Month: December 2010

Santa brought My Kid a rola bola!!!

As soon as My Kid woke up this morning she wanted to check the NORAD site to find out where Santa was.  He was in Japan.   Then he was in Korea.  When we checked back later he was in Africa.

As he approached South America she began to be uncharacteristically interested in going to bed.

Wonder what that’s all about…

Jimmy Fallon as Neil Young singing Willow Pinkett-Smith’s “Whip My Hair” song was one of the funniest things I have ever seen performed.

Why???

Because…

It took me two more days to realize that the reason I found it so funny was because Jimmy Fallon as Neil Young + Willow Pinkett-Smith’s bubble-gum pop song = a perfect expression of the very particular segment of Brooklyn in which I live my everyday life.

Ended up at Barnes and Noble on Court Street.  While waiting for My Kid to finish in the children’s section, I read many embarrassingly resonating pages in the book: Stuff White People Like.

A couple of hours later I was at a Holiday Party, in a Brooklyn Brownstone, hosted and attended by exactly those people described by Christian Lander.

Lovely people talking about liberal arts and performance and teaching and real estate–my tribe…

Or not…

Came home to…

New news: another IT friend laid off…

Damn!

This morning after the in class demonstrations and shadow boxes and power point presentations, we ended up at Tazza for coffee.  The other mother, one of the ones who was so worried, said hello.  We talked about real estate.  We talked about schools.

We talked about the process made us into emotional wrecks.  Maybe it was Christmas and maybe it wasn’t  On the day we turned in the applications, I teared up for no reason when I was Rockefeller Center.

Then, later that day…

When My Kid, and the rest of her Girl Scout Troop, were singing Christmas Carols for the residents of an assisted living home…

The man, who must have been eighty years old, talked so fondly about his favorite elementary school teacher and what he learned and then he sang for us…

The children sang: I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas and the tears filled my eyes.

Hanging by a thread,

We mothers…

Inhaling for the first time,

on the day the middle school applications had to be turned in.

Fear and relief and resignation.

We laughed hysterically with tears running down our cheeks, outside, standing on the sidewalk, for a minimal joke.  We needed to laugh.

There are still many months of the process to go before we know where our children will go to school next fall.

Red and white peppermint-striped fingernails.

Mistletoe.

Elf hat.

Green eye-shadow.

Red lipstick.

Frown.

I came home really excited tonight.  Two reasons.  One; the character I am doing at the New York Downtown Clown revue is coming along and has potential, if only for that one particular venue–which is all I ever envisioned for that particular character…

Also,

In the bar after, a long and involved conversation with someone who has recently discovered clown.  And, somehow, I felt like an elder statesman imparting the knowledge from my years of experience…

Hmmmm….

I wonder what that could mean.

Am I smart or am I just old???

I read CORNER OFFICE: CATHLEEN BLACK by Adam Bryant in the New York Times this morning.

“I am direct and I’m decisive.  I think being decisive for an executive is important.  It doesn’t mean that if it’s not my idea, then it’s a bad idea.  But I believe that most people want clarity from their boss or their manager, and they want decisiveness.

“So we don’t need to debate something endlessly.  Maybe we can talk about it more than once, maybe more than twice, if it’s something really important.   But, let’s make a decision and move on.”

I have noticed a certain controlling tone in the words chosen by Cathie Black.  Maybe that’s her reality.  It’s not mine.

Here in Brooklyn, children are assigned to middle schools in much the same way that medical students are matched with hospitals around the country for their residencies.  The students rank their choices.  The schools rank the students.  When there is a match the student goes to the middle school he or she was hoping for.  When there isn’t a match, or when 5000 students put down a particular school as their first choice and that school only has room for 100 incoming 6th graders.  Well then, 4900 families are disappointed.

To win a seat in a charter school is a child takes a number and plays the lottery.

A game of chance.

Ten-year-old 5th graders do not learn about diligence, goal setting, hard work and fair play.  They learn about odds and chance, winning and loosing.   They learn about playing a numbers game and they are gambling with their educational lives. Playing craps.

