So I visited my third school in as many days on Friday, the Beethoven school. This school appears to be much more popular. The tour group was large. They had a lot of questions.
The school was large. It was oldish, not as old as the first two I saw. They too did a lot to make brick walls more cheerful. But there was just a lot more space for everything. It didn't feel as cozy, quaint, and cramped as the other schools. It just felt like a school. With an actual auditorium. It's hard to articulate beyond that...
The principal was non-nonsense. She was older than the others I've met. And I got the sense she'd been doing this a long time and was good at it.
The test scores from the school are good. It's a popular school. My girls would fit in there. They would get a fine education. We'd never have to worry about it. It would be much like the elementary schools I went to.
But it's out of our walk zone. It probably won't be available for MeToo after the school re-draws zones and changes the lottery program. It's nice to have as a referent - to compare other less-popular schools to. But I don't think we should rank it highly, because I don't think it's a durable solution for us. It's too bad...
Monday, November 19, 2012
Thursday, November 15, 2012
School Report #2
I visited our second elementary school today, Phineas Bates Elementary.
After a hectic day where I worked at 2 different hospitals, I rushed to preschool, picked up the girls, stopped by the house to pick up a container of much-anticipated celery (!?!), and dashed to the other side of Roslindale to find The Bates. We found it. It wasn't too far away, as it is in our 1-mile radius "walk zone".
A teacher met us at the front door. The doors were locked, and we had to ring a doorbell to be let inside. BestestHusband mentioned that the school is in a higher-crime area and has gone into "lockdown" on several occasions. Lovely!
Once inside, we saw the familiar trappings of an old-school Boston school building, with ugly brick walls and "quaint" windows and trim. Somehow, they did a lovely job of making it look cheerful and inviting. We met first in a Kindergarten classroom. The girls were invited to join in at the play area. They dove right in. The walls were papered with artwork and educational tools. I loved the room. It was full of action, even when we parents were sitting quietly. MeToo wandered around looking at all of the displays and teaching activities. When it was time to take the tour, she cried. She didn't want to leave that room. So the teacher of that class invited all of the kids to stay and play or color. My girls cheerfully waved me off and dove into the crayon box. I loved that teacher.
The school was much like The Kilmer. It was boxy. It had multiple levels with old stairwells. It had a large playyard and good playground structure. But it had an additional Cafetorium, a mixed-use room that had a curtained stage to create a largish auditorium.
This school had a large number of partnerships to augment the educational basics, using external community partners to provide additional resources and activities. The student population was not as white as the Kilmer. Or, more importantly, it wasn't as West Roxbury-ish as the Kilmer (ie. more affluent, with more dual-parent families, regardless of race/nationality). In other words, more was offered because the students needed more. The MCAS proficiency average was 22 points lower than the Kilmer, but the SGP (student growth percentage) was also 8 points lower. So the data also suggests that the student population struggles more, and the teachers aren't overcoming it as well. But the school had Advanced Work classes for 4th and 5th grades, equivalent to the Gifted and Talented programs that BestestHusband and I recalled so fondly from our childhoods. In fact, it's the only school in Roslindale that offers Advanced Work classes. So, given likely changes to BPS school assignments, if we want our girls to get AW opportunities in the later grades, it's good to start out here to make sure we can get in.
So again, it's another school I can see the girls going to. Tomorrow I'll visit a third school. Wish me luck.
After a hectic day where I worked at 2 different hospitals, I rushed to preschool, picked up the girls, stopped by the house to pick up a container of much-anticipated celery (!?!), and dashed to the other side of Roslindale to find The Bates. We found it. It wasn't too far away, as it is in our 1-mile radius "walk zone".
A teacher met us at the front door. The doors were locked, and we had to ring a doorbell to be let inside. BestestHusband mentioned that the school is in a higher-crime area and has gone into "lockdown" on several occasions. Lovely!
