Longing for No Longer?

“When I couldn’t stay awake any longer, I asked Braid Beard to tuck me in and read me a story.

‘Tuck you in?’ he bellowed. ‘Pirates don’t tuck.’

‘No tucking!’ the crew cried.

… I didn’t even bother to ask about a good-night kiss.”

- How I Became a Pirate by Melinda Long (With hilarious illustrations by David Shannon)

Because I nursed my infants, middle-of-the-night feedings were my responsibility. Those times are some of my favorites, although I can no longer capture their sweet baby scents and the feel of their soft baby skins. It’s easy to look back with nostalgia, forgetting the shock of their cries ripping me out of a deep sleep. I try to dwell on the moments of sweetness, rather than my longing to once again crawl under my covers. Even then, I knew that someday the moment of my baby and I being nearly one being was fleeting, and that I should appreciate it before it was lost forever.

When my son was about two-months-old, his father became the light of his life. As soon as the man walked through the door, my son would brighten, wrenching himself from my arms. Most of the time, I felt like a third wheel while they had their fun, except for nighttime because I was in charge of the feedings.

My son associated sleep (comfort) with me, so when he was old enough for a proper tuck-in, I was often in charge, especially if my husband worked past his bedtime or was away at a meeting. As an extension, I had the duty of nightmare soothing as well. Lest you think nighttime awakenings were a rampant problem, my son only went through a few small bouts, one when I was pregnant.

My role as the nighttime soother became ingrained so that when I was again pregnant, and passed on the duty to my husband, my son balked. Soon, my son got used to the new routine, and by the time my daughter joined our family he didn’t notice that I tended to her. Just before she was born, I was at the doctor’s office, and while the nurse was checking my blood pressure, she looked at my chart and exclaimed, “You’re having a daughter? That’s wonderful! You already have a mama’s boy and she’ll be a daddy’s girl.” Great. I’ll have no one.

By the time my daughter was one-week old, she became fiercely attached to me. When my husband held her, she would often sob, and turn her head towards my voice. One night after I fed her, she wanted to linger, but I wasn’t the lingering kind – I needed my sleep. I placed her in the bassinet, and watched with disbelief as she forced herself to the side of the bassinet to nuzzle against it. Fearing SIDS, I rolled up a thin blanket so she could feel comfort against that rather than the wall.

My daughter’s loyalty to me has continued to this day, with some adjustments. After my baby’s feeding, I’d hand her over to my early-riser husband, who would have to distract her so I could sneak back to bed. When she was old enough to get out of bed herself, she’d often camp out on the floor outside my bedroom door, and if my husband tried to coax her from her spot, she’d glare at him. She’s grown out of that, and now looks forward to spending time with her father, doing activities like ice skating and eating at Dunkin’ Donuts*.

But tuck-in-time has not had the same progression. Until she turned seven, I don’t think I missed more than sixty-evenings of tuck-ins, and that includes when sitters have had to take over the task. At some point, my son switched to having me tuck him in almost exclusively, so I was doing all bedtime rituals for nights on end.

Before you feel too sorry for me, the time these rituals take has shrunk in the last couple of years. My daughter brushes her own teeth and dresses herself, as my son has done for a long time. I have not read to my son in ages, since he now prefers to read to himself. Until recently, I did read to my daughter, but since she started reading on her own, she wants to be like her big brother. Sometimes they read quietly together (Unless they get silly, and then I have to separate them).

My son has been requesting my husband almost every night, his excuse? "I've seen you since I came home from school, but dad's only been home a couple of hours." When my son turned eleven, my husband announced that the boy was too big for tucking, but he would not be dissuaded. Although my ritual has minimized (no songs, but just a couple of nice words from us, and maybe he’ll share an anecdote about his day), he still wants a parent to climb up the steps of his loft bed as a send him to slumber.

This summer, my daughter went through a 50/50 phase, and so my husband and I would alternate nights. That was fine for a while, but then she started missing me, and now I’m chosen nearly exclusively. Yesterday morning, she told my husband to tuck her in that evening, but adamantly changed her mind by bedtime.