Crap.

This was the day, December 17, the day that the NYCDOE Middle School applications were due.

There was a 5th grade performance that I just found out about yesterday so I didn’t get an e-mail out about it until 10:30 last night.  Too late for parents who work regular jobs.  Bad class parent.

The parent coordinator said he’d send out an e-mail about it but he didn’t.

The kids did dramatic words and movement to go along with the monsters they painted under the direction of the Guggenheim artist-in-the-schools, Miss Jenny.

It was fun.

I feel guilty.

As class parent it was my job to get the word out.

Aghhhh!

TODAY WAS THE DUE DATE FOR THE MIDDLE SCHOOL APPLICATIONS.

One of the dads at the performance said his wife had been going crazy;

“It’s good now that that’s done and we’ll get a break.” He said innocently.

Ha!

Not likely, the interviews and auditions and testing part of the selection process begins in January and may go into March.

The not knowing to which public middle school the NYCDOE computer will assign our child will hang over our heads like the Sword of Damocles until May (!!!!!!!) when the NYCDOE Decision Letters will be distributed to families informing the children and their parents to which public middle school they have been assigned.

Meanwhile the work does not end.

There are charter school lotteries to enter.

There are private schools to apply to and/or write deposit checks for.

Cultural Catholics will dig through back closets looking for the Baptismal certificates which they possess due to a gesture of goodwill towards the parents or in-laws after the baby was born.  Now it’s capitol.  It has value because it proves their kids are eligible to take to attend parochial school– which is yet another option if the public school thing doesn’t work out.

There are out-of-district public schools targeted for letter writing and personal “please-oh-please-let-my-kid-into-your-school-please” campaigns.

Even in the school office, after the morning 5th grade performance, a cluster of parents were gathered around the counter with their applications anxiously making last minute changes.

What school did you put as your first choice?

Over the weekend I learned of a friend who found out her father had cancer and her sister has cancer within a 24-hour period which kind of puts all this stress about the middle school search to shame.

And yet there it still is.

My friend still has to turn in the triplicate computer application to the elementary school guidance counselor ranking the schools in order of preference by Friday December 17 just like I do.

But, she doesn’t even have the life she was living just last week.  Her family situation may change so dramatically over the next few months that the middle school choice process that was making her go grey in October may be completely irrelevant by March.

One would think that if a person moved in the spring or summer of their child’s 5th grade year they would be set up to attend middle school in September.  Not so in New York City.

Maybe we should move.

Over the weekend, we also saw friends who left Brooklyn for the suburban life in New Jersey.  Their daughter will transition easily next September when she advances, along with most of her friends from elementary school, to the local middle school.  They have only 3 schools to choose from.  The one big school with lots of extras like band, drama, science and art, that most of the local kids want to go to and will go to and then there are just two smaller specialized schools.  That’s it they’re done.  Their daughter will continue on to middle school with most of her classmates from elementary school, joining with the kids from a couple of other elementary schools to make up the population of the local middle school.

I heard that of last years graduating 5th graders at my daughter’s elementary school,  14 was largest number of kids who went on together to the same middle school.  A group of about nine was the second largest group.  Other’s transfered to new schools along with only 2 or 3 familiar faces.  Some bravely walked into an unfamiliar building last September as the sole representative from PS 8.  That’s a lot to ask of a 6th grader whose family didn’t move over the summer.

I am reminded of that popular Judy Blume book from my adolescence; Are You There, God?  It’s me Margaret.  As a tween, I read that book primarily for the information about puberty.  As a parent, I am aware of a thru line which completely escaped my notice when I first read that book.  Now I know why Margaret’s parents left their Manhattan apartment and moved to a house in the suburbs during the summer before Margaret entered 6th grade. Growing up in Montana where everyone graduated from 8th grade and went en masse to the same high school it never even entered my mind that the parent’s decision to move might have everything to do with the New York City Department of Education.