Once inside, we saw the familiar trappings of an old-school Boston school building, with ugly brick walls and "quaint" windows and trim. Somehow, they did a lovely job of making it look cheerful and inviting. We met first in a Kindergarten classroom. The girls were invited to join in at the play area. They dove right in. The walls were papered with artwork and educational tools. I loved the room. It was full of action, even when we parents were sitting quietly. MeToo wandered around looking at all of the displays and teaching activities. When it was time to take the tour, she cried. She didn't want to leave that room. So the teacher of that class invited all of the kids to stay and play or color. My girls cheerfully waved me off and dove into the crayon box. I loved that teacher.
The school was much like The Kilmer. It was boxy. It had multiple levels with old stairwells. It had a large playyard and good playground structure. But it had an additional Cafetorium, a mixed-use room that had a curtained stage to create a largish auditorium.
This school had a large number of partnerships to augment the educational basics, using external community partners to provide additional resources and activities. The student population was not as white as the Kilmer. Or, more importantly, it wasn't as West Roxbury-ish as the Kilmer (ie. more affluent, with more dual-parent families, regardless of race/nationality). In other words, more was offered because the students needed more. The MCAS proficiency average was 22 points lower than the Kilmer, but the SGP (student growth percentage) was also 8 points lower. So the data also suggests that the student population struggles more, and the teachers aren't overcoming it as well. But the school had Advanced Work classes for 4th and 5th grades, equivalent to the Gifted and Talented programs that BestestHusband and I recalled so fondly from our childhoods. In fact, it's the only school in Roslindale that offers Advanced Work classes. So, given likely changes to BPS school assignments, if we want our girls to get AW opportunities in the later grades, it's good to start out here to make sure we can get in.
So again, it's another school I can see the girls going to. Tomorrow I'll visit a third school. Wish me luck.
Wednesday, November 14, 2012
School Report #1
So I did my first school visit this morning.
Boston has an interesting public school system, where you don't send your kid to a neighborhood school. There is no such thing as a neighborhood school. There are dozens of elementary schools in your "zone" and a lottery system where you rank the schools by preference and hope that your lottery number is good enough to get your kid into a school at the top of the list. You find out in the spring which school your child will attend that next fall. Of course, if you're on a waitlist, you may get in after school starts. Or not at all. It's hard to know, really. It's a bit nerve-wracking for parents like me who like to plan in advance. Or like to feel like we have some semblance of control over our children's education.
We applied last year for K0, which is like public preschool. Of course we didn't get in.
So this year we're back to try for K1, which is 4 yr old kindergarten. We may not get in. But I want us to at least try. My plan is to visit as many of the schools as possible that are either close or interesting. There are quite a few to visit. Currently, there are 3 zones across Boston, and you attend schools within your geographic zone. This system will remain in place for the 2013-2014 school year, the year that HeyMama could potentially enter K1. But that system will change for the 2014-2015 school year, the year that MeToo could potentially enter K1. We don't know what that system will look like. We may not know until after we register HeyMama for schools. So there will likely be a smaller pool of schools available for MeToo to register for. We're not sure what those schools will be yet. And we may not for a while. The school district may continue the practice of prioritizing younger siblings to be in the same school as the rest of their family members. Or they may not. So we could potentially have 2 kids, just one year apart, attending different schools. The whole thing is like a multivariable equation where the variables shift and change at undetermined intervals. Needless to say, Boston parents are stressed.
So I visited the Kilmer lower school today. The school is across 2 campuses, with K1-3rd grade at the lower campus and 4th-8th grades at the upper campus. These campuses are 2 miles from each other. But it's still all the Kilmer School. Ok... I did not see the upper campus, but I heard it's very recently renovated. The lower campus, that I visited today, is not newly renovated. Built in the 1940's, it's a bit old-school. Both in appearance, and as I learned from a mom who sent both of her kids there, in practice as well. She describes the school as "structured", with high expectations for performance and behavior. She described standards that are higher than those mandated by the state. The school had the best 3rd grade MCAS reading scores in Boston, and some of the highest in the state. And, unlike other elementary schools, it offers multiple "specials", including art, music, drama, and phys ed. Optional string instrument classes start at the 2nd grade for a nominal fee. Now, growing up, we just called those things "classes". They were just part of the curriculum. (Joy, you're not in the 'burbs anymore! Get over it!) There was no indoor gym, no auditorium. But apparently, this is also normal for BPS. They had a nice school yard, with a fun playground structure. It was in a quiet residential neighborhood. The classrooms were all cheerful, orderly, and vibrant. I could see the girls learning a lot there. Apparently others can, too. It's a popular school. There are 2 classrooms for K1, with a total of 44 seats. In any given year, up to half of those seats can be filled with siblings of older students there. And there's always a wait list.
