Cutting out the good stuff

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I am in the process of writing an article about the wonderful resource we here in Santa Cruz County enjoy, Quail Hollow Ranch. For years I have enjoyed going there with my kids and taking part in the programs run by Lee Summers, who, to my surprise, does not have a teaching background. She’s a natural born teacher of kids. She listens to them and gently prods them onward. She modestly gave all the credit to their natural interest, but you and I know that a bad teacher can kill all but the strongest will that a child has to learn.

One of the coolest things about writing is that you enter into every subject through the door that you drew in the wall of your knowledge. That door is the place that you think, based on what you already know, where the good story lies. You have this image of what you’ll see when you open the door. If you’re a bad writer, you’re already planning what you will write, and you’re just looking for people to give you what you’re looking for. If you’re attempting, at least, to be a good writer, you approach that door knowing that once it’s open, anything is possible.

I expected to write about what a great program it is, and how all the local families who haven’t taken part in their programs need to sign up. And I will probably write about that. But my conversation with Lee opened into a whole other can of worms. We don’t live near Felton, so we’ve never taken part in Quail Hollow’s afterschool science program, but I know that in this time of budget cuts and focus on tests, science at schools is getting the short end of the stick, especially for elementary kids. I’m guessing a lot of families were thankful for QH’s program to fill in the gaps.

Then the past year happened, and, well, we’re just outta luck. Lee is thankfully not out of luck — she still has her job. But her job is going to take her around the county working parts of jobs that other people who were laid off were doing. Quail Hollow’s afterschool programs? Gone. Quail Hollow’s weekend programs? Barely surviving, depending on the level of commitment of their volunteers.

I can’t imagine how hard it is for a person of conscience to be working in our state government right now. I’m not sure that many of the people in our legislature are truly people of conscience; I’m definitely losing any hope that I had that our governor is a person of conscience. Yes, we’re in big trouble, but there are ways to fix this big trouble.

This all reminds me of when my daughter was in preschool and was having trouble in a teacher’s class that she’d just moved into. I met with the teacher one day and suggested some things that might help my daughter: more guidance with structured projects, more one-on-one attention and conversation… The teacher answered (and I quote this exactly): “That is not my philosophy.” Not being the queen of comebacks, I only thought of the perfect one later: “I don’t have a philosophy; I have a child.”

Frankly, I just don’t give a darn if you are in our state government and your philosophy is that taxes stink. I’ll tell you what stinks: how many kids I personally know who won’t have healthcare if you “no new taxes” people win out. Those kids without healthcare will save us money, right? Except the little indications of underlying health problems will go unnoticed, and one day they end up in the emergency room. $120 per year for a well child visit vs. $800 minimum for emergency treatment, plus doctors who should be helping car accident victims having their time taken up with asthma and diabetes management, parent education, social work.

I thought we all got this straight for the last 8 years: trickle down theory Does Not Work. Investment in our infrastructure, education, and health Does Work. Sheesh. Even the Economist, which I’m getting free through a promotion, thinks that we should have nationalized healthcare.

And our state parks? And our county parks that are suffering because of the fallout from our state budget and our state parks? Think about the money we’re going to have to invest to fix the broken facilities, the damage to the environment due to poaching.

Just think about this: When we were in Mexico a couple of years ago, we went to a beach that was described in our guidebook as a “charming, local hangout.” There were diapers and baby poop floating in the water. Think that can’t happen here? If no one is taking out the garbage, if the restrooms are boarded up, where do you think all the poop is going to go? Our fisheries are already in trouble — poop in the water is just going to make it worse. The devastation to our state is just beginning.

Or, on the other hand, it can be stopped. We do have options, and a lot of it depends on how the state deals with their problems, which do, in fact, trickle down into becoming counties’ problems and cities’ problems. I’m so glad Lee has her job, but I hope to see her back at Quail Hollow on weekdays too. If she’s not there to watch out for the place, what are we bound to lose in the long run?

What makes a good teacher?

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately: why is it that some people are good teachers and others can’t ever seem to connect with kids? Why is it that some teachers can glide through a classroom, knowing what each kid is doing, noticing who is in trouble, who is bored, who is engaged, while others seem to get flustered if one child needs something unexpected? Why is it that some teachers seem to have an innate sense of when they are being faced with a “teachable moment,” while others will go on and on long after they’ve lost their audience?

