Barriers to Education in America

I am currently reading I Am Malala, by Malala Yousafzai. I'm sure you have heard about this brave teenager who stood up for the right of girls to an education and was shot by the Taliban. She miraculously survived and is continuing to campaign for the right of all children to have a quality education.

Malala's love for learning is evident throughout this book. At the age of 11, she was reading Dickens, Shakespeare and Coelho; studying biology, chemistry and physics; and speaking three languages (Pashto, Urdu and English). When I think about what I was reading and learning at her age, it puts me to shame. At 11, I was still reading upper-level children's books; it would be another year before I considered reading adult-level material.

The Malala Fund Facebook page gave a link today: 10 Barriers to Education Around the World (www.globalcitizen.org). It is amazing that today these barriers still exist.

They are:
1. A lack of funding for education.
2. Having no teacher, or having an untrained teacher.
3. No classroom.
4. A lack of learning materials.
5. The exclusion of children with disabilities.
6. Being the "wrong" gender.
7. Living in a country in conflict or at risk of conflict.
8. Distance from home to school.
9. Hunger and poor nutrition.
10. The expense of education (formal or informal fees).

In America, we have very few of these barriers, as I address below:
1. While we don't have the funding for education that we would like to see, we do have plenty of money for education.
2. Every classroom has a college-educated teacher. Many teachers today have master's or doctorate degrees, as teachers get paid at a higher rate for obtaining a postgraduate degree.
3. Students have clean, well-stocked classrooms. Students have their own desks and supplies and don't have to share textbooks. Schools have multipurpose rooms, libraries, computer labs, lunch programs. playground equipment, restroom facilities, office staff and paraprofessional staff. Many schools provide art, sports and music (choral and instrumental) programs.
4. Students have textbooks that are current, usually no older than 10 years. Before state budget cuts, textbooks were replaced about every 5-7 years; some are older than that now. Schools supply pencils, crayons, scissors, paper, glue, and facial tissue.
5. Schools today are working to include children with disabilities. Programs like Resource and Special Day Class help children with special needs. Children have access to Individualized Education Programs (IEP's), which outline their individual needs and their targeted interventions. Many disabled children can be "mainstreamed" into regular classrooms as well. All schools have handicapped access to classrooms and restrooms.
6. Girls and boys have equal access. In fact, statistically, more women today are in college than men.
7. Other than in inner-city or gang-infested areas, children live in safety. Even in more dangerous areas, the crime problems usually do not prohibit children from attending school.
8. School districts usually provide busing for students who live a certain distance from school. Almost every family has a car and can provide transportation for their children if needed. Other than in extremely rural areas, most children live within five miles of their school.
9. Hunger is still an issue that we have in schools today. Many children tell me in the morning that they did not eat breakfast that morning. Schools provide free breakfast and lunch for children whose family income qualifies them for this program.
10. Public school in America is free. Children have very few expenses for school - backpacks, folders, notebooks, binders, pencil boxes. In poor areas, some charities will provide these items for needy children.

We are very fortunate in America. Yet I still see other, more subtle barriers to education today.

My Title 1 team and I went through the cumulative files (the "permanent record") of every child in our school this spring, organizing and cleaning them out. Our school has Transitional Kindergarten (TK), Kindergarten, and grades 1-6, housing about 500 children. The school is in a middle-class area, although we qualify for Title 1 funding, which is given to schools in lower socioeconomic areas. While we do have some impoverished children, many of our students own cell phones, iPods, computers, and game systems; wear clean, stylish clothing; and participate in multiple after-school activities such as sports, martial arts, or cheerleading (all of which require fees).

These were the things that we found most interesting as we went through the files.

1. By the time children hit 6th grade, the majority of them had been in two or more schools. Probably fewer than 25% had been in our school since Kindergarten. Some of the children had been in over four schools, with a few who had been in close to 10 schools.

2. Many children had attendance issues. Many are consistently tardy. Absences were also an issue for some. With over 14 weeks off from school a year, families still took weeks off during the school year for vacations. Some children that I have worked with are absent nearly 10% of the time.

3. Many families provided past due bills or utility shut-off notices as their proof of address. This shows the severe financial problems families are having today and explains some of the high rate of mobility.

