Monthly Archives: October 2013

I know I’m supposed to write about professional development and the impact of the institutes. I am sorry I missed the third, as I would have liked to have heard from the people who develop the policies that drive education in our state and country. But otherwise, I’m empty tonight. And have been for the past couple of weeks. Each time I sit down to write, nothing.

My father in law is dying. He has been battling cancer for the past year, and the war is nearly over. His liver is failing. His kidneys are failing. He is a tiny sliver of his former self, frail, unable to eat, drifting in and out of consciousness. It is a matter of weeks at most. Days are not out of the question.

Yesterday, we drove to DC so the children could see him one final time. So my husband could stay with his mother and help with whatever remains to try. So I could say goodbye to the man who made me feel welcomed into the family nearly 20 years ago when Mark and I were in college.

My children didn’t know that goodbye would be their last. But I do. And he knew, too.

I write this, not as a way of an excuse for having nothing to say about pd, nor as a way of explanation, nor as a plea for attention/sympathy/whatever, but simply because I need to. When you are the wife-and-mother, you are the comforter, the shoulder to cry on, the rock. You absorb others’ tears. You do not have your own.

So, my takeaway right now, if I have one, is that I am human, ultimately as frail as the man I am honored to call my family. I am not a rock, though I might pretend to be one for the ones I love. I will cry words. And that is all I can say right now.

Chickens, Monkeys, and Money

This is therapeutic writing tonight.

My school is doing a fundraiser. They are asking students to sell trash bags. Part of the money goes to the company. Part goes to the school. Part goes to fund chickens in Africa. By selling at least $20 worth of trash bags, the students get plastic monkeys, so part goes to pay for junk that will likely wind up in the very trash bags (or more reasonably priced ones) that the kids are selling.

As a teacher, and, even more, as a parent, I am angry. My students, my children, are being turned into unpaid salespeople for an organization that makes money off their labor. Even more, they are being told that selling is a “service learning project” that helps “poor people in Africa” so they are being emotionally manipulated. I watched my eldest daughter during the assembly today. I could tell she wasn’t interested in the toys, but her heart strings were tugged by the idea that she could help someone in need. The cacophony of excited children who would get “something” for “selling as much as [they] can” also was too much for a 10-year-old to bear, and she finally was caught up in the wave. My middle child came home, telling me of all the items she planned to sell so she could get every one of the “prizes” being offered. The man from the company successfully manipulated both of my children, and I am furious with the school for allowing that to happen.

I understand that money is tight, but there has to be a better way than manipulating young children, using them as an unpaid sales force, and misappropriating the term “service learning project.” I would be happy to forgo my Teacher Appreciation Week whatever; I certainly do not need another coffee mug or school T-shirt. I would gladly skip out on professionally-lettered “inspirational quotes” to line the walls of the hallway, no matter how pretty or inspirational the stickers might be. I can live another year with broken student computers (given that I’ve had any student computers at all for only one year out of the past six anyway). There have to be things that we take for granted as “needs” that really are just “wants” and without which we could spare our children the nonsense that they endured today.

In the mean time, I now have to defend, to my children, our family’s values against the school’s decision, made even more complicated by my role within the school. My eldest was pleased to learn that there are charities that also help feed hungry people around the world as their main mission. (I didn’t get into the concerns I have with using monkeys as stand-ins for the people in Africa that they are supposedly helping and the racist implications thereof; that conversation may need to wait a little longer until she is more emotionally mature.) My middle child is weighing how badly she wants a plastic monkey versus how much she doesn’t want to spend her own money on trash bags. And I am trying to calm myself enough to help them weather the storm of peer pressure brewing on the horizon.

How do you handle school fundraisers? What is the role of fundraising in schools?