While my husband insists that he doesn’t like, “tucking in kids,” I enjoy it. Mostly. When it’s been a long day, and all I want to do is sit on the couch like a starchy vegetable, I try to pawn it off on another adult. In those instances, I remind myself that soon they will be appalled by the thought of being accompanied by a parent to bed. Soon they will be out in the world, and I will gradually lose my control over them. When that happens, I will look back nostalgically on this time of sweet words, sappy songs, snuggles, and smooches.

* A lovely story from inside a Dunkin’ Donuts can be found at:

http://theresamilstein.blogspot.com/2010/01/surveying-squares.html

Substitute Survival

“A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.”

- Martin Luther King Jr.

As I stated in the previous post*, I had a two-day gig in the fifth-grade, but the day didn’t go as well as I would’ve liked. Afterwards, I beat myself up. I’m better than this! I know fifth-grade. It’s not that the day was horrible, but I’ve taught older students at the same school who have behaved better overall.

A couple of problem students + a chatty class = more chaos than I can tolerate.

Part of the problem was that I hadn’t been warned about how to handle the difficult child, since it seemed to the assistant that he was going to be absent. Attention teachers with your own classroom: Let me know who are the potential problem students and the best way to deal with them. Tricks are much appreciated by substitutes. Why force me to reinvent the wheel?

The other part of the problem is that I’m used to having camaraderie with fifth-graders. I worked with them enough years that I know how to relate to them. One of the toughest aspects of subbing on my psyche is that the relationships I create with students are mostly superficial. The bonus of working with the same students is that you get to know one another in profound ways that enhance everything that goes on in the classroom. It’s more than just knowing their learning styles or their favorite subjects, but it’s relationship building. Even if I teach in the same room, with the same group of students, there’s often a gap in between jobs, and I don’t get the momentum.

Entering the classroom, I was determined to create a formidable presence. Before class began, I talked with the assistant and another instructor about the play the previous day. I mentioned that when we try to get the students’ attention, nobody pays attention to us because our voices are too high and get lost in the children’s voices. But when a man is in the room, his louder, deeper voice cuts through theirs. The classroom had a bell, and I made sure to use it, while trying to make my voice lower during instructions.

This class was inundated with handouts, and I figured that the teacher was trying to make the classes easier for me, but when students have two classes of MCAS (state test) preparation, one for reading and the other for writing, over two days, they rebel. My strategy was to tell the students that if they stayed on task, I’d make time to read, Hatchet by Gary Paulsen. An added incentive was that for good behavior, we’d play Mad Libs at the end of the day.

I chose, Hatchet because the previous day’s MCAS writing prompt was:

Imagine that you were hiking in the woods with your family when you got separated from them. The further you walked, the more lost you became. Until rescuers found you, you would have to survive for one week with only your backpack. Tell how you survived with the things in your backpack.

When students were struggling with the assignment, I asked the whole class if anyone had read the book, but only one student had. When I mentioned the premise (a thirteen-year-old boy must land a small plane when the pilot dies, and then survive in the Canadian wilderness), they were excited about it, so I promised to bring it in.

I had two strategies for my two problem boys. The first day, one student refused to do his work unless the assistant was in the room. When I asked him about it, he said, “I don’t listen to subs.” Great. My response: “Then you’re not going to have a good day.” He spent all morning glued to the assistant. Just before lunch, he said his jaw hurt, and soon went home because he had swollen glands. I was hoping he’d be too sick to come back, but he did.

The assistant wasn’t assigned to work much in my room in the morning. The boy kept coming over asking when she was coming, and I’d say, “She’ll be here later.” Apparently, later was taking longer than he could take because he whined, “You said she’d be here.” Again, he refused to do his handout, so I said, “I am your teacher today, and you will have to deal with it. If you don’t start working for me, when Ms. ***** comes in, I will not let you sit with her.” He begrudgingly began to work, and even when the assistant joined us in the afternoon, he had become comfortable enough that he didn’t even notice.

For the second boy, it had been suggested that he needed a lot of back rubbing, which reminded me of a neglected student I’d had a few years back. I was on this boy at almost every moment. When we had to go to the concert for first and second-graders. I sat with him, and each time he tried to flop around and make a comment, I hissed a reminder to be still and quiet. He kept playing with his glasses, which were filthy with fingerprints, and I wondered how he could see through them. Were they always like that? Near the end of the concert, he gave up trying to act out.