4. Many children had IEP's in their file or were part of English as a Second Language (ESL or ELD) programs.

These are all barriers to education. Student who have been in many schools get a fragmented education. Some topics are never learned when students move due to the different programs in different schools. If children are not in school, or are tardy, they are not learning. Students with family financial problems move more frequently and have less access to educational opportunities. We have students who have never been to the zoo or the ocean (less than an hour away). Students with learning or language issues take longer to learn, which is a problem in today's fast-paced, standards-driven learning environment.

The breakdown of the family is behind many of these barriers. Many of our children are from divorced homes and have shared custody issues. Often, the parents' issues severely impact the children - whether from violence (we had a child who witnessed the murder of one of his parents by the other parent), nasty disagreements that put children in the middle, the financial strains of single-parent families, and the uprooting caused by moving away from negative home situations.

Economic issues are also part of the problem. Some of our families are unemployed or underemployed and struggle to make ends meet. Education is difficult when the child does not know if he or she will get dinner that night or will have to sleep in their car. We've had children who have to go to late-night jobs with their parent because there is no one else to watch them. Other children are unsupervised while their parents are at work and have to feed themselves and their younger siblings. You can be sure that hungry, exhausted, or unsupervised children are not doing their homework!

A larger problem that I have seen in my 17 years in education, though, is a lack of value for learning. Many parents do not see education as a priority, and that view gets transferred to the child. We have had parents in our school who tell their children that they do not have to do their homework. Parents do not help with school projects or make sure homework is done. Some parents never even look inside their child's backpack at all during the school year.

Many children do not value education, either. Most children rush through their assignments, just wanting to be done with it, not really caring if the work is done correctly or at a high level. When I try to guide a child to the correct answer, he or she will get frustrated, wanting me just to give the answer. When the assigned work is done, most students will choose to talk to other kids rather than read a book or do some other educational activity.

Even the books they select from the library are discouraging. Most children choose to read books that are about kids just like they are - middle-class kids dealing with everyday issues. While I am happy to see them reading, it is pretty shallow. Children rarely select books about children from other countries or historical eras. They are not using fiction to learn about other cultures or ways of life.

American pop culture also does not value education or literary pursuits. Children know all about their favorite sports stars or celebrities, can sing along to their favorite songs from "American Idol" and watch endless hours of reality shows. Children pick up that the important thing in life is to be rich and famous, even with all of the attendant problems to that lifestyle. If you were to ask most of my students what they want to be when they are grown up, they would reply "Rich," "A basketball star," or "A singer." Any job that requires a college degree or higher is seen as too much work or effort.

America has some very real problems. Compared with third-world countries, our problems may seem slight. But the end result is the same: Children are not learning like they should be. A child like Malala, who lived in an impoverished area, shows that there are some bright spots in the world. Malala clearly demonstrates that a child who is internally motivated and given opportunity can learn, even in difficult situations.

America's children all have the opportunity. What will it take to make them grasp it and see where it will take them?

On Parenting College Students (originally published October 8, 2013)

Apparently, parenting doesn’t end when your prodigy receives his hard-earned high school diploma. It just changes into different, less hands-on, and in many ways, tougher forms.

Our oldest son went away to college a year ago. He’s in Flagstaff, a six-hour drive, one state and one time zone (for part of the year) away. It was hard to send him off, with a Jeep full of boxes and clothing. We helped move in his stuff, gave him a hug and a kiss (surprisingly, he let us) and told him to make good choices. Then we drove away.

The university, knowing parents, wouldn’t let us into his class-choosing session with the counselor. Parents were banned from the entire building, with students posted at the doors reminding us to let our kids grow up. Well played, NAU.

On the first day of his classes, he called us. He was late to a class due to having to travel clear across campus in too little time. For some reason, the door was locked and he couldn’t get in. What should he do?

Being 420 miles away, I gave him some options: Email the teacher! Try again! Do something! And then he made the best choice: Change the class session so he wouldn’t have to worry about being late every time.

We gave advice, he listened, and then he made the choice that was best for him. Success!

