You Have Schema
Mamacita says: It’s all about schema, you know. Why stay in the box, all cramped and restricted and crowded with boring people, when it’s so much more fun to live OUTSIDE of the box? Nobody who chose to live inside the box has ever changed the universe in any noticeable way.
. . . except for THIS box. This box is larger on the inside, and its occupant has changed the universe in many ways..
Sing. Dance. Write poems and stories and plays and songs. Draw. Sculpt. Discover things. Connect things. Remember, everything is connected to everything else, and one of education’s jobs is to help students connect the dots. There is nothing in the universe that you don’t know something about; my students probably know this entire speech by heart. 🙂 Schema. Prior knowledge. You have schema about everything.
Seriously. Everything.
Well, it’s true. You might not know enough to land the space shuttle, but if you can spell it, you know SOMETHING about it. Can you perform delicate and complicated brain surgery? Probably not, but you know where the brain is located; therefore, you have schema you can bring to the table about brain surgery. Never underestimate yourself. You know things. You can do things. And you have a story to tell that nobody else can tell. Nobody knows it but you.
Who cares what the rest of the world thinks? Be yourself. Nobody else can do it.
You have a message for the universe that only you can deliver. Don’t let the world inhibit you. Don’t let anybody talk you into keeping your message to yourself.
Naturally, if you’re an evil psychotic axe murdering terrorist or a deliberately annoying prick who likes to shoot, steal, pester, disrupt, or otherwise annoy others in both deadly and non-deadly ways, keeping them from their rightful participation in the celestial dance, this does not apply to you. I include people who get off on tickling someone until they cry in this category.
Behave yourselves. Contribute. We need you more than you could ever know, but unless you control yourselves and do what you were born to do, nobody will want to hear your message.
Remember who’s talking here. 🙂
The Rights of the Bully Should NEVER Be Trump!
Mamacita says: So many of the teachers I’ve spoken to lately are frustrated almost beyond words by their schools’ insistence that they keep disruptive, non-participatory, and often violent students and bullies in their classrooms, to the severe detriment of the other children.
Bullies should not trump the other children or the teacher!
All students have a right to be educated in their least restrictive environment. How can this be possible if there are students in the classroom whose sole purpose in life seems to be to prevent other students from possibly learning something? Bullies should never have more rights than their victims. Bullies don’t deserve as many rights.
When a child goes home at the end of almost every day scratched, bruised, pinched, frustrated, and crying because once again “that same kid” tormented him/her, swiped the pencils, broke the scissors, yelled out, distracted, pulled the hair, marked on the paper, constantly poked, stole the lunch, chased, teased, and in any other way prevented a child from having a relaxed-yet-exciting, unimpeded, nurturing, SAFE environment in which he/she might learn and excel and advance upward and onward and feel absolutely safe and nothing is ever done to the perpetrator, who is allowed to pretty much rule the school with such behaviors, I call it bullying and I refuse to accept any other label for it. Why do we continue to allow bullies to exist in our classrooms? It makes no sense. Bullies exist because they’re allowed to exist. Stop allowing it and the behavior will stop, at least in the classroom.
Administrators who require teachers to put up with these behaviors and give teachers no support when these kids become insistently uncooperative (that’s a euphemism, by the way), teachers who fail to protect their students from these behaviors, parents who expect the school to deal with their child’s behaviors in such a way that their child is never responsible, and the child himself/herself who continues to torture other children or in any way put up an obstacle to their success. . . these are all bullies, too. And our good, polite, hard-working, creative kids who WANT to learn and advance have to sit there and wait, and be pinched and robbed and interrupted and teased, etc., and wait some more, most often never getting to advance because they’re still waiting on the other kids, whose behaviors and needs are seen as more important. . . .
Bullying isn’t only on the playground or the internet. Any time Susie can’t learn, advance, concentrate, or sit in peace and be allowed to work because of Billy’s behavior, Billy is a bully and Susie is a victim and the adult in the room is the enabler and the administration is Dolores Umbridge. Why, then, is Billy soothed, placated, rewarded, and continued to be allowed to sit near Susie and torment her? And why is nobody outraged that Susie is being held back, harassed, bothered, and hindered from learning?
I’m outraged. You should be, too.
But nobody does anything about it because Billy is apparently more important than Susie.
And Dolores Umbridge doesn’t WANT our children to learn, advance, and soar because that makes them more difficult to bully, herself.
Bah.
When are we going to grow a pair and demand that our schools become once again what they were intended to be: places where those who wish to learn might learn? At the rate we’re going these days, the answer is “never.”
Shame on us. Shame on anyone and everyone responsible.
It Takes a Village, and We Are That Village
Mamacita says: I think sometimes that if there had been online journals, blogs, when I was raising my children, I might not have made quite as many mistakes.