During class, when he was off task, I’d give him warnings. At some point I became frustrated and I took him aside.

“Do you pay attention better for your regular teacher or are you being worse for me?”

“My brother is leaving this week.”

“I heard that. Where is he going?”

“Back to college in Ohio.”

“That must be hard. I bet you’ll miss him.”

Like magic, he went back to his desk and worked. Quietly. In the afternoon, when he got off task again, I had him move to the back table. I said, “I’m doing this for you because I want you to get your work done.” When the assistant entered the room, she was shocked to see him by himself completing his packet.

As promised, I read, Hatchet whenever I could squeeze it in, and got through the first two chapters. Even though they got a little noisier during the last hour, I didn’t mind because they got a lot accomplished. The old teacher in me came out, and if a table got noisy, I’d tell them that they didn’t want to be the table of shame, which my former fifth-graders had always liked, and these students did as well. Joking with students to elicit positive behavior often works better than chatizing. When one child was unkind to another, I took him aside and demanded more considerate behavior. As a result, he went right over to the student and made right. A student who had almost cried in frustration over work the day before, did better the next day and I made sure to compliment him to boost his behavior and confidence. Getting to know the children and their needs created an atmosphere of productivity.

The last time I read, Hatchet, some students complained that I couldn’t leave my copy of the book with them. I said, “I’ll tell your teacher where we left off, and if he wants, he can get it from the library and continue reading to you. If not, you can borrow it from the library.” The student who didn’t work with subs and was the only one who had previously read the book, said, “I’ll bring in my copy. I can bring in the whole series.”

At dismissal, one student said, “I hope you get your own class very soon.” I had forgotten that in my introduction on the first morning, I had said that I used to work in the fifth-grade and said that I was subbing to get a full-time job. But she hadn’t forgotten. It made me feel good, and I realized that I long for my own classroom more than ever.

Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

*http://theresamilstein.blogspot.com/2010/01/performance-anxiety.html

Class Discomfort

"Shop assistant: Hello, can I help you?

Vivian: I was in here yesterday, you wouldn’t wait on me.

Shop assistant: Oh.

Vivian: You people work on commission, right?


Shop assistant: Yeah.


Vivian: Big mistake. Big. Huge. I have to go shopping now."

- Julia Roberts as Vivian in film “Pretty Woman”

My husband is celebrating a BIG birthday today, so for two months I can gleefully say that we are residing in two different decades, because I’m petty like that. I asked where he wanted to eat on his birthday, and he said, “Let’s go to a steakhouse, even though it’s more than we would ever spend on steak at home. We’ve never gone to one.” We went on www.yelp.com to research some steakhouses, and we agreed on K.O. Prime in Boston because: it wasn’t a chain, boasted great sides (creamed spinach raves), was known for delicious desserts (vanilla crème brulee was a favorite), and had a bone marrow appetizer (That was my selling point). Oh, and the steaks were supposed to be fabulous as well.

Once we chose the place, I went on www.opentable.com to make a reservation, but nothing came up, so I called the restaurant. Turns out they were closed on Sunday and Monday, which struck me as odd. We decided not to waste all of our research and just go the day before the BIG day.

I knew that the steaks ran as much as $45 a plate, not including sides, which would get me about six or eight filet mignons at Costco. Of course, my home in Area 4 boasts none of the atmosphere of a restaurant in a swanky hotel just off Boston Common. A birthday only comes once a year, and a decade changer comes once every ten years (I paid attention in Math class). To keep myself from getting anxious over the price tag, I told myself the whole night would cost some outlandish amount, so when the bill came I’d be pleasantly surprised. Believe it or not, it worked.

After explaining to my husband how to dress “business casual” per the restaurant website’s instructions, I dressed up as well. When we arrived, the staff took our coats and immediately seated us, once we figured out what name I put the reservation under (Not “Theresa”, not my husband’s first name. Turns out it was under “Milstein”). My husband scanned the wine list, and then handed me the menu, which meant I would choose the wine. I was going to joke that I’d pick a bottle of wine costing the same number as his birthday, which would be a BIG splurge as we usually choose about as low in price as we can. Turns out that the cheapest bottle cost $45. I thought about my outlandish estimate of the eventual bill, and believed I’d still fall under it.