There were times when we were glad the distance kept us from knowing everything: “I overslept the other day and missed class because my bedroom only has a tiny window and it’s pitch dark in there.” “Oh, what did you figure out?” “I moved my alarm clock across the room.” Yay!

Or, “I went around a corner in my Jeep when it was really icy and skidded some.” Didn’t need to know that. And I don’t really need one more thing to worry about. Please don’t tell us everything!

Now, our youngest has started college. He’s living at home and commuting 25 miles each way. Fortunately, it’s on only one freeway, easy on-and-off. I say this because my son has missed exits for entire freeways. Multiple times. “Really, Mom, there are no signs that tell you the 10 freeway is coming up!” There are four. Yes, I counted them.

I also worry because he was in a terrible accident in January where his car, his pride and joy for seven months, was totalled. It was almost worse because it was completely not his fault; the lady made an illegal turn into him. I say worse, because all of us now know that accidents can happen, even if you’re doing everything right. For the longest time after the accident, I nearly had a heart attack every time he drove his car. And yet I had to let him go. Sadly, he has a different attitude now. We got him new rims and tires for his replacement car with the insurance money. He wasn’t sure he wanted to spend the money, because, after all, what if someone hits him again? I hate to see my son so jaded, already.

But I digress. Parenting a stay-at-home college student is a whole other thing. He’s at home, and I know when he’s studying and when he’s not. I know when his projects and papers are due. I know what time he should be out the door.

And I’m trying to say nothing. After all, if he was away, I wouldn’t know any of those things.

So, I leave the house when he’s still asleep and hope he remembered to set his alarm and leave on time. (So far, so good). I’ve only been a little naggy about getting his papers done. I’ve only looked at his papers when he asked me to check them over for spelling and grammar. I tried not to help him on his soldering project, except he needed me to hold the wire while he manipulated soldering iron and solder.

It’s harder for me to treat him this way. It would be so easy to fall into old middle-school and high-school habits. But he’s in college now for himself, not to please us. And we have to trust that if it’s important to him, he’ll take care of business.

Both of our boys have risen to the challenge. Our oldest didn’t get the grades he wanted his first semester. When he was upset about it, I just told him that he knew what he needed to do. He did, and raised his grades a whole grade point second semester.

So far, our youngest has been getting B’s in college (at least, that’s what he’s shown me!). Again, he knows what he needs to do.

That’s the whole point of raising kids…so they are doing what they should because they want to, not because we told them to. So they can make good choices about classes, studying, and managing their time. It’s been a hard road, but it’s worth it at the end.

Midterms are coming up soon…and I will try to stay out of it, no nagging.

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Cleaning Out (originally published July 31, 2013)

Today I tackled the monster under the stairs. That’s the big closet where we throw everything when we don’t know where else to put it. Suitcases? Check. Giant sleeping bags that could probably sleep more than one person? Got two of those. Bags of tissue paper, gift boxes, and gift bags? Lots of those. I even have gift bags with Noah’s Ark on them, which means that they date from Adam’s baby shower, twenty years ago.

Stacks of DVD’s and old videos. Those I carefully sorted and alphabetized. Someday we might want to watch the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers movie again. Then again, probably not. But it’s under M, just so you know. We did toss the videos we had taped of old Barney, Sesame Street, and Shining Time Station episodes. Pretty sure the boys have outgrown those.

That stuff was easy to clean out. It was the other stuff that was harder.

Two boxes of crayons, colored pencils, protractors, and other homework necessities. Don’t need that anymore. But that didn’t go in the trash. I sorted it all out, bagged it in ziplocks and stowed it elsewhere. You never know when you might need a burnt sienna crayon, after all.

Three bags of college brochures and SAT prep materials. That all went in the trash. College decisions have been made, tests taken. So much stress at the time, but irrelevant now.

Lots of half-used notebooks with equations and notes. Old folders with Yu-Gi-Oh (is that even on TV anymore?) and Star Wars characters. All trash now.

Adam’s backpack, abandoned after graduation, and since he left three days later, never emptied. My son saw no point in taking anything out of his backpack. I think it had the contents of his entire senior year stowed inside. His philosophy was, “If I never take anything out of it, I’ll never lose anything, and I’ll have everything I need.” Yep, plus lots of other stuff. 50 cents and two bags of candy inside. Permission slips I had signed and apparently never turned in by him. How did he get to go on that field trip, anyway? Progress reports of grades. Might have wanted to have seen those at the time, but maybe he was sparing himself the parental drama.