First of all, I have a firm belief that there is some possibly unquantifiable quality that makes some people ready to learn to be a teacher. Call it inspiration or personality type or whatever, but some people just have the right sense of kids. People who don’t have this sense, I think, can learn to be adequate teachers. But the great teachers all have a quality that they bring to the job that training can’t create.

Perhaps one aspect of this unquantifiable quality is believing that you have something to offer your students. One teacher I’m familiar with always seemed so unsure of herself; this insecurity translated to the classroom and kids just didn’t trust that she was a solid quantity in the classroom.

Another aspect is that a good teacher is to a certain extent “a people person,” though I have known great classroom teachers who were not terribly personable outside of class. In class, however, they are totally focused on the kids as individual people. A great preschool teacher, for example, is almost always terse to the point of being dismissive with parents if s/he’s really hooked into what’s happening the classroom. When my son was in preschool, at first this bothered me. But then I got it: a good teacher focuses on the people s/he’s teaching, not their parents.

On the other hand, a good teacher, outside of the classroom, needs to be able to step back and consider the child in a larger way and be able to articulate that to the parents. My dream teacher is totally in the moment with my kids, but then later when we’re at a conference or talking on the phone, she can step back and say, you know, I’ve been noticing this about your son, and here’s how I’m altering what I’m doing because of it.

Good teachers that work with groups of kids also need to be able to have a sense of the group. Recently I was at a science camp with my kids and I was chatting with the teacher. The kids were playing a game of tag with the counselors, but the teacher had half an eye on them while we were talking. He broke our conversation short, saying, I can feel that the kids are getting ready to sit down and learn something. And they were. And they did.

In reality, there’s no way for a good teacher to be the best teacher for everyone, but he really needs to try. I have seen teachers in action who were just fabulous with a certain subset of their students, but they let the others just follow along as they could. A teacher needs to recognize that some kids will be hooked in visually, some aurally. Some might need a physical connection. My daughter, for example, is much more likely to listen to an adult who pauses long enough to touch her and wait for eye contact before she speaks. It’s a small thing, but a teacher who gets that is more likely to reach her.

And as a teacher’s career progresses, I think the overwhelming challenge is for a teacher to consider each new classroom of kids a new beginning, a separate journey that she is excited to take with each kid. When I was in my twenties I had a conversation that has stuck with me. I was talking to a woman in her fifties who had been teaching the same grade for thirty years. She was telling me how much she loved it, and how people seemed amazed that she still loved it so much. She said to me, “The great joy in my life is teaching kids to read. Every single time a child learns to read, it’s completely new to me. It’s a miracle that I help happen.”

I don’t know why this has stuck with me so strongly, but perhaps I just felt its truth and its power. My children and I have been the recipients of way too much half-baked education. Teaching is not a job for the lazy, the uninspired, the people who don’t want to take their work home with them. It’s a commitment to changing a child’s life, which is almost as big a commitment as creating that child’s life in the first place.

One curry at a time

Americans who eat Indian food are often rabid fans; those who make it are… more adventurous souls. Since my husband and I are in both categories, I thought I should write a bit about it.

First of all, for most Americans there’s the huge spice learning curve. Turmeric? Cardamom? And I may be dating myself here, but when we first started cooking Indian food, you didn’t see packaged “heat’n’go” Indian food in your supermarket. Finding unusual spices was an adventure in itself. I remember my years-later-to-be husband telling me about his odyssey finding “curry leaves.” I’d been cooking Indian food for years yet I didn’t know what he was talking about. It’s a whole sub-continent of cultural information we didn’t grow up with.

A few things have guided our adventure. One is going to eat really great Indian food. As far as we are concerned, there is only one place in Santa Cruz County that you can do that: Ambrosia. We’ve had some other decent places come and go, but if you don’t see your favorite listed here, believe me, I’ve tried it and I’m telling you it’s not someplace you’ll learn what good Indian food is!

Indian food is generally broken into two main categories, north and south. Most restaurants are north. You’ll have to go to Sunnyvale, the epicenter of Indian food in California, for good south Indian food. I’ll leave it at that — I could go on for days about what makes a fine dosa.