I’m not one to pretend I’m something I’m not. When the waitress came over, I told her I didn’t want to spend much on wine, and asked for a recommendation. She recommended Spellbound, which wound up being perfect. And when it was time to order steaks, I sought her advice as well. If you live in the Boston area or plan to visit, and like to spend a lot of money on steaks, go to this place.

At some point I used the bathroom. After washing my hands, I reached to take a paper towel, and almost had a moment when I wondered if the paper towel was actually a hand towel. They were so soft and absorbent that they didn’t mush from the water, and the wastebasket looked like a laundry receptacle.

Something similar happened to me four years ago, when a friend and I took my sister to a tearoom for her birthday. For the record, I would never go to a tearoom on my own, and I don’t even know if that’s the correct name for it. We had teas in lovely pots with pretty pastries. When I used their restroom, I was flummoxed by the quality of the towels, fingering them in confusion. Were they to go in the garbage can or was there another place for them to be laundered?

Although I was still dismayed that these towels would take decades to decay in a garbage dump, this time, at least I knew they weren’t made of cloth. Can’t they be recycled?

As you can see, I’m not exactly comfortable with what I perceive to be excess. Some of it comes from my upbringing. My family almost never went out to dinner; I wore hand-me-downs for years, and we didn't own anything that my father would have called “ostentatious”. Because my father grew up in a working class household, he sometimes leaks out some of my Irish grandfather’s attitudes towards the wealthy. While he did well, there was the Irish “Don’t get too big for your britches” sentiment. Since I don’t think I own any britches, no problem there.

Now I’m not as out of place in nice places as Julie Roberts was when she first stepped into the boutique on Rodeo Drive in the movie “Pretty Woman”, but it’s different than my day-to-day life.

Yesterday morning, we were all cleaning the house. I began scrubbing areas that often get overlooked, and when I notice them, they have a layer of grime, like the kitchen windowsills. At some point, my husband came in and said, “Now that you’re working more, we should outsource this thing.” He wanted her to do the parts that we often neglect. I know a lot of people who work full time and get a maid to clean once a week or once every other week. I understand how indulgences seem like a necessities because when I’m pulled in too many different directions, something has to give.

This past week was like that. I only worked four days, but each afternoon I had to scramble to make it to the children’s after school activities, cook dinner, and at least wash clothes, if they didn’t get folded and put away. When my son tells me he’s out of shirts, and I have to tell him to check the pile in my room, I know we’ve hit chaos.

But is having a maid a solution? My husband brought it up again during dinner, and I chewed on the idea and my rare steak. It was hard for me to articulate why it’s weird to me. The woman will probably clean my house, along with many others, go home and have to cook dinner for her family, and then clean her own house. It’s as odd to me as women who have relatives watch their children so they can go to some family’s home and watch someone else’s children. These scenarios existed for few families thirty plus years ago.

If I get a maid, then she makes money, and that’s good. But it seems miles away from my Sicilian grandmother doing piecework in a tenement house on the lower east side nearly a century ago. I’m in a different place, and I have to make peace with it.

“There is only one class in the community that thinks about more money than the rich, and that is the poor. The poor can think of nothing else.”

- Oscar Wilde

Performance Anxiety

“Our bodies are our gardens - our wills are our gardeners.”

- William Shakespeare

If you read yesterday’s post*, you know I went to Hell Night. The place was decorated and the staff dressed up for the occasion. We started off with a deviled egg Russian roulette, which means that everyone at the table got a deviled egg, with heat on a scale from two to eight. I think my egg was a six or seven, but just about everyone thought they had a spicy egg. Then we moved to a plate of chicken wings, which were seven “bombs”, and I realized that my egg was nothing. My lips and the skin around them burned, as did my mouth, for many minutes.

My main dish was five bombs, but I removed the sauce from my sirloin so I could eat it (I’m a closet wimp). My husband ordered the “Pasta from Hell” (nine bombs) for the table, and the three who ate it (not me) had to sign a waver. Even the toughest ones got red, glistening skin, and ate just a forkful or two. For the couple of hours we were there, I only heard one chant of “Wimp!” which spread throughout the restaurant.