I carefully went through all the papers, not wishing to throw something valuable away. My efforts were rewarded – I found the letter he had written to himself when he was a freshman, returned to him his senior year. Priceless. A poem he had written about himself. Things he’ll want to have later, a portrait of who he was back in high school. The letter’s envelope also had his freshman year band photo and two ticket stubs – one to a Ducks hockey game, one for the Star Trek movie. A mini time capsule.

You know how when you clean out one thing, it just leads to more tasks? That was my day. The crayons and colored pencils had to go somewhere. I have another stash of kids’ art supplies in the kitchen buffet. Time to pull all of that stuff out, sort it, and add the other items. We still have coloring books down there. Those stayed, with the random pieces of construction paper and the four bags of crayons. We will have grandchildren someday, after all.

Above the shelves, we have four drawers, some filled with more junk than others. Two of them were so full that when you tried to close them, stuff spilled out the top and fell onto the shelf below. It wouldn’t have been so bad, except for some reason the push pins were what had escaped and were all over the place. Apparently we need two boxes of push pins and about eight rolls of Scotch tape. Who knew?

So now I was tackling the junk drawers and organizing all those odds and ends. That’s when Josh walked in on me. “Why are you cleaning out those drawers, Mom?” Really. Like he’s never been frustrated trying to find a Post-It note that’s actually sticky on the back and a pen that works. By the way, if you need a pen or a pencil, see me. I have about a thousand, and that’s not exaggerating a whole lot.

The good part? Sending my husband a picture of the closet that you can actually walk into without crushing something. Realizing that I will probably never have to buy office supplies again in my life. Tossing two giant bags of trash and saving two bags and a box of random things for a future yard sale. And marking another passage in the life of our family, one that doesn’t require lunchboxes and notebook paper.

The Cruelest Job (originally published July 29, 2013)

I’ll say it up front: I miss my oldest son. Adam graduated from high school on May 22, 2012, and left the nest on May 25. He spent an amazing summer touring the country with the Academy Drum and Bugle Corps. After only two weeks home, filled with shopping and laundry, he was off again. Since that May, he has only been home for weekends and school breaks. As I write this, his room is filled with a mountain of boxes from his college dorm while he is touring for a second summer with the Academy.

Last summer, I missed him so much it ached. I counted down the days until we would see him. In a way, I didn’t want it to stop aching. That would mean that I was getting used to him being gone, and I wasn’t sure I was okay with that. But after a four-week long visit at Christmas, I realized that I missed him less. I was adjusting to his absence, as it should be.

In August of 2012, my husband and I delivered him to Northern Arizona University, moved in all of his stuff, and left him there. Driving home, both of us a little misty-eyed, we looked at each other and realized, “We did it!” And then it hit me.

This is what we had been working toward for the past 19 years: The moment when we could leave our child at college, a complete and prepared human being, and know that he would be successful. In the telescopic way that memory shrinks our life down, I realized that every action we had done as parents had unconsciously led us to this very moment. From enduring two-year-old tantrums to hours sitting supervising homework, we had been molding and shaping him into becoming a self-reliant and responsible person. So that he could leave us.

And that’s why parenthood is the cruelest job. From the moment when the nurse places that tiny baby in our arms for the first time, we start the process of preparing that baby to leave us one day. His utter dependence on us slowly dwindled as he learned to do things by himself. From rolling over, to crawling, to walking, he slowly took steps to independence. There was no clinging to my leg in preschool. He would wriggle out of my grasp, so eager to play with his little friends. The exhausted mother of a toddler, thinking “When will he ever grow up?” doesn’t realize how quickly the days go by, how soon he will be grown and gone.

This day, though unseen at the time, shaped so many of our decisions regarding our son. Holding him back in first grade as he struggled with ADD and vision problems so that he would be successful in school. Encouraging him to go to the 5th and 6th grade church camp alone when all of his friends were going to the junior high camp. Telling him as he started high school that this was his chance to reinvent himself.