Often, during those years, I felt very isolated. I was sure that nobody else was feeling the same emotions, having the same problems, trying and failing at so many things, when it came to baby/child care. I felt like I was the only one, struggling with this and that, with the babies, and later with the children. I was embarassed to ask some questions, because I knew that nobody else in the universe could possibly have my same problems.
What to do…what to do….what to do….
I used to wish that there was SOME place where I could find a lot of advice and sure-fire plans to help me. I used to wish that there were people who had BEEN there, who could share their successes and failures; word of mouth is still the most believable way of selling anything, and advice has to be sold, you know. We SAY it’s ‘given,’ but if it’s not packaged and presented juuuust right, nobody will take it.
Yes, there were relatives who were laden with advice. Friends, who had a lot of advice. Much of it was good, too; and just as much of it was horrible. And, the ‘supply’ of relatives and friends was limited. So limited, there was no way their experiences could help me with very many of the problems and questions I had. Besides, they were, well, relatives. And friends, however beloved, don’t always agree with our own parenting methods or theories.
Now, though, this has changed, and changed drastically. For every question or problem a blogger posts, there are potentially millions of people who have BEEN THERE, and somehow survived, and who therefore have believable and practical advice for a young parent who is wondering, puzzled, or even at the end of his/her rope.
It takes a village to raise a child?
Bloggers, WE are the village!
Bloggers: WE are the village!
For someone like me, with grown children and a shipload of experience but no takers, blogging about the past is a cathartic thing, a trip down memory lane, with a lot of the bad memories miraculously erased. But to a young parent, some small thing I mention might make a world of difference! I hope so, anyway.
This applies to many areas, of course; but parenting is the most important job in the world, so it is the one I am thinking about right now.
I tried to care for my first baby by using charts in those free pamphlets the hospital gave me when I checked out. Imagine. With my second baby, I felt confident enough to laugh at myself, but even so I made tons of mistakes. We all do; they’re unavoidable. People who tell you that they don’t make mistakes are liars or amnesia victims.
Sara and Andy Goodwin, and Mommy
Now, when a parent has a problem or a concern, one little mention of it on a blog or a forum, and the whole world wants to help.
And hey. A piece of advice about, say, diaper rash, from a parent who has battled diaper rash and won, is worth a lot more than a pamphlet about a diaper rash product. Even if there’s a coupon, and Marsh is tripling coupons that week.
Parents want answers to their questions. They want the latest answers to their questions. Our Moms/Dads may have been perfect, but a perfect answer from 1953 isn’t necessarily the perfect answer to the same question in 2016. And then again, sometimes it is. When our peers chime in with solutions that have been proven to work, perhaps it’s the solution to try.
I am not downplaying the role of grandparents and friends, in regard to parenting advice. I am merely saying that no matter how old we are, our peers’ opinions mean a lot more than we think. Blogging is a big collection of peers, and friends, and parents, and grandparents, and aunts and uncles and cousins and their next-door-neighbor’s sister-in-law’s beautician’s second cousin once removed. It is the biggest pamphlet in the world. It’s the biggest forum in the world. It’s the biggest therapy couch in the world. It’s the biggest sounding board in the world. It’s the biggest reference book in the world.
Just as there are kooks at the family reunion, whose opinions you wouldn’t touch with a 2×4 and a pair of rubber gloves, there are also kooks online, whose opinions we wouldn’t touch with TWO 2×4’s and a long knife. At a family reunion, laughing, screaming, mocking, and facial grimaces are not allowed. Online, we don’t have to be that polite, because the person can’t see us anyway, and we can click away any time we want. Or, if the advice is good, we can comment and thank the blogger, and come again as often as we can because maybe they’ll say something equally good or helpful again some time.
On my blogroll are people I wish lived next door to me, or WITH me, because I’ve come to love them as dearly as though we met for lunch daily. I’ve also BE’d to some blogs that made me laugh out loud at the pompous stupidity of the blogger, or cringe in horror at the close-minded prejudice, or smile at the picture of a child in front of a birthday cake.
The Blogosphere
Blogging is conversation. Checking out our blogrolls is seeking conversation with people we like. Sometimes, there isn’t time to read as many as we’d like, and we feel as though we should apologize the next time we’re able to come by! Well, I do, anyway.
We’re all busy. Most of us work and raise children and try to nurture them and a marriage and our friendships at the same time. Many days, something’s gotta give. With blogging, the conversations can wait till we can get there. Bloggers are true friends who don’t put any kind of time limitation on us. We are here, and we’ll be here tomorrow if you can’t stop by tonight.
We post about our lives, and if some aspect of one life can touch and help another life, well, that’s what friends are for. Enough friends together, make a village.
It takes a village.
And that village, my friends, is us. We are a phenomenon. We are the village.
