New School Year 2010-2011

Well, it's official . . . summer is over and school is back in session. We had a great summer with lots of visits to family and friends that were both rewarding and heart warming. As the school year begins I am somewhat concerned about the direction that education is headed in. No one seems to care how well our children learn or what quality of education they are receiving. It's so frustrating to me. I love my job but with all the budget cuts in special programs, I don't know how long I will be able to continue to work with these kids the way I have for the past fourteen years. With having to see students at least three class periods each day and for a minimum of one hundred and twenty minutes each day, scheduling has become a nightmare and we have classes with twenty students in them and classes with only one student in them. It's so crazy and totally frustrating.

After lunch today I mentioned to one of our lunch ladies that I wished I was back in kindergarten when we got to take our blankies and lay on the floor while our teacher read us a story. Some of us would fall asleep and others would just listen and relax to her soothing voice. She told me she remembered having those little flower shaped cookies way back in the 50's. I asked her if they were shortbread cookies and she said they were. I told her she wasn't that much older than I was and that I went to kindergarten in 1962 so I remember those little shortbread cookies too. Such a silly thing to remember!

We had a little chuckle and as I wandered back to my classroom I recalled my kindergarten and first grade years. Thanks to Shelley Burt I have a great class picture from kindergarten. She brought it to our class reunion this summer but it was too late to put in the video I had made. I didn't even remember having the picture taken but I love it.

If we could only return to those simpler days. The days when no one worried about letting your kids walk home from school or if they were a little bit late getting home. It just meant that they had stopped off somewhere along the way to kick a rock along the curb or pick some innocent gardener's beautiful flowers. Now days, we give our kids cell phones so that we can always know where they are and track them if they are late, or heaven forbid, get lost.

We've come along way in the past fifty years or so. Technology has made things easier but also more complicated. Politicians have only seemed to blur the issues or destroyed them completely. It makes a person wonder where or when these things will ever be resolved but we all just keep on doing what we're doing and doing it the best we know how.

I'm going to make this year count. I want the students I work with to know that I care about their education and about them as a person. Some days that's not easy, but it will be written in my daily lesson plan from now on. Better input equals better output, right? I sure hope so!