In each situation, he succeeded. He made new friends when he repeated a grade and became a good student. He learned that he could go someplace by himself, make friends, be accepted, and have a great time. And in high school, he joined the marching band, switched instruments to play the tuba, and became section leader twice. What he learned in these situations would come into play as he prepared to leave for college.

As parents, we see the irony: This child, whom we love so much, we have to teach, guide, and mold so that he can fly on his own. We want to hold on to him, saying, “Don’t leave us!” and yet that’s exactly the wrong thing to do. With tears in our eyes, we let him go, knowing that he will come back…but it will never be the same.

Exploring Prejudice with Hannah Goldsmith and Azar Nafisi (originally published July 17, 2013)

Prejudice and racism are hot topics right now in the news. George Zimmerman and Paula Deen are just two current examples of people who have been accused of being racist.

I, too, was once accused of being racist – in, of all places, a Christian school. As a white girl raised in multicultural southern California in the 1970′s, I was used to being around people of different ethnicities. I didn’t know that one of my kindergarten friends was half-white/half-black until I was in high school. She was just Lynn to me. I had friends who had been adopted from Korea and Vietnam. We thought that was interesting and different, but we liked them for who they were. We didn’t ignore race; it just wasn’t an issue.

My high school was in La Habra, and we joked about it being in the “barrio”. We had a large Hispanic population as well as other races. Just last year, my friend Julie told me that our school was considered low-income, which had enabled her to get a discount on a musical instrument. I had never noticed.

The issue came when I was teaching third grade. At the beginning of the year, I always seated my students in alphabetical order. After a few weeks, I would move them around based on behavior issues or just for variety. I was careful to make sure that all of the kids had a chance to sit in the front of the class.

So, after Back-to-School night, I was shocked when my principal called me in. Some of my African-American parents were upset and said I was being racist in the way my kids were seated. Then I realized: I had four African-American students in consecutive alphabetical order, and that row happened to be against the wall of the room. I had never noticed it. To me, they were just Austin, Michael, Alisha. Race had never entered my thinking.

My principal was kind and supportive. He told me that I didn’t have to change the seating chart, but I should consider it. I went back to my room that day and rearranged the desks. I was careful to spread out my African-American, Hispanic, and white students, as well as considering which students could or could not sit next to each other.

The funny thing was that I felt MORE racist making my seating chart that way. I had never considered race, and now I was forced to. For the remaining three years of my teaching career at that school, I always had to include race as a consideration in my room.

So, was I being racist because as a white girl, I never considered race? A book I was reading last month caught my attention. The book, The Monster in the Box, by Ruth Rendell, is a mystery set in contemporary England. Rendell’s characters are a group of police detectives. One character caught my eye: Hannah Goldsmith, a young detective sergeant. Hannah is a character who is deliberately politically correct, determined not to be racist at any cost. She is careful to use language that reflects equality and is horrified when the older people say things that could be racist.

Yet Hannah, too, finds herself in a quandary. She visits the home of a Middle Eastern family and is surprised that the furnishings are English. The mother of the family sneers at her, asking Hannah what she had expected – Oriental rugs? Hannah realizes with a shock that she had expected those things. Hannah is forced to realize that even the most careful person on race issues can still have preconceived notions about race.

When we think of it, we all have preconceived notions about others. It’s simply because they are different from us, living lives in a different way than we do. We have ideas about how the rich and the poor live, about city dwellers and country folk. We see images on television about people of other races and form conclusions.

Then, when I was reading Reading Lolita in Tehran, by Azar Nafisi, I came on this same issue myself. Nafisi describes how her reading club girls would come into her apartment in their black robes and then remove them to reveal colorful t-shirts and jeans. I was surprised to read of girls with stylish haircuts, makeup, painted toenails, and fashionable clothing in Iran. The images I had in my head from television had never shown that to me. I shouldn’t have been surprised, knowing that women are really the same the world over, but I was.

I realized I was full of preconceived notions, too.

But isn’t that why we read books and magazines? To learn more about others and to expand our thinking? To gain appreciation of the magnitude and breadth of our world? To walk in the shoes and lives of those who are different than we are?

