It is called vindication. And it reads like the sweet, smooth words of Jane Austen, the biting and truthful wit of Mark Twain, and the timeless universality of William Shakespeare. I should know, because I am from St. Louis: the eighth most literate city in America.
We dig the library in The Lou
After ranting about a bogus report that St. Louis was the third most dangerous city in the world (see my post “Lock Your Doors: There Is Danger in The Lou“), I was a little over the moon this morning to hear that my beloved city finally fared well in one of these lists our society seems so enamored with making. And this one is actually legitimate, unlike the one that ranked us among world cities dominated by war and drug cartels. Apparently, a Central Connecticut State University study found St. Louis to rank among the top ten literate cities in America, according to a CNN article.
So we might shoot you, but at least we will be able to read the story when it makes in the papers the next day.
Every English teacher in the city should be proud right now. All those painful book reports we graded, all the groaning we let roll off our backs as we assigned homework chapters and summer reading, all those lessons in sentence diagramming, all the class discussions that resembled pulling teeth and exercises in non-sequitur thoughts more than literary dissection…they have all paid off.
It is nice to see our city rise to the occasion and succeed in an arena inspired by natives such as T.S. Eliot, Kate Chopin, Tennessee Williams, Eugene Field, Marianne Moore, William S. Burroughs, and Maya Angelou, instead of just being known as the home of rappers Nelly and Akon. That is a different kind of literacy, though I am sure we would probably rank pretty high on that list as well. I am going to say that makes us well-rounded.
Now if only we could figure out how to pronounce Gravois, mostaccioli, wash, and fork, I bet we would get bumped to #5 on the list.
It is called vindication. And it reads like the sweet, smooth words of Jane Austen, the biting and truthful wit of Mark Twain, and the timeless universality of William Shakespeare. I should know, because I am from St. Louis: the eighth most literate city in America.
By StLouisArchMultExpEV-4.72.JPG: Kevin McCoy StLouisArchMultExpEV-1.82.JPG: Kevin McCoy StLouisArchMultExpEV+1.51.JPG: Kevin McCoy StLouisArchMultExpEV+4.09.JPG: Kevin McCoy derivative work: Darxus [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)%5D, via Wikimedia CommonsAfter ranting about a bogus report that St. Louis was the third most dangerous city in the world (see my post “Lock Your Doors: There Is Danger in The Lou“), I was a little over the moon this morning to hear that my beloved city finally fared well in one of these lists our society seems so enamored with making. And this one is actually legitimate, unlike the one that ranked us among world cities dominated by war and drug cartels. Apparently, a Central Connecticut State University study found St. Louis to rank among the top ten literate cities in America, according to a CNN article.
So we might shoot you, but at least we will be able to read the story when it makes in the papers the next day.
Every English teacher in the city should be proud right now. All those painful book reports we graded, all the groaning we let roll off our backs as we assigned homework chapters and summer reading, all those lessons in sentence diagramming, all the class discussions that resembled pulling teeth and exercises in non-sequitur thoughts more than literary dissection…they have all paid off.
It is nice to see our city rise to the occasion and succeed in an arena inspired by natives such as T.S. Eliot, Kate Chopin, Tennessee Williams, Eugene Field, Marianne Moore, William S. Burroughs, and Maya Angelou, instead of just being known as the home of rappers Nelly and Akon. That is a different kind of literacy, though I am sure we would probably rank pretty high on that list as well. I am going to say that makes us well-rounded.
Now if only we could figure out how to pronounce Gravois, mostaccioli, wash, and fork, I bet we would get bumped to #5 on the list.
Today my first grader asked me to help her with her math homework. After staring at it for about five minutes, I had to tell her to ask her dad for help when he got home.
Wow. Pathetic.
I knew this would eventually happen. I have even admitted to my blogging public that most math is pretty fuzzy to me (see “Lock Your Doors“). But I expected to maybe make it to AT LEAST fourth grade math concepts before I needed to start turning over that portion of homework help to my enginerd husband. Maybe?
Aside from being a tad embarrassed at myself, I am also incredibly impressed with the curriculum at my daughter’s school. Believe it or not, I remember a fairly good chunk of my own first grade experience, thanks to an incredibly cruel joke God played on me by blessing me with a brain that is a steel trap for most things useless (like the theme song to the 80’s television show Small Wonder) but a leaky sieve for genius-making material (like algebra). And from what I remember, things were pretty basic. I have very intense flashbacks to staring at a red felt grid, taking tiny popcorn kernels out of old margarine containers, and placing them in various columns to find the sum. My daughter brought home a worksheet on mode and range. Seriously? Granted, once my enginerd hubby told…um, reminded me what mode and range were, I could see that it would fall into the realm of concepts my daughter could understand. But the fact that she was sitting there having a discussion with her dad using those words, mode and range, while I am sitting here still trying to remember what you call the two numbers you add together to find a sum, well, it blows my mind a little. Apparently, I couldn’t even handle popcorn math.
(And speaking of other first grade memories, I wrote about one of my favorites in an earlier blog post. And it is a lot more entertaining than popcorn math. Two words: Michael Jackson.)
