Confessions of an Old-School Kindergarten Teacher - Number 1 and 2

The last day before winter break, the school IT guy rolled in a spanking new smart-board.

They just don't understand. My whiteboard is cracking and mottled and almost useless. If anything, I need a new white board to teach math and phonics with my trusty dry-erase pens (which do just that-dry up in a week). Why was my white board the most decrepit in the whole school?

A veteran kindergarten teacher told me that she had my room when she first started. The front wall flaunted a meadow-green chalkboard. Since the school was about 30 years old, whiteboards had not become the teaching fashion.  But that year, she said the District updated the chalk boards and transformed them into whiteboards by applying a white plastic veneer.

After over a decade of use, the cracking veneer looked like the shell of an adventurous hard-boiled egg. Picture Humpty Dumpty after he fell. I checked the upper corners of the board and found that I could actually peel the darned stuff off. Being a picker by nature my semi-psychotic urge to remove the sheet of plastic was severely tested. I SO wanted to reveal the leprechaun green and get out my little cylindrical instruments to have at it!!

Notice the 7-year old writing in cursive - a foreign language to most 4th graders!
Photo credit - Pinterest

But I resisted, knowing it probably would not peel off uniformly and look worse than it already does. Picture Humpty Dumpty meets The Hulk.

Turns out...

I don't need to worry about removing the disintegrating gook any longer because they brought me a smart board. Something that will only distract and mesmerize the children. They will pay more attention to how my pen magically draws digital colors rather than the equations I am writing. The truth is,

Confession #1:

I want my chalk board back.

If it was good (and smart) enough for NASA, it's good enough for me!
Photo Credit- Rarehistoricalphotos.com

Then there's the joy of teasing the class with that grating screech made by holding the mineral utensil at just the right angle with the precise amount of pressure. You know you miss that, too.

 I want the classic board along with McGuffey's Readers that explain the diacritical marks so children can easily blend words, which, by the way,

Confession #2:

I consult McGuffey Readers on the down low every night to see how I can sneak in diacritical marks and the "Ann has a cat" lessons.

Enough of sight words and letting kids spell anyway they want!

I learned to read using the McGuffey Readers. (Along with "Dick and Jane"). My father bought the books at Knott's Berry Farm in the Motte's Miniatures store in the mid-60s and I still have the whole set, from Primer to Book 6.  It's a shame that book 6 is really our current college level. We have been dumbed down so.   I try to smart-up my kids using the books secretly--not 'smart' as in iphones, and security systems, but as in brain power.

Plans, Pots and Life-Pursuits

You can find them at Target (Thank you, Magnolia), Joann's, and Macy's. Pots are in. And in a big way. Rustic, country-fied, modern and suspended in 70s retro macrame pot hangers.

But where can you find something truly unique and customized? Is there a skilled ceramist anywhere around Wellington? Probably just a few in the alcoves of Loxahatchee turning their potter's wheels. That's not to say that a skilled potter couldn't find a start here in Wellington though.

Especially for one young man whose mother demanded that he do something more productive with his time besides staring at his computer screen.

Sometimes your own advice can come back to haunt you.

I told my teenage son (and the other three sons for that matter) that he needed to create something 3-dimensional in real time that we could see with our eyes and hold in our palms.

At the time, the choices in high school were to take wood shop, machine shop, some kind of visual art, or cooking. But he wasn't interested in those hobbies.

So he signed up for a pottery elective. And took to it like it was the latest version of Nintendo or X-Box or today's Fortnite.

At first, the only tangible thing my son brought home was a lot of red and grey dust on his pants.  But soon his classroom creations began to line up on every dresser. Then they were scattered all over the house on end tables and shelves like confetti. Set high on top of the kitchen cupboards. They were lumpy and misshapen, bearing oddly colored glazes. Pitchers had disproportionate handles. Dishes had uneven edges. But with each passing month, the pieces grew more attractive and artistic. More refined.

Graduation came and went and my son headed to NYC to major in business, not knowing what field to pursue. But with each semester, he enrolled in fewer classes. Until, much to my dismay, he discontinued school entirely.  And this is where my words of advice came back to haunt me.

That high school elective had sparked a career, albeit a tricky one to navigate. A season in upstate New York with a kiln and small shed resulted in a portfolio of pots and a possibility of apprenticeship. Eventually he finally found his way to a pottery studio membership in Queens. That is where his collection of functional pottery, like lamps, chess sets and vases blossomed so that he attracted a major boutique hotel. After his first big order he needed to find his own work space and collaborated with a well-followed sculptor to open their own studio in the old Brooklyn navy shipyard.

His company Episode has produced lamps and ice buckets for prestigious hotels in the Caymens and New Orleans. Not bad for a self-taught artist. Each family member this Christmas received a beautiful brown Petrie lamp with the most beautiful New York stamped hardware seen on any fixture. These are nothing like the China-made versions found in Marshall's or Home Goods.

The humble high school elective has come back to compensate and reward not only my son, but his family and more and more of the art-appreciative public. I've let go of the idea of college and stopped nagging my 26-year old son. It's about time I followed in his father's parental philosophy and, "Let the boy do what he loves and wants to do, for goodness sake!"

Good advice, indeed!