Outliers.

Maths.

The warm-up problem is:

947
-799

He’s doing a 2nd array after solving the first: 26x6 buildings, drawn on their scratch whiteboards. A faint smile, he scrawls away, bedecked in his red Flash sweatshirt. His brother, two grades behind, works in the back of the room on a fractions worksheet I did early this morning.

I have to ask the teacher, Mrs B——-, when to turn in workbook pages. I should know this, or feel I should know it, but I don’t, and it seems the ridiculous thing to do would be to not ask something when I don’t understand or know it, so…I ask. And am given an answer. I have a difficult time believing I’m the only parent who doesn’t get confused sometimes over these things. Or maybe I am. I have spent significant portions of life being an outlier.

Mrs B——— introduces the Zero Property of Multiplication and Identity Property of Multiplication concepts. Two moms talk about nails in the back. A grandmother is very hands-on with helping and “helping” (I think she does a bit of both). She hovers over my son as he works away. I’m not quite sure why, but keep an eye on things as I roam around and help - or try to help - 3rd and 4th graders who are needing assistance.

What is the difference between “keeping an eye on” and “hovering?” I’m not sure, precisely. Maybe something to do with actively being present and on hand, but letting a student work out a problem without jumping in right away, versus physically standing right behind them and waiting to correct each slip-up as it happens. Maybe it’s not so difficult to define the difference. My goal is to be an on-hander and less a hoverer.

Zero Property = anything multiplied by zero equals zero (one trillion x 0 = 0)
Identity Property = any number multiplied by 1 is the number itself (1 trillion x 1 = 1 trillion)

Block 2

The teacher, Ms C——-, asks a question to kickstart class. What is the capital of our state? Hands shoot up all over.

But not my son’s hand. He literally spends almost every free minute drawing maps (as they relate to endangered animals), and even now, has a map of South America in front of him. Do I want him, as parent, to shoot his hand up, or even just blurt out the answer? Come on, you know it, know it so well!

I’m acknowledging my internal emotions and thought process. Does it feel good to have your child shoot their hand up with the correct answer? Of course. But why? What is the point? The point is that it is not about me or me feeling good. It’s not. It shouldn’t be about any parent feeling good as a result of their child’s performative success or acumen. It is not their job to make us feel good or look good.

It is their job to learn. It is our job to love them and help them learn. Sometimes it’s our job to help them build the confidence to raise their hand and answer, if the reason they’re not answering is motivated by that. But otherwise…we have to, have to, not only support our own children, but all the children in our child’s ecosystem. That means supporting them and their confidence in answering questions as well. Did my son raise his hand and give the correct answer?

No. But somebody else did, and she looked happy. I was happy for her. Small victories and tiny ways of building confidence. Our children are not in competition with each other. In this present time, so many of us, as adults, have done a terrible job of modeling how to support others, enable the success of others, and respond with genuine happiness to the success of others. We can do better.

Writing

They work on first drafts of personal narratives. Our son is doing a story about our goat and his escape skills.

Teamwork

Ms C——- has the class pair up and do an assignment about listening. The nature of how teachers divide up classes into small groups and partners is something I plan to write about at length. Sometime. Students paired up, and our son ended up working with our other (1st grade) son.

“But you walked away with three?” : Recess 12.50-1pm

I supervise. Moms gather, chattering. There was a birthday celebration in a different class and there are extra cookies floating around. One of the 4th graders from our classroom, A—-, walks up to a mom and asks for one. She hands him one, and at the end of recess, he divulges to me, with a grin, that he ended up with three.

“Did you tell the birthday person happy birthday?” I asked.
He shrugged. “I didn’t see him.”

Block 4

There’s a 3rd grade boy who is having an especially rough time today. He keeps making signs behind other kids’ heads and engaging in generally disruptive ways. He’s a good kid. They’re all good kids. It’s us, it’s us, who need to do a better job of holding them accountable in kind, consistent, attentive ways. Draw the lines, make the boundaries, hold them to what those demarcations are.

I’m working on the best way to be of support to the teacher in moving the class forward, in a manner that helps him with those boundaries and holds him accountable for behavior that is not acceptable, while also upholding his dignity and those of his classmates.