Although I got to bed by 10PM, eating a big spicy steak with drink is not a good way to spend an evening before a two-day sub job in the fifth-grade. I received the call the night before, to report to the same school I’d just worked at on Tuesday, when I was in charge of the third-grade class. This year, I’ve almost exclusively reported to the same three schools, and now that I’ve subbed a while, I’m getting repeats of the same jobs. This teacher was one I subbed for once last school year. He was a floater teacher, working in two fifth-grade classes, teaching Math and Social Studies. So I thought I knew what to expect.

Turns out he now has his own fifth-grade classroom. I worked in fifth-grade classes for years, so, unlike Hell Night, I thought this would be no sweat. In the back of my mind I also thought of my son’s class having his building substitute on Monday. Two students stole the sub’s $300 phone. They confessed on Tuesday, and now have been rewarded with a week of in-school suspension. By fifth-grade, students can be known to treat subs terribly. I pushed down the anxiety, reminding myself that I was tougher than that.

The group who first came in seemed wholesome enough, following the rules on the board. Some others came in, a little noisier, but nothing I couldn’t handle. When it was time for morning meeting, we all sat in a circle around the rug, and after greeting, students could share. The first person brought up the earthquake in Haiti, and I learned that three students were of Haitian descent and had family members still in Haiti. Two of them knew of family and friends who died, while one hadn’t been able to reach anyone. The discussion was poignant when a small boy raced to the rug; the size of a second-grader, with glasses and eyes that made me think he was either mentally impaired or had been a preemie. He couldn’t stop talking and was all over the place, making the boy I worked with yesterday seem in control.

This boy needed a lot of support all day, but there weren’t four teachers in the room all day, like yesterday. Sometimes I had help, but other times I did not. Luckily, an assistant I worked with at my former school kept watch on him every time she was in the room.

After lunch, the students had “Know Your Body”. I was supposed to stay while an outside teacher ran the class. Listening to the topics: menstruation, sexual intercourse causing pregnancy, ejections, and nocturnal emissions was a little strange, although I’ve been in the room for these topics before. Even stranger were the handouts scattered about with penises on them (I preferred their worksheets on decimals). It’s important that they’re informed because they’re on the threshold of dating, although they don’t look like it. Hearing their questions let me know that they took it seriously and that they had been in the dark about most of it.

One student’s last day would be tomorrow, and some students had written a play they wanted to perform for her. They also wanted the other fifth-grade class to come in. The absent teacher hadn’t planned anything special, so the assistant ran out to get cupcakes during her break. I was weary of letting them perform the play (as were the other instructors), but the students promised it would only take twenty-minutes. Letting them rehearse during lunch, I thought the play seemed tame and cute.

It took some time to get the audience to settle, but when they did, the play began. It was silly and made the students laugh, but at some point, a few actors ran around the room (improvisation gone bad), creating mayhem. All five teachers had to calm them. I was mortified by the whole spectacle. The play resumed without incident, and dragged on for about thirty-minutes in total. I decided to put off the cupcakes until the next morning, giving them a talk about expectations for behavior instead.

Afterwards, the other class left, and my class put everything back where it belonged, and got ready to go home. I was glad that it was over, but had a little anxiety since I’d have to give another performance to a tough audience tomorrow.

*http://theresamilstein.blogspot.com/2010/01/problem-day-hell-night.html

Problem Day, Hell Night

“It takes a village to raise a child.” - African Proverb

I’ve been spoiled two days in a row with evening calls for next day jobs. Again I was to report to a third-grade class, but this time at the Inclusion School, in a classroom I’d worked (and blogged about) once before*.

A friend, who recently moved away, came to visit last night, and I was up much later than I should have. I went to bed after 11PM with a stomachache, and woke up around 4AM because I still wasn’t feeling well. Because I couldn’t fall back to sleep, I rose before my alarm sounded, wishing I could take a coffee IV to work.

I went to the office to sign in, and noticed that the board had eighteen absent teachers. Most were because of staff on assignment or training (apparently there hadn’t been communication to prevent these occurring on the same day), and they didn’t have coverage for all of the teachers. It’s too bad when they don’t coordinate because this was a day that probably every sub in the district was called, and other days my phone is silent.

