Why my daughter should run the CIA

This morning - 5:30 a.m.

Em:(whispering) "Mama? Mama? Can I open up one present now?"
Me: "Emily - Go back to sleep! No! No presents at 5:30 in the morning!"
Em: (Whispering still) "Mama? What time can I open presents?"
Me: "EMILY! Go back to sleep!"
Em: "Mama? Mama! Can I open them at 8:00?"
Me: "Emily, please. Please go back to sleep. It is too early to discuss this."
Em: "Mama? Mama? Mama? How about 8:00? Can I open them at 8:00?"
Me: Silence.
Em: "Mama? Mama? Mama?...Mama? Is 8:00 OK? Can I open them at 8:00?"
Me: "Listen, if you go back to sleep, you can open one present at 8:00, then we'll go to the bakery and get your cake.."
Em: "And a candle like an 8?"
Me: "Yes, we can get a candle like an 8"
Em: "And ice cream? Can we get ice cream?"
Me: "Of course. You have to go back to sleep though."
Em: "So at 8:00, I can open one present...and we'll go and get my cake....and a birthday candle like an 8, and vanilla ice cream...and then will you take me to lunch?"
Me: Silence
Em: "Mama? Mama?"
Me: ( defeated tone) "Yes. Yes to everything - just go BACK to sleep. Please - P-l-e-a-s-e."

Em: "OK Mama - see you at 8:00!"

Originally published May 22, 2006 at The Gimlet Eye

Hope over Experience

I want to whisper secrets.

I want to have my cassettes full of new wave 1980's pop and early rap, and I want to wear my walkman on my hip, the weight bouncing against the bone as I dance around my bedroom.

I want to curse the short life of AA batteries that I must change over and over.

I want to slide up to my 16 year old self, my 18 year old self, my 22 year old self and tell her things, things from the future, her future.

I want to tell her the answers; Yes, Yes, No, Not yet, Yes instead of No, No instead of Yes.

I want hope, instead of experience.

In the epic battle of Dawn Vs Quad Mud Pit, Mud Pit always wins.

Don't Hate. It was 1989, and this was da bomb.

Snow White and Rose Red, complete

The rug is nearly complete - Just binding to do. The finished size will be 32 inches High, 54 inches Long.

I am very pleased.

A: Why Yes. Yes They Do.

Q: Do older men of French descent really wear beret's?



And other visions from the Big Bang Exhibition at the Fine Arts Museum

I was so moved by this exhibit that I gave little attention to the Feininger exhibit, walking through it in a daze. Tonight I announced that I need to go back and revisit Feininger, as I found his images re-playing in my head throughout today - a sure sign that there is more there for me to absorb.

Testing for Kindergarten? I call Bullsh*t

Yesterday, Professional Dawn opened her email and saw something which made her so angry that she sputtered and choked her way into the University where she is a PhD candidate, and then proceeded to sputter and choke about what she had seen in her email inbox to her PhD partner in angst.

What could have caused Professional Dawn this type of reaction?

An invitation to a chat with an "expert" in Kindergarten Testing.  An "expert" with no actual degrees or experience TEACHING children. An "expert" who has written a book and is trying to sell it to worried parents afraid their child is going to be left out of some thing that , if only they bought the book, would solve the problems of getting their child into that exclusive preschool, or Kindergarten. This will, of course, lead to your child being prettier and popular and eventually getting into Harvard with a full scholarship.

I call Bull Shit. Do you need me to CAPS that statement?

I CALL BULLSHIT.

Professional Dawn has, of course, TAUGHT kindergarten. Professional Dawn has degrees in Education (Both Early AND Elementary) and Child Development and is in process of her very own PhD in said Educations. Professional Dawn is a Mom too.  A Mom with a child with a variety of diagnosed learning issues.  Professional Dawn is married to Professional Terrance , a man who did his PhD in Psychometrics. Do you know what that is?