Establishment Clause

There’s a discussion about Character. Specifically the trait of Respect. Examples are batted around about different ways to show respect and why it’s important. A 3rd grade girl, often quiet, closes out the discussion, hand waving in the air. Ms C——-, trying to move to the next topic, allows her to add her thoughts into the mix.

The girl looks around, before confidently, proudly pronouncing: “And…we should always respect Jesus.”

There are nods and affirmations around the classroom. I would not call this area we’re in the most ethnically, culturally, or religiously-diverse place you could find. Many good people. Many - most - are good people of homogenized religious (i.e. evangelical Christianity) inclinations.

As a Christian family ourselves, we are in this mainstream, I suppose. But as a supporter of people’s (Constitutitionally-protected) rights to be free of and from religious indoctrination or support woven into government institutions, including public schools, I feel very much an outlier.

Exodus 22:23

We are not asked to weaponize the Gospel. We are asked to follow Jesus. Right now, there’s a lot of people who want to live two contradictory mindsets: they want to be in the mainstream and forcefully shout that “this is a Christian nation, and we need God in government and God has sent a certain man to be President and he was elected by overwhelming mandate and…!”

And…they want to lay claim to martyr status: “The liberals/Democrats/Communists/Satanists/America-haters want to keep God out of schools, so we have to fight for our rights.” Ad nauseam.

I know the first reaction to some reading this is: “Well, this is about individual students having the right to pray and talk about Jesus.” Et cetera etc. Yep. Of course. I support as well.

But let’s also be honest about the amount of wink-wink that goes into people understanding the coded language of the communities we’re embedded in. It is an accepted, a given, in the public school home-based learning community we are a part of that families are…Christian. The conversation is not “Are you Christian?” or “What is your religious affiliation or faith conviction, if any?” The question is “which (Christian) church do you go to?” It is assumed, built-in-, taken for granted that if you are part of the (public school) community in this area, that you are of a certain upbringing, mindset, and religious preference. Again, this is a place of of many good people. Again, there are many places that have good people, but also, also, let’s be upfront concerning the level of homogenization when we’re in that type of community. It’s easy to be welcoming when it’s in concept or theory. It’s easy to be welcoming when it’s people who are like you.

It’s a lot harder when it suddenly is real people with different convictions or lifestyles or ethnicities or national backgrounds or variables that place them outside “the majority.” So let’s be forthright and transparent about what and who the majority is.

You can’t be part of the majority and simultaneously claim martyr status. There is no better group at doing this currently than modern American evangelical Christianity, at large, in all its nationalistic faux-patriotic glory.

Niemöller (they’re coming)

We are asked, we are mandated, as Americans and as Christians - either or both - to protect the rights of not just the majority, but the outliers, the vulnerable, and those within our borders, regardless of whether they were born within these borders or not. Full stop. No asterisks. No explanations or defenses of callousness and cruelty.

You can’t be part of the mainstream and also be a martyr claiming persecution status.
You can’t be a Christian and consistently commit to patterns of callousness and/or cruelty that strip away dignity from others.
You can’t commit to the Gospel and then weaponize it.
You can’t.

I mean, you can. You have the choice. But if you do, then you are, at best, engaging in moral hypocrisy, and at worst, being an actual hypocrite. And that means Matt Stone and Trey Parker may be coming for you next.

Science, pt 1 (recess)

I spoke to the teacher about upcoming college football games, scraping my memory for the scraps I know about the current state of Division 1 athletics.

I spoke to a mom, P——-, about Stevie Nicks and Ozzy Osbourne. She has been able to see both.

I supervised recess again. Twelve boys and and two girls played soccer. Eight girls climbed around on monkey bars. My boys chased each other around the slide and playground area.

Science, pt 2 (vox populi)

There were Dad Jokes, one hundred percent of which went over the heads of 90% of the class, and required explanations of words such as “kleptomania” and “stock” (as it relates to broth).

A student spoke up: “Uh, we’re in 3rd and 4th grade. We don’t really get these jokes.”

Good for him, I thought. Good for A—-. The same kid who finagled three cookies from another classroom’s birthday party celebration is now speaking up for his class. We’re complicated creatures. We are human. We are dancer. We are mainstream and we are outliers. Let us embrace it all and embrace each other.