We Start At A New School This Week

We start at a new school this week. As some of you know, our son attended a small, private school close to home, and when I say "small," I mean K-8-under-one-hundred-students-small, where everyone knows your name. We're moving for a number of reasons, but the only one that matters to us is that our son requested it. He's ready to experience life outside his small brick building. Both Mom and Dad are a little nervous, because this will be a big change, not to mention culture shock for him. There will be no daily chapel, children aren't expected to hold doors open for their elders, he won't eat his lunch at his desk, nor will he be expected to attend eighth grade graduation each year. Having said all that, despite all that we'll miss that made his previous school special, we're proud of him for advocating for himself, stating that he's ready to make new friends, while firmly and confidently letting us know that he is not going to be siting at the peanut table, either.

Today we attend his new school's Fourth Grade Meet-and-Greet, where we'll drop in to the class, meet his new teacher, other parents and classmates. It's a huge fourth grade wing at a school that will be the equivalent of a small high school for a middle schooler used to a small brick building. I'm grateful beyond words for the role the school adjustment counselor, in addition to the other supports, that are being made available to make his transition as comfortable as is possible, for a ten-year-old, transferring to a new school. I can only imagine the anxiety a family must experience if they or their child are new to the country and don't speak the language. What supports are available to them? As a student of school guidance sitting on the other side of the table, I empathize with these concerns, and for that I'm also grateful.

This week we'll be chronicling a lot of firsts. We're not expecting everything to be perfect and we welcome the unpredictability and excitement that starting something new brings. I came across a wonderful article written by Dr. Michele Borba, a renown and multi-book published, parenting expert. The article is titled "Helping Kids Fit In to a New School and Make Friends." She makes some wonderful recommendations you might find helpful if you have a child starting at a new school.

Is there anything special you've done to ease your child's transition to a new school?

Winged Cigars

Learned something new this week I thought I'd pass along, because apparently I don't know much about insects. Earlier this week I noticed a green dragonfly perched on a dry rosebud in my backyard. I crept up to see how close I could get and saw that its tiny jaws chomped on something -- open, close, open, close, its mandibles moved rhythmically. How cute, I thought. The green helicopter is having a snack. Hmmmmm.

Then I remembered an incident from elementary school, when a young girl approached me on the playground. She held her index finger out in front of her, as if she wanted to say, "Number one." I remember asking her at the time what had happened to her finger, because the ruddy tip was smothered in a glob of a vaseline-like substance. That's when she told me that she'd been bitten by a dragonfly, except, she didn't call it a dragonfly. She called it a cigarrón, dragonfly in Spanish. What did I know? Winged cigars flew around burning people's fingers whenever somebody tried to touch them. Stay away! From that day forward I'd duck a cigarrón whenever one came near.

These days, I smile every time a dragonfly hovers about, mainly because somebody shared with me once that whenever you see a dragonfly, a loved one who's passed is thinking of you. I'd embraced the winged cigars.

That is until I downloaded this picture and upon closer inspection saw that it munched on a fly. Ew.

Turns out dragonflies are carnivorous.

Who knew?

I've Got Chickens On My Mind

You can fool a rooster some of the time, but you can't fool a rooster all of the time. So lemme tell you a story of an urban chick who got it into her head that she wanted to raise chickens. And by "chickens" let me be specific -- I mean two chickens in particular. If you read my Raising Chickens In The Burbs post, you know that my son brought home two baby chicks from his third grade's incubation project. At the time, the sex of the two baby chicks was unknown. I was hoping and praying that Ricki, my white feathered beauty with the rosy comb and waddle, was a hen. It was obvious that my sweet Samantha was a hen. No question. But, Ricki? Welllllll.

I'd convinced myself that I had two egg-laying hens. I so wanted to believe it. That was until a week ago Monday, when at 5:42 a.m. this creepy, croaky sound (like that of an animal being strangled) drifted up from the coop two floors down from my bedroom window. It sounded something like this: cocka-cuu-cu. My eyes snapped open at the strained crow of my Ricki. I knew it was Ricki. Who else could it be? So I waited, holding my breath, watching my husband, hoping he wouldn't wake up. The raspy crowing continued for about fifteen minutes and by six a.m. he was done. This scenario has repeated itself every day since.

5:30 a.m. .... 5:45 a.m. .... 5:20 a.m. I can tell you with certainty that the bird's found his voice.

What's an urban farmer girl to do? Do I keep him and risk having someone call the town to complain about the rooster in my backyard? I decided it would be better for Ricki to go live on a local farm where he'd roam free. I learned later from the friend who arranged the placement that the farm is called BLOOD FARM. Hello. I can't make this stuff up. You don't even want to know what I imagined. We'd decided that the farmer would take Ricki and introduce him to his flock, and in return, I'd get a hen. Then when I learned about the whole business having to do with quarantining a new chicken for up to six weeks to make sure it's not diseased (because it could kill my existing chicken with its bugs), I decided to give up Ricki in exchange for no hen. My Samantha would need to live a solitary life, until I could accommodate quarantine quarters. But then, what about the winter? She'd freeze to death. Even though Ricki bullies her around the coop, they roost practically on top of each other. He's her bud.

