“Cars that make you look good, at any price.”

That was the catch line for one of the news items rotating across the screen when I logged on to the Internet.

I was stunned. Is that really the reason we buy a particular car? Because it makes us look good?

I’ve ridden in a lot of different vehicles in my life, but I don’t recall ever riding in one that made me look good. Unless maybe it was my dad’s old farm tractor that I had to stand up to brake because I wasn’t heavy or strong enough to simply step on the pedal.

Or maybe it was the Veteran’s Day Homecoming float back in 1970, or the 2½-ton International Harvester truck my family rodeoed in. How about the white Jeep Cherokee in a blizzard with my son hanging out the window so he could see if we were about to run off the highway?

Did we look good? Did we care? Did anybody else?

No, no, and no.

American advertisers will stop at nothing to get us to buy their product of choice. But what about our choice? Shouldn’t we be considering affordability, feasibility, safety, and other issues?

Marketing is a powerful tool in this nation of freedom. Whom do we date? What type of home do we live in? What about our jobs, our social affiliations, even our churches? Do we choose based on what will make us “look good?”

School starts this week in most communities, and parents have doled out plenty to help their youngsters get the supplies and clothes they need.

Sadly, as a teacher, I have seen students turn up their noses at classmates who didn’t wear the latest fashion or the hottest brand name. It is one of the signs of innocence lost, but they didn’t learn it on their own. They gleaned it from parents and television and magazines and movies.

Yes, we all want to look our best; it is human nature to do so. The opposite extreme of poor hygiene and inappropriate dress is just as bad. But at what price (not just monetary) will we follow the trend setters?

This year, let’s change the status quo. Instead of paying too much to look good, let’s take a good look at who’s really making our choices.

The Test Taker's Turn

I am certain that last week’s stout wind that tossed the bird feeder, knocked over my lawn chairs and dragged a few weak leaves from the mulberry tree was caused by the collective sigh of California children exhaling in relief at the end of State Standardized Testing.

Teachers and others working in education talk about these tests all the time. We argue the benefits and detriments, exchange ideas for gearing up kids without stripping their gears, and bemoan the days when the annual state test was just a test – not the all-in-all-goal-of-a-teacher’s-life.

But what do the students think about all of this? What’s their take on taking The Test?

I was privileged to find out on the very first day of our test week. My room was properly denuded of all catchy grammar hints and colorful word-wall displays. Plain paper drooped blandly over a giant list of prefixes and suffixes, and in an effort to liven the scene, I hung a movie poster from Pirates of the Caribbean, a large print of an Aslanesque lion, another of a wolf and one of an iceberg photographed from beneath the water line. Not very comforting images, but unusual enough to prompt a little imagination or just plain mental relief.

As I trolled the room that morning, peering over the shoulders of the studious, I detected the bare corner of a piece of binder paper tucked almost completely beneath a student’s book. He had finished the test and was reading quietly as directed. When I reached down to pull out the paper, he glanced up with pleading eyes and quickly shook his head as if to hide a forbidden note from a fellow student.

I persisted, he relented, and here is what I found – the honest heart of a test-riddled sixth grader. I share it with his permission.

Test Time!

A calm before the storm begins
Will I do well?
My heart beats, like hammer on cloth!
I stare at the wall
Jack Sparrow returns my gaze
Standing with a sword in hand and the Black Pearl at his back.
I glare at the million questions before me
Feeling a pang of pain
… or self-pity!
I begin to write with a very light hand
Answering questions as best I can.
My classmates and I sound confused altogether.
This test may go on forever and ever …

©Isaac Flores
April 26, 2010

A Way With Words

Sometimes we say what we don’t mean. It can be in the form of a simile like, cute as a button, or an idiom – chip off the ol’ block – or just a simple spelling error like one of my students made when she wrote about the Prince of Whales. Did she really mean Moby Dick?

Sometimes we don’t mean what we say. Hyperbole is a great example, as in “My feet are killing me.” Are they really? How about that ton of homework your child lugged home today? Did he have any difficulty dragging it across the threshold?

However, we often try very hard to say exactly what we mean, and when we bump up against a language barrier, it can be not only frustrating, but also embarrassing. Just last week an English language-learner wrote on her History test the only thing she could think of for the upper, ruling class of ancient Greece: Aristotle craps.

She was reaching for “Aristocrats” of course, and since I could see the connection, I gave her credit for her rather colorful attempt.

This week in an extra-credit report on Alexander the Great, another student told me the young conqueror died from astronomical diary.

I wonder: did he choke on his own words?

Last winter, just before Christmas break, I wrote a note to a substitute instructing Jesus to sit with Miss Angel at the back table. It sounded OK in my head, because I internally heard the Hispanic pronunciation of “hay-soos.” But seeing it on paper the next day made me wonder if the sub was a little nervous about who would be attending class.

Though it’s often frustrating to communicate exactly what we mean, there are a few phrases that somehow never fail to carry their message:

I understand.
It’s OK.
We’ll get through this together.
I love you.
I’m sorry.
You were right.
You’re amazing.

Pick one to share with your child each day this week. I’m sure that opportunities will present themselves.

Five ways to give your child a fighting chance on test day

At last –
the time of year when flowers bloom
and sprinklers sprout,
and kids count the days
until school is out.

But not teachers. We’re busy pushing facts and reviewing strategies and getting our students ready for the Big State Standardized Test – the one that lets us know if they learned anything, and how much they learned in comparison with other kids just like them, or not quite like them, or nothing like them at all.

