DaughterGeeding starts kindergarten on Monday and last night her charter school had an orientation and then an opportunity to meet her teacher. I’m now turning into one of “those parents”.
The whole thing wasn’t well organized and almost a logistical nightmare. Maybe I’m being hard on them as this is the first year for the school to exist, but part of my job is to make things intuitive and user friendly, and things just felt chaotic last night. So perhaps I’m always judging and evaluating things on how they can be better, and that might not be fair.
For instance, the headmaster spoke but never introduced himself. Hey dude, you’re not Bono, not everyone knows who you are the moment you’re on stage. On top of that, he didn’t introduce anyone else, not even the assistant headmaster.
The faculty and staff seem well versed in touting the company line. I kept hearing “our job it to work with parents in raising children to be good men and women” and “our students study the best of our Western and American heritage”. That second line kinda scares me, not that I think there’s anything bad about teaching students those things, but it seems like there’s a hidden meaning behind the message. Furthermore, you’ll also hear “our course of study helped propel Western Civilization to the top of the world when it comes to civic institutions, personal liberty, philanthropy, economic enterprise, technological innovation, and relative safety and security.” I’m just going to follow Reagan’s lead here and “trust, but verify”.
One parent pulled out her phone and recorded the entire orientation. Another set of parents made their kids wear their uniforms to the orientation, and they were the only ones wearing their uniforms. They both had that look of “Mom, Dad, why did you make us dress up, no one else is dressed up and now everybody knows who we are.”
DaughterGeeding’s teacher’s last name is “Honey”. We also learned that on the first day of kindergarten, she’ll have homework. Baptism by fire, I guess. Heck, in college I still remember how some classes basically went over the syllabus and you were out of there.
It’s really interesting getting WifeGeeding’s take on all this as she’s taught kindergarten almost all of her adult life. She notices the little things. For instance, she said whenever she meets a student for the first time, it’s important to squat down and speak to the child on their level to better engage and welcome them, and none of that was done last night.
We met a lot of parents that want to start carpooling, which I’m open to, but it seems like they all think it’s okay to just have your kids start commuting with people you’ve never met. I’m not trying to be overly protective, but I want to establish a comfort level first before putting my child in the car of a stranger.
I thought I might have gotten a bit of a late start in life starting a family (this coming from a kid who’s father was 52 when I was born) but there seemed to be a lot of white-haired men with children going into kindergarten.
BoyGeeding must have thought he was Ant-Man because he decided to put ant killer granules in his mouth which resulted in a call to poison control.
We’ve got such a strange political electoral system. We want elite leaders who are at the top of their class, but we make them dumb themselves down by having them trot through Iowa and their state fair, compliment a cow made out of butter, and watch them stuff their faces while acting as if they are “of the people” and “just like us”. As usual, I don’t have the answer, I just like griping about the problem, but it’s weird how Iowa is such a clarifier, as if they represent the whole country because they host the first primary.
If there’s one thing I learned from ‘Hard Knocks’, it’s that Brian Cushing is a bonafide jackass, but off the field he seems like a good guy. The other, I really like their head coach.
Purdue University proposes selling shares of students’ future income – private investors will fund their education, and get paid back as a portion of the students’ future income. It’s called an Income Share Agreement (ISA)—if students earn more than expected after university, they pay back more; if they earn less, they pay less.
" her charter school had an orientation "
Did they mention anything about Sharia Law or the 47%?
I'm pretty sure that's Muhammed, not Jesus. Or is it an elephant? I could never answer right for my psychiatrist either.