It's a school that I would be thrilled to send HeyMama to. But it's a bit further away, out of our "walk zone" (an area that is a 1-mile radius from our house and grants some preferential seating to kids in a school's neighborhood). So any school assignment changes would likely take it out of the running for MeToo the following year. Dang.
The Assistant Principal and I had a wonderful conversation about why we wanted our kids to grow up in a city school. We can offer our kids educational enrichments at home. They won't suffer academically, regardless of where they go to school. They will travel and see the world to learn history, geography, art. But we can't offer them the life lessons of growing up with kids that are different from them: kids that speak different languages at home, kids that come from different religious backgrounds, kids that struggle with the challenges of poverty and broken homes. There is something to be learned from growing up in a diverse city that we can't provide as parents. And isn't that my job as a parent? To provide my kids with as many advantages as possible? I know it sounds strange, but perhaps putting my children in urban schools actually does give them more than putting them in homogenous and safe suburban schools would. I don't know...
There are 2 more schools that I plan to visit this week, with more scheduled over the next month. I'll report in regularly, mostly to just help myself organize the info. Sometimes choice can be a great thing, but at the moment, it feels like quite a burden.
Boston has an interesting public school system, where you don't send your kid to a neighborhood school. There is no such thing as a neighborhood school. There are dozens of elementary schools in your "zone" and a lottery system where you rank the schools by preference and hope that your lottery number is good enough to get your kid into a school at the top of the list. You find out in the spring which school your child will attend that next fall. Of course, if you're on a waitlist, you may get in after school starts. Or not at all. It's hard to know, really. It's a bit nerve-wracking for parents like me who like to plan in advance. Or like to feel like we have some semblance of control over our children's education.
We applied last year for K0, which is like public preschool. Of course we didn't get in.
So this year we're back to try for K1, which is 4 yr old kindergarten. We may not get in. But I want us to at least try. My plan is to visit as many of the schools as possible that are either close or interesting. There are quite a few to visit. Currently, there are 3 zones across Boston, and you attend schools within your geographic zone. This system will remain in place for the 2013-2014 school year, the year that HeyMama could potentially enter K1. But that system will change for the 2014-2015 school year, the year that MeToo could potentially enter K1. We don't know what that system will look like. We may not know until after we register HeyMama for schools. So there will likely be a smaller pool of schools available for MeToo to register for. We're not sure what those schools will be yet. And we may not for a while. The school district may continue the practice of prioritizing younger siblings to be in the same school as the rest of their family members. Or they may not. So we could potentially have 2 kids, just one year apart, attending different schools. The whole thing is like a multivariable equation where the variables shift and change at undetermined intervals. Needless to say, Boston parents are stressed.
So I visited the Kilmer lower school today. The school is across 2 campuses, with K1-3rd grade at the lower campus and 4th-8th grades at the upper campus. These campuses are 2 miles from each other. But it's still all the Kilmer School. Ok... I did not see the upper campus, but I heard it's very recently renovated. The lower campus, that I visited today, is not newly renovated. Built in the 1940's, it's a bit old-school. Both in appearance, and as I learned from a mom who sent both of her kids there, in practice as well. She describes the school as "structured", with high expectations for performance and behavior. She described standards that are higher than those mandated by the state. The school had the best 3rd grade MCAS reading scores in Boston, and some of the highest in the state. And, unlike other elementary schools, it offers multiple "specials", including art, music, drama, and phys ed. Optional string instrument classes start at the 2nd grade for a nominal fee. Now, growing up, we just called those things "classes". They were just part of the curriculum. (Joy, you're not in the 'burbs anymore! Get over it!) There was no indoor gym, no auditorium. But apparently, this is also normal for BPS. They had a nice school yard, with a fun playground structure. It was in a quiet residential neighborhood. The classrooms were all cheerful, orderly, and vibrant. I could see the girls learning a lot there. Apparently others can, too. It's a popular school. There are 2 classrooms for K1, with a total of 44 seats. In any given year, up to half of those seats can be filled with siblings of older students there. And there's always a wait list.