Could this story get any longer? So here's what happened next. It was the night before Ricki was supposed to go away, when I had an idea. Why not cover the coop at night and trick the rooster into believing it's still night when he rouses? So I did. With a half dozen Glad trash bags that I taped into the shape of a big blanket. I covered every inch of the coop, leaving the bottoms loose for the free-flow of air, and crossed my fingers. Wouldn't you know it? Ricki did not crow the next morning until I removed the cover from his coop at a more suitable time, like 7:30 a.m. I was ecstatic, jumping up and down in the kitchen in my pajamas, while my husband held his coffee mug and shook his head. He does that a lot.

Later that afternoon I texted my friend and told him I was going to keep my rooster because I'd solved the crowing issue.

Do you think the ruse worked the following morning?

Nope.

Tonight the door into the enclosed part of the coop is closed enough to block Ricki's exit in the a.m. AND the coop is covered with my Glad bag invention.

We'll see what the morning brings.

(Samantha's now laying eggs :-)

MIERCOLES MUDO: Resando A La Luna

I Visited the "Oldest All Poetry Book Shop in America"

Harvard Square in Cambridge is one of the places I love to visit most around Boston. I didn't realize how lucky I was when I first moved here and secured a position at a firm in the office building attached to The Charles Hotel. I had an office that overlooked The Kennedy School of Government and would sit at my desk chewing away at a pen watching suits pass through the revered building's doors. It made me happy to be in the midst of so many interesting people. The crowded news stands, savory smells wafting out of the myriad of diverse restaurants, hustle and bustle of the T stop, and eclectic bookstores ruined me. Imagine my sadness when a couple years later I had to move forty minutes outside of Boston, where the deer and the antelope play.

The point of this post is that after years of visiting Harvard Square, and never finding the Grolier Poetry Book Shop open, two weeks ago I finally did. I'd dropped into the Harvard Bookstore to check out the Remainders table and on the way out noticed a sandwich board (see above) pointing around the corner. With only fifteen minutes to spare before an appointment, I scrambled to finally see the inside of the "oldest all poetry book store in America."

It was hot that day, like fry-an-egg-on-the-sidewalk-hot. I remember stopping abruptly in front of the poetry bookshop and hesitating for a minute. In all my wierdness, I felt my self-conscious self stirring inside, because I don't know about you, but being around these uber intellectual people can be intimidating. My mind invented all kinds of scenarios and none of them were reassuring. Then I tried to open the door. I immediately thought the bookshop was closed when the really, really old (some might call antique) door knob wouldn't open. It wasn't one you turn, but the kind that opens when you press down on a lever with your thumb. Hard. The heavy door finally opened after a few tries, when the slight woman working inside opened it for me. Apparently, the door knob "sometimes" gets stuck, she told me, when she stepped aside to let me through. Maybe you should think about getting that fixed, I thought, more out of embarrassment than frustration.

Any anxious feelings I had completely dissolved the minute I stepped inside the shoe-box size bookshop. Its breath was of dusty, worn pages and its interior was mildly cool and hazy with sunlight spilling in through its dusty, old window. I fell in love. The shelves were organized by geographic region and displayed titles and authors completely unknown to me.

I gravitated to the shelf lined with Latino writers and brought home three titles: a collection of poems by Cordelia Candelaria, OJO DE LA CUEVA, another by Américo Paredes, BETWEEN TWO WORLDS, and INFINITE DIVISIONS: An Anthology of Chicana Literature. I'm happy with my selections and am learning about the arduous lives Spanish-Mexican-indigenous women endured around the time of the Mexican-American War. 

I'm due back in Harvard Square this afternoon for another appointment. This time I'll be dropping into another bookstore I've never visited, only because I've been too lazy to walk the extra five minutes up Mass Ave. Revolution Books it's called.

Let's see what I find inside. :-)

Have missed blogging and chatting with you all. Life's settled down a bit now that summer school's over. Easing back in to normalcy, whatever that means. It felt good to take a time-out.

Have a great week, my friends!

MIERCOLES MUDO: Tiene Mucha Prisa

Raising Chickens In The Burbs

We stopped for chicken feed and our son wanted to buy another chick!

I'm raising chickens. Never thought I'd hear myself say those words. I mean, we're not farm people. At all. We live on a quiet residential street, where the most exotic pet you might find is a pet frog or turtle.

It all started when our son's third grade class conducted their annual egg incubation project ...

"Mom, the eggs are going to hatch in twenty-one days."

"Mom, we can hear scratching."

"Mom, you can see the chick in the egg under a lightbulb."

"Mom, can I please bring home a baby chick -- everyone else is."

