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Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial: Overcoming

Oct 18th, 2011
by Lily.
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This is in the history books: In 1983, Congress passed and President Ronald Regan signed the law making Martin Luther King’s birthday a national holiday.

This is history, but it’s not in many books: My Utah state legislature made us the last state to recognize the holiday. In 2000 our legislators finally renamed our generic “Human Rights Day” Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. The argument for preferring the broader “human rights” name went something like, “Civil and human rights is bigger than just one person. Many people struggled for human rights, not just Martin Luther King, Jr.”

And so we kept the faceless “human rights” day for many years. That I recall, our school district did nothing particularly special to celebrate the day over the years. But I love a party, and I wanted a celebration. This I could do, because when you teach elementary grades, you are La Reina, The Queen of your domain. I was going to celebrate.

In 1986 I was teaching 6th grade. (more…)

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Nerves and the New School Year

Sep 12th, 2011
by Lily.
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There is a good nervous. And a bad nervous.

I was always nervous the first day of school, but it was a good nervous. I was nervous-excited as a kid. I was excited to know my new teacher. I was excited to know who would be sitting next to me. I was excited that I got a new pair of shoes even if I had to wear my big sister’s hand-me-down sweater. It was a cool sweater, so that was ok.

teachers have class

As a teacher, I was always nervous-excited on the first day of school. I was excited to know my new kids. I was excited about the new lesson plans I had put together with science experiments from stuff in my kitchen and a script I had adapted from an adapted version of The Christmas Carol and a new group of pen pal friends we’d have from the retirement home in the community.

(more…)

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Boys and Girls, a Terrible Thing has Happened…

Sep 11th, 2011
by Lily.
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Ten years ago today I was making scrambled eggs in my kitchen in Salt Lake with the Today Show providing the usual background noise. But it sounded like a different kind of noise. I looked up. I saw the smoke and the buildings and the panic. I burned the eggs.

I wondered, “How could a pilot have been so careless to fly into a building?” And while I was wondering, the second plane hit. It still took several seconds to register: This was not an accident.

A short while later, with my husband and I glued to the set, the first report from the Pentagon was phoned in. Later, a plane crash in Pennsylvania.

I got dressed and went to school.
(more…)

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When is Parent Day?

Nov 16th, 2010
by Lily.
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It’s Parent Day today.

Ok. Parent Day was Tuesday of American Education Week and I fell behind my schedule for getting this up, but still. It’s Parent Day.

I remember when I first started teaching sometime in the late 1800s when one of the moms of one of my 4th graders came to the class to apologize. She had always been The Room Mother for her kids, but this year she was working outside the home, and she was apologizing for not being able to be involved.

I said, “You’re going to be involved, because you’re a good mom. You don’t have to be a school volunteer to be involved. I’m a working mom, too, and I’m involved with my kids’ education because I make sure they do their homework and that they don’t watch too much TV and I ask what they’re doing at school, and I make them tell me. You do that every day, and it’s the best parent involvement a teacher could ask for.”

We love it when parents get involved. But just as things have changed in the world so that there are fewer and fewer stay-home parents who can even think about being school volunteers, schools, themselves, need to recognize how when they need to change to involve parents.

(more…)

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