The teachers remembered me, and I recalled the routine. In fact, I think I may have even subbed the same day of the week because it was the exact same schedule. I cringed when I saw Science, because I didn’t want a repeat of “Slug Paradise”*, but they were doing an indoor experiment – observing rocks and writing their observations. I wasn’t off the hook entirely – I was getting the outdoor recess assignment on a cold winter’s day while another teacher took lunch. At least it was sunny.

After morning work, we met on the rug. This time it was a stand up, singing and moving kind of greeting:

Hello neighbor

What do you say?

It’s gone be

A wonderful day.

Clap your hands

And boogie on down.

Give you a bump

And turn around.

While three teachers and the students participated, I watched, conserving my energy (And my dignity).

The three “problem” students that I remembered from the last time had changed. The girl was now calmer and more focused, though she did have a meltdown during the above greeting. There’s also an autistic child in the class who has a full-time aide, and is frequently pulled out to work with specialists, but he interrupts less than another boy. This boy had as many impulse control problems as I remembered, but now he also acted out for attention, making him harder to handle.

This student’s disruptions were incessant, and teachers used verbal cues, quick reminders, and back touches to remind him. We worked hard to keep his distractions to a minimum, and offered praise when he remembered to raise his hand before blurting out. He even has a reward/consequence chart and “reminders” on his desk. The result was that the class could carry on learning in spite of him.

During Science, this student stood when he wasn’t supposed to, and when the teacher called on him, asking him to describe the rock, he replied, “It looks like granola.” When she asked him to be “more scientific” he couldn’t come up with anything. He constantly called out and often wandered during lessons. His pencils had to be confiscated on a couple of occasions because he kept using them when he wasn’t supposed to. He has a rubber cushion on his chair, but I doubt he’d be any worse without it. He’s also allowed to squeeze a ball during rug meetings, but he kept getting it taken away for throwing it. The boy is intelligent, but has little self-control, so I can’t imagine how he’d do if he weren’t in the Inclusion School.

I spent much of the day watching him, but staying far enough away that he didn’t act out to get my attention. The paraprofessional kept an eye on her autistic student, but also helped the other children. The main teacher ran the classroom, and often stood in front of the room to lead lessons. Then the student intern graded homework, helped with discipline and academics. Four teachers for twenty-students – it takes a village.

When I left the school, I was wiped out from the previous night and spending the day being mentally alert. Then I remembered that I’d be going to Hell Night** at East Coast Grill in Inman Square this evening. A few times a year, almost their entire menu has various stages of heat, on a scale from one to ten peppers. My husband has gone a few times, but I only went once. Ordering from the wimp menu, I could feel them judging me, so this time I vow to be more adventurous***. They make a spaghetti dish so hot that nobody can take more than one or two mouthfuls before they resemble a chili pepper and sit still and silent. If the heat becomes too much, the staff has an antidote – a creamsicle, and when they bring it to you, the staff chants, “Wimp! Wimp! Wimp!”

Yeah, Hell Night will be a breeze.

*http://theresamilstein.blogspot.com/search?q=slug+paradise

**http://www.eastcoastgrill.net/main/hellnight.htm

*** stupid

Tears and Tape

“I started trying to write when I was in second or third grade.”

- Margaret Haddox

I received a call last night to sub where I normally get called for middle school, but this time it was for “Third-Grade Support”, which meant… I don’t know what it meant. I’ve been called for "support" a number of times, and it’s always been something different, so I think it means they don’t know exactly what they’re doing with me or which teacher is out. Not reassuring.

Since my children’s school was on the way, I told the kids that I could drop them off. The first time I agreed to it was a mistake because getting three people out of the house, with various shoes, coats, and bags takes a longer than just me, which I hadn’t taken into account.

That commute felt more like a race, with each red light or pedestrian crossing testing my patience. I arrived at their school about eight minutes before I had to be at mine, which would be fine if I didn’t have to take Massachusetts Avenue (Known by locals as Mass Ave). There was a study regarding this street during rush hour a number of years ago, which figured out that bicycling was the best mode of transportation to get from one location to another within Cambridge. Busses hog the right lane, while cars making left turns block the left.

