now Change Your Security Settings To Exclude That List.

 Now whenever you post a status, this list will not see it, unless you change this setting.

You can lock down everything and make it seem like you're just never on FB, or you can leave up some pictures, etc. And the cool thing is, you can always change this on the fly...if you post a status or photo you want everyone to see, you can change it right from there. Just look for that little Custom gear!
*Do pay attention though...when you change this setting in a status update, that change becomes your new default so be SURE you change it back!

Voila. You're back to having a Professional AND a Personal life! :)

The "Worst Parent EVER!"

Ever had one of those? a Worst Parent Ever! moment?


Last night was my official inauguration into the Worst Parent Ever club. It was the night before the first day of school…correction: the night before the first day of Middle School for my brilliant, geeky, funny but sensitive and sometimes pessimistic youngest guy. He’s awesome, and his new school is going to be awesome and everything was awesome… until bedtime. The Man and I always do one last email check before bed (geeks through-and-through), so we both discovered the email at the exact same time.

And gasped at the exact same time.

It was a friendly little note from the director of Jordan’s new school:
“What a great first day at school! The kids did an amazing job and it was wonderful to see our new and improved campus filled up with happy faces. Clearly we are going to have a great year.”

Yeah. Alternate reality, right? Whose life did I accidentally slip into just now? The first day of school is tomorrow. It’s tomorrow!

Nope.

We missed the first day of middle school. Epic. Beautiful. Glorious. Swan-Dive-Into an empty pool-Failure!

To my credit, they did start a day earlier than the public schools this year and the rest of us are all public schoolers. But on the “ridiculous fail” side, I honestly clicked that stupid “First Day Of School” link no less than 25 times this week and apparently never actually read the message there even once. So Brilliant.

We laugh in this family. It's a dang good thing.
We decided he can use this excuse for just about everything now. Doesn’t all of life hinge on that first day of middle school?
How many job interviews could he be late for and say, “Yeah, well…my parents made me miss the first day of middle school and I’ve been catching up ever since.” Who wouldn’t have pity on that kid, right?
Card games lost: “I missed the first day of middle school.”
Girlfriends dumped: “Yeah, I missed the first day of middle school.”
Fails the math final: “It must have been what I missed that first day of middle school.”

So as it turns out, we’ve given him a great gift after all, you see.
He now has,
The freedom to fail.
(...oh, and also we bought him the large size at Cuppa Yo after school today).

That's also why I decided to go ahead and write a post about my most fantastic parenting failure to date. Giving ourselves the freedom to fail is the starting place for so many great stories, so many courageous successes! And now I bequeath that to you.

You, my dear friends, now have the freedom to make a creative and far-reaching plethora of legitimate mistakes and all the while, you'll be able to say:  "Yeah, but I had this friend once who totally spaced her kid's first day of middle school."

See that? I can be generous that way (...which probably mostly has to do with the fact that I had the large size at Cuppa Yo today too).

Go ahead. Fail. Laugh. Try again. Laugh some more.
That'll be the policy in our family. At least for as long as there is a Cuppa Yo.



And Jordan?
Jordan's been busy all afternoon coming up with reason after reason why he's the luckiest kid on the block...having not had to go to the first day of middle school.

Geez, I love him!

Why I Keep Playing With Kindergartners

Photo Credit: Jessica Miller

On the first day of my first year as a Kindergarten EA, I was sent outside with the class while the teacher finished prepping for the rest of that long day. I was wearing my long white flowy skirt (I know...white and Kinders...*shrug *) and holding hands with two little girls.

"Hey you guys! Let's play Duck, Duck, Goose," I said, and the kids cheered.
Then a tiny hand tugged at mine and when I looked down, two blue eyes were gazing up at me. "We should play Duck, Duck, Swan, and you could be the swan," she said, very seriously.

I haven't needed to question my decision to go into education since that day.

It's been a long year. No, it's been a really long 6 years. I guess I'm a grown-up now, because broken friendships and mean people have finally left their mark and I'm more cynical and jaded than I ever really wanted to be. I was agonizing about this to my dear Best the other day.

"I'm a freak," I said, "why have so many people treated me this way? How do people just walk away from people they seemed to care about and never look back?" My Best is wise (which is why I married him of course).

"You're not the only one. Everyone has the kind of broken friendships that hurt and will never make sense to them. That's just human. You're not a freak. You're just acquainted with the real world now."

Both things are true. I am more cynical than I ever wanted to be, because a lot of people are meaner and more selfish than they really need to be. Bleh.  And, it's true that I'm not the only one who has been on the crummy end of selfish decisions. People everywhere know what this feels like. But I don't want to live jaded. I'm determined to live into beautiful, into kindness, into selflessness. And that's why I keep hanging out with Kindergartners.

They tell me I'm pretty. They ask me if I could teach them how to do something. They want me to swing with them. They listen if I have a story to tell. They want me to like what they like and not just because it would give them a higher number on their Facebook friends list.

Kinders are the real deal, my friends. These are the people I aspire to be like.
School starts in 5 days. Today I signed up to do the Kindergarten Tours where I show them where the bathroom is and introduce them to the nice office lady who has the band-aids.

I.Can't.Wait!