It's a school that I would be thrilled to send HeyMama to. But it's a bit further away, out of our "walk zone" (an area that is a 1-mile radius from our house and grants some preferential seating to kids in a school's neighborhood). So any school assignment changes would likely take it out of the running for MeToo the following year. Dang.
The Assistant Principal and I had a wonderful conversation about why we wanted our kids to grow up in a city school. We can offer our kids educational enrichments at home. They won't suffer academically, regardless of where they go to school. They will travel and see the world to learn history, geography, art. But we can't offer them the life lessons of growing up with kids that are different from them: kids that speak different languages at home, kids that come from different religious backgrounds, kids that struggle with the challenges of poverty and broken homes. There is something to be learned from growing up in a diverse city that we can't provide as parents. And isn't that my job as a parent? To provide my kids with as many advantages as possible? I know it sounds strange, but perhaps putting my children in urban schools actually does give them more than putting them in homogenous and safe suburban schools would. I don't know...
There are 2 more schools that I plan to visit this week, with more scheduled over the next month. I'll report in regularly, mostly to just help myself organize the info. Sometimes choice can be a great thing, but at the moment, it feels like quite a burden.
Tuesday, November 13, 2012
Airing Dirty Laundry
If you read some blogs, you might get the idea that the blogger lives in a world where the house is always clean, the food is always gourmet and organic, and the cute clothes on the children are always hand-made.
This is not that blog. You don't want to read those other blogs. You want to know that other people out there live lives that are more chaotic and disorganized than your own. You want to see other people's failures so that you can feel a bit better about your own.
Oh, you don't? Well, sometimes I do...
So I'm posting my week's laundry failure. It's not really a failure, I mean, I managed to get all of the clothes clean in a 36 hour span. But not necessarily sorted. Or folded. Or put away.
But I did manage to make a pretty menacing mountain of laundry.
This is not that blog. You don't want to read those other blogs. You want to know that other people out there live lives that are more chaotic and disorganized than your own. You want to see other people's failures so that you can feel a bit better about your own.
Oh, you don't? Well, sometimes I do...
So I'm posting my week's laundry failure. It's not really a failure, I mean, I managed to get all of the clothes clean in a 36 hour span. But not necessarily sorted. Or folded. Or put away.
But I did manage to make a pretty menacing mountain of laundry.
 |
| In the beginning, there was a basket of clean laundry, and a collection of socks. |
 |
| And then a dry rack of work clothes and some more clean laundry came along. |
 |
| And then the laundry basket disappeared. |
 |
| And the mountain continued to grow. |
There's a quilt still in the dryer that will soon be added to the mountain. I plan on sending out an avalanche warning. I think the spare bedroom will be off-limits to children and pets until I can get this monster under control.
I hope you feel better about your own laundry habits. Happy Tuesday!
Sunday, November 11, 2012
Little Surprises
Some things are for certain. Like laundry.
Some things are surprising. Like the speed at which laundry multiplies.
Good gracious. Bunnies have nothing on the multiplicative power of laundry.
But life is still full of little surprises.
Like finding the Virgin Mary at the bottom of the girls' laundry hamper.
Some things are surprising. Like the speed at which laundry multiplies.
Good gracious. Bunnies have nothing on the multiplicative power of laundry.
But life is still full of little surprises.
Like finding the Virgin Mary at the bottom of the girls' laundry hamper.