But even with all the potential pitfalls, I made it to the school with five minutes to spare, reminding myself for the millionth time that I needed to stop panicking about being late. I blame this “quirk” on my father and his side of the family, along with our obsession with weather.

Since then, I make sure to leave with plenty of time to spare so I don’t get myself in a tizzy. Besides, I wanted to arrive even earlier today to find out just what this "support" job entailed. It turns out I was to run a third-grade classroom. This fact made me trepidatious because I hadn’t run a classroom alone with young students since last spring. When I work at the Inclusion school, there are always three teachers in the room, so I’m more of an assistant, but today, at this school, I’d be in charge.

The teacher left me detailed plans, but I still had a few minor questions. A teacher conveying information in a letter to a substitute is much like a writer giving her manuscript to an editor – it makes sense to the author until the reader explains what isn’t clear. For example, I was given the name of the person who would run morning meeting, but I didn’t know what type of teacher she was or when she’d arrive (Before morning meeting, I hoped). Where was the attendance? For Reader’s workshop, after I read the picture book aloud, what were the students doing for the rest of the period? Writing a reflection? Reading quietly? Where were the other stacks of math cards?

Luckily, the third-grade teacher next door answered all of my questions and the students were good at guiding me (Ms. M, you’re supposed to stamp our homework binders), though it wasn’t until 11AM that anyone mentioned using the electric sharpener wasn’t allowed after 9AM.

For some reason, the day was filled with scotch tape. It began when a student came over to me with a torn page in a picture book, which I quickly repaired. Next, came a student, holding a book that had pages coming apart because the binder was loose. That required A LOT more tape. Just before lunch, one student passed a shelf and tore a page in his small book, which I fixed. While the students were at lunch, I looked through a book I’d read aloud later and found… guess what? A ripped page. And then another. What were these kids doing to these poor books, and why? During Math, another student inexplicably created a tear through three-quarters of her worksheet.

Although I was in charge, I wasn’t completely alone. The woman who ran morning meeting wound up being an assistant through the Office of Special Education, helping one student in particular. But she wound up helping all the students and me. I had worked with her at my old school when she spent much of her time with an autistic student in my class. I’ve always found her tongue piercing distracting, and can’t help but notice it when she talks to me, especially because it affects her speech. There was also a student working on her Master’s degree, who spent time in the class, and I was glad to have her help as well.

It was a busy day, with Reading and Writing Workshops, Math, and Social Studies, but I enjoyed them. Third graders need a lot of reminding about everything, there are a lot of words they don’t know that come up when reading, and some like to annoy each other. I was prepared for all of that. By fourth grade they get much easier. When I’ve asked adults which school year was their favorite, I almost always hear, “Fourth-grade.” I had Mr. Worosz that year, and I loved him and his class. One of my favorite times of the day was after lunch when he’d read from a chapter book, and we wound up listening to many fabulous stories that year. What is it about that grade? Is it the age of the students? It can’t be the curriculum, which varies from place to place and over the years.

I believe that it’s the first year that most students can really sit still, and enough maturity kicks in that a teacher can begin teaching some interesting things, and they’re still young enough that they love to be read to. Fourth-graders stop tattling every five minutes. I bet they tear fewer papers. They’re still wholesome. It’s another couple of years before they hit middle school, where they become gangly, while their brains seem to lose some of that hard-earned maturity obtained during third through fifth-grades.

At the end of the day, the students cleaned and packed up, and waited on the rug for their busses to be called, and to be released to parents and after school. One student came over to the desk, where I was finishing grading Social Studies handouts, and took some tape. I didn’t think much of it. Then he came back, pulling a ruler-sized piece. “That’s too much tape. What do you need it for?” I asked. He used it to fasten a poster. Where the poster came from, I had no idea. His bus was called, and the rest of the students left. The tape dispenser would get a break until the next day.

“I'd love to go back and teach primary school. I used to teach fourth grade and fifth grade. I'd love to spend several years teaching kindergarten or maybe third grade.”

- Jonathan Kozol

Scrimp and Save

“Novelist and Existentialist philosopher Albert Camus posed the question, ‘Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee?’ His point was that everything in life is choice.”