Here, let me give you the Wikipedia fast and dirty definition:

Psychometrics is the field of study concerned with the theory and technique of educational and psychological measurement, which includes the measurement of knowledge, abilities, attitudes, and personality traits. The field is primarily concerned with the construction and validation of measurement instruments, such as questionnaires, tests, and personality assessments.


OH SNAP! We have a REAL education Expert AND an Expert in EDUCATION TESTING DESIGN in the same house!!! You can see why we may make a fearsome parental duo.


And do you know what we two experts KNOW about the designs of all of these tests?


They don't measure shit.  Not your child's intelligence or interests or ability to succeed in life. Not who you will marry or how happy you will be later in life. They are arbitrary tests which give institutions a Number in order to control the supply and demand of any given product, in this case, Education. 


Alfie Kohn calls it "a way to separate the wheat from the chaff children", and you know what that is veiled code for right? Rich and Poor. White and Non White. Haves and Have Nots. 


These books - these programs to "prep" your child for anything? Lies. They do nothing. 


Do you know what does help? Reading to your child. Talking to your child. Taking your child on walks around the neighborhood and discussing what you see. Listening to music with your child. Cooking with your child. Laughing with your child. 


I can tell you that the brain isn't fully developed until about age 21 when the pre-frontal cortex comes fully on-line. This is why teens have such crappy decision making skills, they are still growing the part of the brain that is needed to MAKE decisions. I can tell you that until age 7, the true Concept of Reading is not really accessible to most children. Sure, they can repeat words. They might even be able to sound out letters and sounds if you drill them enough....But the mystery of Decoding for information? Comes on-line about the time they move into the Piagetian "Concrete operational" stage.


I can tell you all sorts of things about children and learning and brain development. I can tell you that a healthy diet and protecting uninterrupted sleep  is as important for brain development as reading to your child. I can tell you it is the Quality of experiences and not the Quantity of experiences which shapes brains and intelligence. 


I can tell you that if Parents were to refuse to allow their children to participate in these tests that the Institutions would eventually stop demanding them - JUST like most schools no longer require GRE scores for Graduate schools. If you have no test scores to arbitrarily assign value to, then how are you going to Know a child as a learner? Maybe watch them? Get to Know them? Talk with them?  If you've got no test scores and no parents willing to comply with providing them, then your product (the school) becomes devalued. You are then forced to change your metric of admission. 


I can tell you that Anybody can slap "expert" next to their name and talk about things they have no right to be talking about as "experts". 


I can tell you that these books, these programs, do nothing but take your money and stress your children out. 
As Alfie Kohn says more eloquently:


"And once you realize that the tests are unreliable indicators of quality, then what possible reason would there be to subject kids – usually African American and Latino kids -- to those mind-numbing, spirit-killing, regimented instructional programs that were designed principally to raise test scores? If your only argument in favor of such a program is that it improves results on deeply flawed tests, you haven’t offered any real argument at all. Knock out the artificial supports propping up “Success for All,” “Open Court,” “Reading Mastery,” and other prefabricated exercises in drilling kids to produce right answers (often without any understanding), and these programs will then collapse of their own dead weight."




However, until PARENTS stand up and say "Absolutely Not, there is no basis or reasons for this" OR Schools come out and simply honestly say "We are trying to keep THOSE children out of this school, you know, the poor/black/stupid ones..."  this nonsensical hamster wheel of ridiculousness will continue. 


And it makes Professional Dawn crazy mad.


Sept 2010


I am re-printing this because it still makes me crazy mad.  And, sadly, because I now have to talk about how I would teach potential teachers to cope with the outcomes measurements being shoved down their throats, ala Race to the Top. Outcomes measurements which I know, in my heart of hearts, is such bullshit that it makes me sputter and storm and want to throw my degrees in the trash, for all the good it has done.


I can not tell you how disheartened and just Sad it all makes me, these policies. How one of the critiques of me during interviews is my non participation in these things that I find so repugnant ( how to prepare teachers for these situations where they must meet "accountability" measurements)...and it isn't because I don't think teachers should be accountable. I do. But because I know what these tests and measurements will lead to, and it isn't better teaching, or better schools or better anything for the children who need it Most. It is more segregation of those we Choose and those we throw away.