I love this quote from Nafisi: “Someone who is engrossed in literature has learned that every individual had different dimensions to his personality…Those who judge must take all aspects of an individual’s personality into account. It is only through literature that one can put oneself in someone else’s shoes and understand the other’s different and contradictory sides and refrain from becoming too ruthless.” (p. 118)

And that’s it – we all have different and contradictory sides. We are all people who are still learning and growing and changing over time. Our personalities are not static. We can’t fully understand people of other races because we haven’t lived their life and walked their path. But we can accept that we’re all human, making mistakes and acting in contradictory ways.

Is Paula Deen a racist because she used the “n-word”? Is George Zimmerman racist because he had a preconceived notion about a young black man? Maybe. But aren’t we all, a little bit, when we look honestly at ourselves?

Literature teaches us that are all frail human beings, and therefore we must refrain from being too ruthless on others. That is one of the reasons why I read.

Reading Lolita in Tehran (Originally published July 1, 2013)

I purchased Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi about eight years ago, when it was a best-seller. I was intrigued by the premise of a secret book club in Iran, by women loving literature so much that they were willing to risk their lives to read it. When I glanced through it, I realized that it was divided into four sections: Lolita, Gatsby, James, and Austen. Having only read Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility at that time, I decided to read the suggested titles by Nabokov, Fitzgerald, James, and Austen before plunging into this memoir. After all, I couldn’t let the characters be more well-read than I!

Little did I know that this would become an eight-year journey. I stumbled through Nabokov (oh, to have a teacher like Nafisi to guide me!). The other titles were easier to comprehend, but with the turns my life took (two boys in high school marching band), it took me much longer than anticipated. This spring I completed the last title, Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen, and I was ready.

What inspired and intrigued me was Nafisi’s commentary on literature. She says, “Most great works of the imagination were meant to make you feel like a stranger in your own home. The best fiction always forced us to question what we took for granted. It questioned traditions and expectations when they seemed too immutable. I told my students I wanted them in their readings to consider in what ways these works unsettled them, made them a little uneasy, made them look around and consider the world.” (p. 94).

I was a history major in college, not a literature major. I have always loved reading, but have never interacted with books so much as absorbed them. One of the reasons I started this blog was as a tool for me to interact with my reading more, to think about the ideas presented in the books I’m going through. Seeing the intensity and fierceness that the girls in the book had towards literature made me realize how casually I’ve taken the ability to read whatever I’ve wanted. In a free country, we hold these freedoms so carelessly that, until we see what it’s like for others, we don’t see what privileges we have.

This book, although not fiction, has forced me to question what I took for granted and think more about what I’m reading. I’ve never been one to mark in books or fold corners to mark passages, but I did in this book, to save the passages I want to consider for this blog. It felt strange but also liberating. I’ll discuss these other passages in future posts.

So, read on – and question and be unsettled!

Thank You, Mr. Cole

In the book I'm currently reading, the main character, Jim Qwilleran, a journalist, credits a teacher for teaching him how to write. He says, "Fortunately I had a tenth-grade teacher who taught me how to write a thousand words about anything - or nothing...Behind her back we called her Mrs. Fish-eye, but she knew her craft, she knew how to teach! Every time I sit down at the typewriter to pound out another column, I mutter a thank-you to Mrs. Fish-eye" (Lilian Jackson Braun, The Cat Who Sang for the Birds, p. 8).

I had a tenth-grade English teacher like that. Oddly enough, he also had not one nickname, but two. And he taught me how to write.

His name was Bill Cole. He taught my sophomore English class, and I was fortunate to have him again for a class called Great Books my senior year.

At the beginning of the school year, he wore Hang Ten t-shirts and OP shorts. Everyday, a different combination of t-shirt and shorts. He told us his name was Beach Bum. Then, on Friday, Nov. 13, he suddenly showed up in long pants and a long-sleeve button-up shirt. He told us that Beach Bum had left and that he was now The Sheik of Apparel. Now he wore shirts that looked like they had come out of a 50's thrift store - stripes, zig-zags, plaids. And, again, a different one each day. Then, in the spring, timed to another Friday the 13th if possible, the Sheik left and Beach Bum reappeared. He pretty much had us convinced that he was two different people.