- Barry Schwartz, The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less (How the Culture of Abundance Robs Us of Satisfaction)

My son loves to play video games. I’m not one of those parents who shun games for their violence or because of the accusation that they turn a child’s brain and body into mush. I make sure the ones he has are not morally bankrupt and I do pay attention to the warnings on the games. My son won Class Peacemaker for his “calming influence”, so I’m not worried. As for brain mush, I once read an article in the New Yorker, which asserted that problem solving in video games is supposed to up the IQ several points. And as for body mush, my kids are skinny and active.

But game systems are “Keeping up with the Joneses” on a small scale. We started off with a Game Boy we bought on eBay, which he gave away to a friend when, years later, received a new Nintendo DS. Then he got the Nintendo DSI, giving the DS to his sister. His first system for the television was a PS2. Then the PS3 and Xboxes came out, but I told him we couldn’t just rush to get the new one because we’d already devoted money to this console and these games. I made an exception for the Wii, which we got as a family present last year.

It’s difficult to say, “No” to all of my children’s requests. Before my husband began his new job nearly two years ago, we couldn’t afford a lot. We rarely took vacations and saved for when times were lean. There was no glory in the struggle, and we knew it was because of the career choices we made. We also knew that we wouldn’t be in our situation forever – a luxury many don’t have. And now that we make more money, we’ve grown into our income in the way that people accumulate accessories in a bigger house. It’s nice not to have to scrimp so much, and splurge a little more.

I tried to instill the ideas of delayed gratification and that money doesn’t buy happiness, but how many kids can be satisfied by those lessons?

My children clearly aren’t suffering without. If you perused their room, piled high with containers of toys, you’d hardly feel sorry for them. And since my husband’s new job, we’ve been more generous with them (Wii and DSI). When my husband’s iPod hit capacity, I bought him a new one for our anniversary, and gave the old one to my son.

But where does it (and should it) end? Many of my son’s friends have cell phones, (including the iPhone), but I’ve told him that he doesn’t need one because he’s always in phone’s reach. As a teacher, I know that students with phones are tempted to text and play games during class. Technology creeps into all of our lives, but what’s important and what’s a waste of time? My son has an e-mail address, which he rarely checks, but he wants a Facebook account. The minimum age for Facebook is supposed to be thirteen, so I’m making him wait. He’s got plenty of friends, so I don’t think lack of a cell phone and Facebook account is interfering with his social life.

My son was never a good saver. Around the age of six or seven, he began receiving a small allowance. He’d spend it as soon as he received it, and then ask to borrow on the following week’s money (Ah, credit). To make him more accountable, we stopped letting him borrow ahead, and had him put a small portion into his savings account. As he got older, he started saving for a couple weeks for something bigger. But in the last year, something has changed; he now saves for weeks and even months on end. Sometime in the late fall, he realized that he’d accumulated enough that maybe, if he could stick with it, he could save for an Xbox 360 Elite at $299. I know it’s not just that amount. This system forces people to purchase $60 games, and there are accessories needed on top of the price of the console.

The boy has not spent his allowance in months; he’s saved “tooth fairy” money, and even asked for gift certificates from Best Buy in lieu of toys and games for Hanukkah. I mentioned what he was doing to my cousins (one is an awesome saver, who owns two houses after just receiving a PhD, and he’s only about thirty-years-old) on Christmas Day. One cousin who my kids call "aunt", the saver, and a couple of other family members gave my son money on the spot. Were they encouraging him or trying to make up for my stinginess? Whatever it was, it got him closer to this goal. My husband is now going to help him list and sell his PS2 and games on eBay. Once that’s done, he’ll have enough.

This summer, I read, The Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz, which I highly recommend. It talks about why Americans, with all of our purchasing power, are less happy than people in poorer nations. It turns out that the more choices we have, the less satisfied we feel. It’s made me rethink my relationship to material items. It has also generated discussions between my son and me. I told him that one-day, he’ll be an adult at his first entry-level job, without his parents’ bankroll, and he won’t have things right when he wants them. At the time, he really seemed to get it. My son is aware that many people he knows, who get what they want, when they want it are happy for about thirty-seconds before the wishing begins again.

I’m proud of my son for the lessons he’s learned and the saving’s he’s accumulated. I’m hoping that the lessons we’ve taught him will prevent him from amassing huge debt in the drive to immediately obtain the next big thing.

* hoping