As I read that well intentioned suggestion - that I become more familiar with "Standards" in the schools and address how I would teach undergrads these standards and assessments,  I saw all the money and time I have spent on a Master's degree and then a Doctoral degree as wasted. 

Did I mention that we were out of Bleach?

You know when you KNOW something? You know - as a parent. You see the event unfolding in your mind - step by step. No psychic flash or exciting event - just the parental spidey sense of "Oh Dear. This is not going to end well...."

The scene: Monday Morning, our house

There is no cereal ( more on that in another post) for breakfast. We are doing well on time. Showers are had. Bodies are dressed. I say, "Hey! Why don't we pop down to the bakery. We have time to pick up breakfast before school!"

Smiles abound. There are rainbows and bluebirds flitting about our heads.

I park and send Emily into the bakery. She gets a huge kick out of going in with the money in hand to order. Quite the "big girl" thing to do, you know. As she gets out of the car, she pauses. "Can I get some milk?", she asks.

Why sure! No problem! What kind of mother says No to milk?  Not me!

Then it happened. You know that moment...the one where you spot something and the realization sets in?

Um, yeah.

She walked out with chocolate milk.

Normally, I have no issue with a little container of the chocolate milk. Live and let live, I say. But Emily wears a uniform. And the shirt to that uniform is white.

Granted, the school is only three blocks away. Only.

You all can see where this is going, right? I know you can. We make it two blocks when the spill happens. The great drooling spill down the front of her. The big chocolate milk stain on the white shirt.

Which leads to wailing.

"I CAN'T GO TO SCHOOL LIKE THIS!!! EVERYONE WILL MAKE FUN OF ME!!!"

I keep my cool. I did, after all EXPECT this to happen. I calmly explain to her that she will most likely have to take a tardy slip at school, but that I would take her home to change. I can be a wench, at times, but I am not going to make her walk around in a stained shirt all day.

We get home. She goes into the house to change. She runs out in a lather, wailing loudly.

"THERE ARE NO OTHER WHITE SHIRTS IN MY ROOM!!!!"

Fifteen minutes later, we have dug a white shirt that is LESS stained out of the dirty laundry. Apparently there ARE no other clean white shirts left.  The one shirt is serviceable - it will do for the day.

We get in the car and head back to school.

Emily reaches over for the carton of chocolate milk and begins to bring it to her lips.

"Are you KIDDING?!?!?!", I say. "Have you LOST your mind?"

She looks at me.

"What?"



October 17, 2007 Gimlet Eye

Pictures in my Mind

Green Light

Red Light

Or

"Oh My god, the waitstaff are trying to kill Maija with this Pakun Flower slipped in her drink"

Been to Whorish Ravens lately?

You should.

Think of it as my secret room.

What's in a Name?

I've mentioned that I'm white, right? Middle America, German heritage? And I've mentioned that my husband is Black ( his preferred term)? Detroit raised, black panther parents?

Yep. We are.

This makes our daughter bi-racial, which is our preferred term for her heritage. Please don't make the mistake of calling a bi-racial child "mulatto", which is a term laden with historical baggage of slavery, rape or otherwise unequal power relationships. And no, she isn't "high yellow", which was another less than kind version of the same thing. Or "mixed". Or "light-skinned"

She has two distinct racial heritages. She is bi-racial.

The problem ( such as it is)  is that she is also Black.

As her mother, I have to recognize and prepare her for the reality of living in our society. She will be viewed as a woman of color - specifically a black woman. She will never be able to assert her whiteness, for it is visually clear that she is not white.

Were she to walk into a room filled with white people and announce "I'm white", she would receive puzzled and angry expressions. Were she to walk into a room of black people and announce "I'm white", she would be accused of trying to "pass" as white, or worse denying her black heritage.