Everyone seems to have an idea about how best to test. Some researchers believe more frequent testing strengthens long-term retention. Others say that too much homework leads to poor test scores because many families are not prepared to help their children address homework each evening.

However, regardless of researchers’ opinions, parents and other adults really can help children face the big test. Here are five suggestions that have proven to be the most effective at giving young test takers a fighting chance:

· The school will let you know before their standardized testing begins. Be sure your student gets plenty of rest the night prior to each test day. No late night parties, television or computer gaming.

· A good breakfast gives the brain the fuel it needs to work through the morning. Don’t let your student face the day on an empty stomach.

· Attendance during testing is critical. Schedule doctor and dentist appointments at another time of year. Your child will do better is she tests with her class rather than making up the test later by herself in the school office.

· Please see that your student arrives at school on time so he has an opportunity to use the restroom, ask questions, and begin testing with everyone else.

· Encourage him to just do his best and not stress out over the results. Remind him that everyone is faced with a test occasionally – even you. Remember how you got your driver’s license?

When test week is finally over, celebrate with a special treat – maybe a trip to the ice-cream store. Help your young ones learn that hard work has its rewards.

Sabbatical

Due to new demands on my time, I am taking a sabbatical from this blog, About Your Kids. But I will continue to write bimonthly in my devotional blog, and I invite you to sign up for its automatic email delivery at: www.davalynnspencer.blogspot.com.

Thanks for reading!

Can You See the Irony?

Irony: 2a. the use of words to express something other than and especially the opposite of the literal meaning … (Merriam-Webster online dictionary).

Sometimes irony hits us in the face, leaving us stunned for a moment, unable to respond. For me the jolt came during a recent visit to a new optometrist. New to me, I might add, not new to the profession.

After filling out all the required personal information, I was caught off guard by the next question on the clipboard-attached form: “Do you have blurry vision?”

What?

Yes, I thought. But only when I’m not wearing my glasses, like now.

Blurry vision? Were they kidding? I was sitting in an over-padded examination chair in an optometrist’s office and I wasn’t there to have my teeth cleaned.

I brought the question to the doctor’s attention, but he just smiled and said nothing. Evidently, he failed to see the irony.

Maybe I shouldn’t have been so surprised. Irony appears early in life. My middle school students faced it this fall on our “Peace Out to Drugs” day during Red Ribbon Week, a national anti-drug awareness campaign.

On that particular day, students came to school dressed as hippies, wearing t-shirts adorned with peace signs and mushrooms in psychedelic pink and orange and green. They loved it – rainbow-colored Afro wigs, scarves for headbands, and peace-sign earrings. But they had little, if any, knowledge of the hippie culture, and I couldn’t help but appreciate the fact that they didn’t know about the so-called free love, free drugs (at least the first round) and free spirit of the 1960s.

I wonder if their grandparents would have seen the irony.

Stupid is as stupid does

The headline said, “Why teens do stupid things.”

Of course I had to read the article. What grownup/parent/teacher/former teen wouldn’t? We all want to know why kids do the things they do. I wondered if scientific study had turned up some new chemical imbalance to blame, some long, multi-syllabic name that educators could reduce to yet another string of disjointed letters like ADD or ADHD or OCD or KID.

But there was no news. After much study and observation, those in the know decided the deciding factor was peer pressure.

My mom was right all along.

But the reporter did make one interesting point: teens actually spend more time weighing the risks of risky behavior than do their adult counterparts. The bottom line is, sometimes it’s just worth it to a kid.

I’ve seen the worth-it look in the eyes of a youngster on his way to the principal’s office after punching someone who said something he didn’t like.

I’ve seen the worth-it look on the face of a girl who wore her cute little micro skirt onto campus in spite of the dress code. Even though she had to call home for a change of clothes, she still made a fashionable appearance, and boy, was it worth it.

A kid with a Mohawk haircut and lip ring also decided during his microsecond of deliberation that it would be worth it. Later, without the ring and strip of hair, his friends still knew he’d had the guts to try it.

I think it has something to do with bulletproof mentality and “not me” thinking.

But if we can chalk up teens’ irresponsible behavior – like riding with drunk drivers, trying drugs and never cleaning their rooms – to youth and immaturity, to what do we attribute the poor decisions of their elders?

The first incident that caught my eye was the Philadelphia father last fall who pulled a gun on his son’s football coach because Junior wasn’t getting enough playing time.

Then there was the South Carolina fifth-grade teacher who let five students use a wastebasket to relieve their bladders during a school lockdown.

And in Livingston, Montana a high school principal was suspended for giving one of his soccer players a wedgie during a junior varsity game.

No wonder teens do stupid things. They have wonderful examples living right in front of them.

I can’t imagine what the gun-toting father was thinking. I’m guessing the teacher was trying to prevent the humiliation of a child wetting herself, and the principal reportedly told authorities that his act was intended as a gesture of playfulness.

I think it’s pretty safe to say that people – not just teens – have been doing stupid things for quite some time. Our forefathers came up with a few phrases to help us think about the outcomes of our actions. Their words often come to mind today as worn out platitudes, thin clichés and tired expressions. But don’t they say what many of us have forgotten?

Look before you leap.

You reap what you sow.

Better safe than sorry.

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Maybe it’s time we pulled out a few old viewpoints and dusted them off for a new year of clearer thinking.


This column previously appeared in the Porterville Recorder Newspaper.