Where else would she be? I mean, why NOT in the bottom of the laundry hamper?
Maybe it's because I'm doing laundry after midnight and even BestestHusband and the dogs have gone to bed. But it made me smile.
It's a nice reminder that even in the mundane, joy hides, waiting for you to find it. This week was full of little joys:
- I found encouragement and support in strangers, even after a difficult mommy confession.
- I found friendliness and trust in other strangers, who took a chance and accepted a random offer of hospitality.
- I found thanksgiving and grace in the news that a church friend's child, born with birth defects that could have been fatal, will be testing out of early intervention, and is just as healthy and well-developed as any other child his age.
- I found hope and excitement in a new project that will share the joy of the upcoming Christmas with others who might be in need of a little joy.
The week was a busy one. It was good stewardship of my time that prevented me from writing more posts this week. This upcoming week will be busy, as well. I'll visit 3 different elementary schools to try to decide where to send HeyMama next year. There's a party, some swim lessons, and trips to the playground. There will be a lot of the mundane. Like more laundry. (For Pete's sake, will it ever end?!?!) But I have no doubt that there will be plenty of joy. Maybe even at the bottom of the laundry hamper.
Have a great week!
 |
| It multiplied again! Yikes! |
Sunday, November 4, 2012
Maybe Sunday isn't the Best Pick
So I'm starting to think that Sunday isn't the best day to sit back and reflect on my week. Perhaps Monday isn't reliable, either...
I don't watch much TV. Except Sunday and Monday. Call the Midwife is on. Then, Revenge. They've become addictions. I never used to understand the ladies who scheduled their days around their afternoon soap operas. And now I schedule my week around a show of my own. Lame, I know. But they're really fun shows! Call the Midwife is good. Really good. Revenge is just fun. And then Monday has Dancing With the Stars. And then Castle. Ok, so they're not the most profound of offerings, but they are a lot of fun. And they make me not want to to escape my escapism to write about how my week was and how to improve upon it for the next week.
So maybe I'll switch to Stewardship Saturdays. Sundays aren't really so productive anymore.
I don't watch much TV. Except Sunday and Monday. Call the Midwife is on. Then, Revenge. They've become addictions. I never used to understand the ladies who scheduled their days around their afternoon soap operas. And now I schedule my week around a show of my own. Lame, I know. But they're really fun shows! Call the Midwife is good. Really good. Revenge is just fun. And then Monday has Dancing With the Stars. And then Castle. Ok, so they're not the most profound of offerings, but they are a lot of fun. And they make me not want to to escape my escapism to write about how my week was and how to improve upon it for the next week.
So maybe I'll switch to Stewardship Saturdays. Sundays aren't really so productive anymore.
Friday, November 2, 2012
Bedtime Prayer
Heard tonight during prayer time (translated from preschooler dialect):
MeToo: "Dear Jesus, thank you for Mama... and Daddy... and Mandy... and Cameron... and HeyMama... and undies... and jammies... and pants... and shirts... and good stuff.......... and Mama... and Daddy... and Mandy... and Cameron... and lights... and flashlights... and toys... and flowers... and books... and butterflies..... and um...... and um.........."
Mama and Daddy: "AMEN!"
MeToo: "Amen."
I'm glad she gives thanks for the small joys of life, but she was starting to do a visual inventory of the room, and we didn't want to spend the next 20 minutes in there.
Thank you Lord for bedtime. Amen.
MeToo: "Dear Jesus, thank you for Mama... and Daddy... and Mandy... and Cameron... and HeyMama... and undies... and jammies... and pants... and shirts... and good stuff.......... and Mama... and Daddy... and Mandy... and Cameron... and lights... and flashlights... and toys... and flowers... and books... and butterflies..... and um...... and um.........."
Mama and Daddy: "AMEN!"
MeToo: "Amen."
I'm glad she gives thanks for the small joys of life, but she was starting to do a visual inventory of the room, and we didn't want to spend the next 20 minutes in there.
Thank you Lord for bedtime. Amen.
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