What does that leave her? What does that leave me, as her mother? Do I teach her to downplay my cultural background to save her the problem of explaining her parents marriage and her birth?  Does she grow ashamed of being white in a society which can not and will not recognize her as being part white in a positive manner?

Emily has the great fortune to have been the planned only child to two well-educated parents who were fully aware of the issues facing children of bi-racial heritage. We considered if we would be strong enough to equip a child with the tools he or she would need to face the institutionalized racism inherent in our society. We decided that we were. We decided that our extended family was strong enough to lend any child the support they would need. We have carefully taken steps to expose her to as much cultural diversity as we could find in our corner of New Hampshire. She spends summers with her grandparents in Detroit to soak up the culture of her father. She knows that the families of her friends are made up of loving parents, even same sex parents.

(* a moment of Mommy pride? When Emily handily refuted a playmates assertion that everyone had to have a mommy and a daddy - which Emily said wasn't true cause her friend Zoe has two mom's!)

To my knowledge, the worst racial "name" Emily has been called was when she was told that "she was black, so she didn't have any friends." I am not so naive as to think that this will be the only comment she will encounter, but it was damaging enough in the context in which it was delivered to her.

My family talks about the issue of race and culture in America every day. We have to. Our daughter's self image and self esteem depends on the manner in which we prepare her for the external societal experience.

Can you do me a favor? Can you start talking about this in your family too? Cause someday, my daughter will be out there - with your children.  I want her to be accepted and comfortable in her skin. I want your children to see Emily, as she is - not a label, not a name-  but as a beautiful whole person.

Originally published May 18, 2006 at The Gimlet Eye

Having lived in Montreal for nearly six years, I can safely say that Emily has known "cultural diversity" in so many ways - Ethnic, Religious, Language - that I now worry about our return to the US.

Even here, she has been told she is not Black...since her friends see her as possibly First Nations, or of Latin descent. She has had friends from India, much darker skinned than she, call each other black and tell her she was not black. During one trip to New York City, Latinas would constantly come up to us and begin to speak with us  - admiring Emily. They believed that her father had to be Hispanic, and since Terrance was not with us at the time, there was no identifiable partner to my White-white-girlness.

Last year, she had her first incident of having a dark skinned girl dislike her ( and verbally disparage her) because she was light skinned with "good" hair.  Don Lemon's opinion piece on CNN still holds a great deal of truth in many black american families and communities. It still takes only one drop for many people.

Yesterday, I was showing her pictures I have been scanning in of her as a baby. At her second birthday, we had invited a friend of hers, from child care, over. Brandon was, like her, biracial - with a white mom and black dad.

Emily looked at the pictures and was shocked. She had forgotten Brandon, and certainly forgotten that he was like her, biracial in an extremely white state.  In her surprise, she blurted out, "He's coloured!" - which was her brain mixing up words and concepts and even languages.

Her father freaked out.

I mean FREAKED OUT.

As he barrelled into my bedroom yelling "WHERE DID YOU HEAR THAT WORD?! TELL ME RIGHT NOW. DID ONE OF YOUR FRIENDS USE THAT WORD?", Emily's mien was that of one confused person. She had no idea what she had said that caused such an intense reaction in her father.

I had to put my hand out and stop him - remind him that I don't think she had a concept of that word as derogatory, given our many years here in Montreal, where racism isn't encountered in the same forms as it lives in the US.

(Racism is alive and well in Montreal, don't get me wrong, it just lurks in different forms. "Mulatto" is still a term used here, as it has a different cultural context, not to mention we are in  French speaking province)

After I had calmed him down, I explained to her that "coloured" was a term of prejudice, used in signs and language of segregation that existed in the not terribly distant past. That her father heard that word as one of disrespect, of racism.  That his instinct remains that of a man who was born in 1961, a year when our marriage would have still be illegal, and before the Civil Rights movement.

So do my family still talk about issues of race? Yep. Nearly Everyday.

I suspect we always will.