There are no big revelations here. Really this incident has just served to reinforce what I, every math teacher I ever had, and my dad (a.k.a. my math tutor and also an enginerd) already know: calculators were invented for people like me.
I think my daughter is enjoying first grade. She has been spending a lot of time at home today playing school. Well, not actually playing school…preparing to play school. She has taught very little. Her entire afternoon has been filled with making math workbooks, rearranging furniture, creating alphabet lessons, and making a list of rules which apparently does not include a dress code, since her only pupil Michael is attending class in his underwear. She has informed him that the most important rule is “no burping, along with no fighting and no stealing.” I’m finding her to be a very perceptive teacher. Already, she knows her student well.
She does, however, have her work cut out for her. Michael is not always such a willing participant in her games. Even after starting the school day with recess, she still had to bribe him with money to get him to stay and be her student for a bit longer. To be honest, I’m not sure where she is getting said money, or what the heck my three-year-old would do with it once he had it. And I’m not convinced it is going to buy her much of his attention span. All that prep work for very little payout. Welcome to the real world of teaching, Grace.
As I sit here at the computer, playing the role of principal that was assigned to me, I overhear what is possibly a shining moment of genius on my daughter’s part. The conversation is as follows:
Grace: “Why do we have A?”
Michael: “Because it’s a cupcake.” (laughs at what was apparently a joke)
Grace: “Okaaaaaayyyy. Why do we have B?”
Michael: “Because it’s like F.”
Grace: “It is kind of like F. (drawing on the chalkboard) If you get rid of these two big bellies and put two lines at the top, you get F. That’s why I like B,…because it’s like F and F is my third favorite letter.”
Well, I’ll be. Maybe this little girl will follow in her mama’s footsteps one day after all. But she still has a lot to learn about classroom control. Michael keeps running away to find something new to play as Grace yells after him, “You have to have my permission! Do you know what permission means? It means you have to ask me if you can leave!”
I guess that’s my cue to bring him into the principal’s office and call his mom. I hope she’s not one of those parents who blames everything on the teacher. I hate those people.
Before my daughter started kindergarten last year, my husband and I had the discussion that I am sure a lot of parents have: whether to send her to public school or to a Catholic parochial school. In many ways, it was an agonizing decision. But truth be told, I think we both knew what our answer was going to be before we even started the discussion.
I would like to start by saying that first and foremost, I believe in SCHOOL…whatever form it takes. Education is one of the most important tools we parents can give our children. And my husband and I knew we were in a good position for this. We live in a fantastic school district AND our parish parochial school is very impressive as well. So this really was not a question of where our kids would get the best education. We knew we would be happy with the curriculum and standards of either school. Besides, learning is just as much about what the student and the parents put into it as it is about what the school offers.
But there is that little issue of tuition. That was really where our biggest stumbling block occurred. When you make a side by side comparison of free education with an education that comes with a fairly sizable price tag, it is hard to ignore the difference. Catholic school tuition meant sacrifice for us. The question became, is that sacrifice worth it? When it really came down to it, we thought it was.
It is sometimes hard to explain to people who do not understand why we would choose to pay for Catholic education when we could send our kids to a wonderful public school for free and supplement their religious education with PSR (Parish School of Religion) classes once a week. But it is the same reason I chose to take a teaching position at a Catholic high school over a better paying one at a local public school. It just felt right.
It felt right for the development of my children’s spiritual lives to be a natural part of their education, that God can be part of the equation in any subject matter. After all, He is part of the whole equation in our home life. Does it not make sense that He be a part of their educational life? I am not going all “creationism over evolution” here. But I do believe that God can be found in science. And it is nice to know that my kids will be able to discuss that in a classroom setting.
And there are other things that make me happy about sending my kids to a Catholic school. I had one of those little reminders just yesterday. As I pulled into the parking lot for pickup, I noticed Grace and her classmates were encircling the statue of Mary outside the church with a bunch of blue balloons. They were having a prayer service in honor of Mary’s birthday. And like any good birthday party, they all got goodies at the end, in the form of fruit snacks. Then the students dispersed to find their parents and head home. Grace walked over to me with her friend Sarah and I said, “It looks like you guys were having a little party over there.” They both smiled and replied, “Yeah! Mary’s birthday!” Then they high-fived each other. That’s right…they were giving each other some skin for the Holy Mother’s big day. The phrase “you know you go to Catholic school when…” popped into my head. But it was really just too cute for words.
Now that we have started our second year of Catholic education for my daughter, do we ever second guess our decision? I have to admit there are times when that tuition bill comes around and I literally grunt, and times when I drive past our public elementary school and envy all that free education happening behind the doors. But other than that, I can wholeheartedly say we have been so happy with the decision we made. Grace’s school has lived up to every expectation we had, and I feel good that I am giving her (and eventually Michael) a similar educational story to the ones my husband and I had…which we actually really loved and appreciate to this day.
Grace's First Day of Kindergarten 2010
Oh, and I have not even BEGUN to sing the praises of those plaid uniforms. Let’s not even mention how adorable Grace looks in it. The fact that I can avoid the battle of the wardrobe every morning might just be worth the tuition alone…we certainly have enough battles to fight without that one rearing its head. Oh, how my gratitude to the Catholic school system swells…
Are You Finished Yet? 