After a good seven days of some pretty serious begging and pleading by him, and deliberation between my husband and I, we gave in. "Okay, but only one." Where it would ultimately live, how we'd care for it, or what we'd feed it didn't even come up in conversation. Never mind, the implications of potentially ending up with a rooster. I guess we figured, we'd figure it out.

Raising Chickens? You Must Take Two

I went online a couple days before the chick came home to do a little research and discovered a great website called Backyard Chickens. It's chock-full with every chicken fact imaginable. There are even floor plans, with step-by-step instructions and pictures, for various chicken coops. I thought, "I can do this." The research was going pretty well until I learned that solitary chicks don't do well; they need to be in the company of at least one other chicken to thrive.

Sam and Richard sitting on a chicken recipe.

Hmmmm ...

So I wasn't surprised the day before the chick came home when our son's teacher sent a note home informing us that if we took one, it would die. Therefore, we had to take two. And so we did. Two chicks. One black. One yellow. Their names are Samuel and Richard, at the moment. Should they turn out to be female, their names will be Samantha and Ricki.

The chicks have been home two weeks and things are going smoothly. We've had no drownings or electrocutions in the makeshift coop, and they seem to be happy in their new home: Albert's (our dog's) crate. Glad we were finally able to put it to use.

They have about another five weeks indoors, then they'll move outside into a build-it-yourself chicken coop that we're ordering. The hubs isn't too crazy about the idea about keeping them, especially since their coop is going to be right under our bedroom window, because we don't want to disturb the neighbors with possible crowing you'd be able to hear two streets over, anyways, but hey -- they've grown on me. And it's not so strange to keep chickens in the burbs. The more people I talk to, the more I discover that there have been chickens in our midst without our even knowing it.

Should be interesting.

Read The Sequel: I've Got Chickens On My Mind

Classroom chicks in the incubator

THROWBACK THURSDAY: Convenience Store Fragrance

Snakelike

It creeps

Snakelike

It slithers

Snakelike

It settles

Under the skin

Kindness is lacking

Cruelty stalking 

Death in the making 

Before a child's eyes

Convenience store fragrance

Pine-Sol and coffee

Mingling

Dancing

With butcher shop smells

Describing a past

Defining a future

Explaining

The here and now

Propelled far away

Life sweet and pretty

Love and safety find you in its arms

MIERCOLES MUDO: Primera Rosa

Year Two of Grad School -- Over!

Some course materials ... except for The Great Gatsby. Had time to sneak it into my reading. :-)

I can breathe! Returned from my back-to-back trips to Hispanicize and a much needed family vacation to the end of my second year of graduate school. Can't believe I just typed those words. They look bizarre on the page: second year of graduate school. I've survived it all! Presentations, role-playing, writing and reading assignments. This week sees the end of my 100-hour practicum at the middle school, then a short breather before summer school starts next month.


Meetings, Meetings and More Meetings

I've been exposed to A LOT at the middle school: initial and three year IEP meetings, transition from middle school to high school meetings, 504 meetings, parent-teacher meetings, administration-guidance meetings, student group meetings, counseling sessions with students. In short, I've gotten a broader glimpse into what the job of a school guidance counselor entails. How they're able to cram so much into their days, know the names of the over two hundred students they're assigned, and keep it all straight -- I don't know! Often they don't eat lunch, run from one meeting to the next, when they're not on the phone with parents, community services, or filling out the reams of paperwork that mandated. A good amount of endurance and a healthy sense of humor are required.

Being a parent myself and having the experience of going through the IEP process has helped me to appreciate being on both sides of the table.

Tim Wise: White Privilege, Racism, White Denial & The Cost of Inequality

Multicultural Counseling Weekend

One of the best experiences I had this semester took place over several weekends, both Saturdays and Sundays, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Crazy, right? Truth is I couldn't wait to get to  Multicultural Counseling for Children and Adolescents. We tackled some pretty heavy-duty material that made some uncomfortable, while reaffirming the experiences of others. Racism, stereotypes, micro-aggressions, a close inspection of our own biases and assumptions, and advocacy for underserved populations were just a few of the topics we covered.

What I didn't know before starting this program at Cambridge College is that the role of the school guidance counselor is evolving into one of being an agent of social change. Be ready to make yourself heard.

Microagressions and Stereotypes Matching Lesson

Here's an interesting classroom lesson ... matching microagressions to their corresponding stereotypes ... the class did a pretty good job of identifying the pairs. Encouraging to know that educators entering the profession have a high-level of awareness that will help all of us effectively advocate for students and their families.

Micro-agressions and Stereotypes Matching Lesson

This colorful class project has been hanging on one of the walls of our building since I started school. The bright colors, symbols and energy depicted in it make me smile every time I walk by it. Yup, even adults do art projects in school. :-)

I'm anticipating the future and am already thinking about looking for a job in the spring. I cannot wait for either school or the internship to start in the fall. In the meantime, my husband and son are happy to have my undivided attention and I'm happy to just "be."

Feeling blessed.