Not only this, he proceeded to give every student in all of his classes a nickname. He would take his time, distributing nicknames one at a time over the course of the year. Once you got a nickname, he would only call you by that name. You even had to put it on your assignments in place of your real name. He especially liked it when the students used his names to refer to each other.

His nicknames were amazingly spot-on. Julie was Cool Jul (was and still is), Anne was Classy Lassie, Andre was The First and Foremost (went on to be president of the Great Books club), Pete was Golden Boy (went on to be Valedictorian). My sister was virtually the only one to never get a nickname, because he said that she perfectly embodied the name Sarah, and he could not find a better one.

And me? I got stuck with Neat-n-Nifty. Imagine how that went over with 15-year-old me. No 15-year-old wants to be known for being neat.

This man knew how to teach writing. He divided the year into three-week sections. During the first week, he would introduce the writing assignment, whether it was a summary, description, narrative, etc. He would read examples from previous years' students that he especially enjoyed (of course, we didn't know who wrote them because they were attributed to their nickname).

He showed us how outlining your ideas before writing helped organize your thoughts and ensure you had enough support. He taught us how to use a "grabber" and a "clincher" to tie up our writing, with appropriate examples. He helped us frame the all-important thesis statement to reflect our entire paper.

The second week was devoted to writing the paper, due on Friday. He would grade the papers on the weekend. Then we all looked forward to the third week, when he would read his favorites to the class. It was an honor to have your paper read aloud, or even more, kept for future years.

He was also the first one to teach me how to diagram sentences. In my elementary-school years during the laissez-faire 70's, somehow I had never been taught basic grammar, and I really struggled with diagramming. Mr. Cole was the only teacher in high school to give me B's in English, mostly due to diagramming. But, slowly, I learned.

He taught us about the "Gross Errors": using apostrophes to show plurals, mixing up its-it's, and other grammar mistakes. To this day, I have an eagle eye for grammar and punctuation errors. I especially hate to see them in print - "How could they publish this Gross Error??"

I learned, like Qwilleran, how to write a thousand words about anything fairly quickly. This came in handy in college, when as a history major, I had many papers to write on deadlines. As an adult, writing is natural to me and something I enjoy.

So, as I begin this next phase of my blog, I am muttering a thank-you to Mr. Cole, who shaped me into the writer that I am today. Even if he did call me Neat-n-Nifty.

P.S. If you're a La Habra High School alumnus, please comment below with your nickname from Mr. Cole! And feel free to correct me if I have misremembered details from over 30 years ago. I'll be sure to change my work for accuracy.

The Last Chapter (originally published June 25, 2013)

In case you’re wondering about my blog title, a few months ago, my (then) 17-year-old son informed me that since he was soon graduating from high school, I was now entering the last chapter of my life. Thanks a lot. My response was, “Where does that put my parents? The Epilogue? Index?” It’s great to have a teenager around to give you some perspective.

But, he’s right, in a sense. I’ve been a parent for 20 years, and now both of my children are adults, graduated, moving on with their lives. Hopefully there is more than one chapter left for me.

So, in the restlessness that I’ve been experiencing this summer as I’ve been re-evaluating my life, I’ve decided to start a blog. My life keeps moving forward, but I have to re-examine who I am. I’ve been a stay-at-home mom, working part-time for 10 years. I’m still trying to figure out what I want to be, what I want to do with my life.

We’ll see where I go with this. I expect I’ll do random posts on eclectic subjects – parenthood, children, literature, faith, and whippets. It’ll probably be like “shuffle” on my iPod, the way I like to play it – varied, mixed-up, never knowing what will come next.

The Last Chapter, Phase 2

Hello, everyone!

I have changed my blog platform out of frustration with my last blog provider. Many times I was unable to access my blog and I have had enough. I am switching to blogspot and am hoping to be much happier here!

I was able to briefly access my old blog website and print out my previous posts. I'll either re-type them into here or hopefully copy/paste them when I can access them. Either way, you'll see some older posts from the last nine months reappearing.

If you had an email subscription to my old blog, I think you'll have to resubscribe here --->

Please let me know either here or on Facebook if you have any problems viewing this site or subscribing!

Thanks for reading!