The next thing that guided our adventure in Indian cuisine was a few good cookbooks. The very best for the novice Indian cuisine cook is Yamuna Devi’s Lord Krishna’s Cuisine. Perhaps she’s able to translate the cuisine so clearly to American readers because she’s an Italian girl from New York (renamed when she went to India to follow her guru). But the range of these recipes is incredible. And amazingly, she has a great number of recipes that will jibe a bit better with the average American’s concerns: in other words, not all of her recipes end with “add a cup of heavy cream,” as do many of the recipes by the other Indian Cuisine author we love, Madhur Jaffrey. Jaffrey’s books that we have contain lots of the standards of northern Indian cuisine; they’re complex, heavy, fattening, and wonderful. Devi includes a variety of recipes that would be served at banquets as well as on the street. We have lots more really great Indian cookbooks that I won’t recommend, since I’m talking about starting from the beginning.

So two really important questions come up now: what about kids? what about those ingredients?

Well, first of all, I have to tell you that kids will eat Indian food. In fact, some hundreds of millions of them do every day. And the two that live in our household. There are, of course, some Indian staples that will appeal to American kids more than others. I suggest that you start with what you know your kid likes: for example, every single Indian meal I used to make contained chickpeas, because I knew my “pickier” daughter would eat them. I’d take any recipe, and either make some Indian-spiced chickpeas on the side (slice up some onions and garlic, brown them in oil or clarified butter, add a few mild Indian spices, dump in a can of chickpeas, heat, and serve), or sometimes I’d just dump a can of chickpeas into whatever I was cooking.

OK, now you KNOW I’m not talking gourmet here. I’m talking about introducing Indian cuisine to your family, by hook or by crook.

If your child is still a baby, start now. Dal, the ubiquitous bean dishes of every Indian meal, can be made mild, soft, and easy to eat by those without teeth. Raita, a standard north Indian component of the meal, is a sweet (make it really sweet at first) yogurt and cucumber relish. My daughter, if she eats nothing else from an Indian meal, eats rice, beans (dal), and raita. Any baby brought up on this stuff isn’t going to balk when you add a chicken curry or charchari vegetables later.

If you’ve got kids who haven’t had much Indian food, get them hooked on the stuff that’s the Indian equivalent of junkfood: deep fried breads (can’t go wrong with that), sweet chutneys, and Indian versions of pretty much anything they like. If you have a kid who loves potatoes, or beans, or broccoli, find an Indian recipe, perhaps tone it down a bit at first, and keep going.

Many Indian foods are not nearly as hard to make as you think if you haven’t tried yet. First of all, you need to find the ingredients. If you live near the Bay Area, go to India Cash and Carry in Sunnyvale. If not, your health food store might have overpriced spices and ghee (clarified butter — really, if you can get to an Indian grocery store, don’t pay the prices that your health food store charges; it’s like they’re selling clarified gold!). You can even clarify your own butter.

Other pre-made stuff you might want to pick up: Our kids LOVE and DEVOUR frozen paratha (flat bread, which in some places you can get whole grain versions of) and chapatis (another flatbread which are whole grain). Back in my early days I loved having some Patak’s spice mixes around, though we don’t use them much anymore. Once you get the hang of it, mixing your own spices is easy and somewhat like meditation, assuming you can get your kids to leave you alone while you’re doing it. Our daughter loves to munch on popped mung beans, which they sell spiced as a snack and as an ingredient in chaat (Indian street food).

The main rule to follow is to remember that kids need to be offered something over and over before they’ll adopt it. If you keep making good food that you enjoy, eventually your kids will notice. Don’t make them their standard mac’n’cheese until they really have tried the stuff you’re eating. And have I written about the incredible value of family dinners? Gotta do that one of these days. In essence: don’t feed them separately or they’ll eat separately and stay picky!

Our “picky” daughter has recently fallen in love with Indian eggplants (which we get from our farmer’s market) stuffed with spices. She swears she doesn’t like eggplant otherwise, but we’re patient. We know that we’re breaking down the barriers, one curry at a time.

My soccer coach changed my life

My morning reading included My soccer coach changed my life, an opinion piece in the SF Chronicle. The writer makes the point that her involvement in soccer in high school taught her how to set her sights high and work hard toward a goal. She credits her soccer coach with her getting into UCBerkeley.

I second her argument and take it further: cutting arts, physical education, and other “non-essential” parts of the curriculum from public schools doesn’t just hurt kids who need an extra boost. It hurts even the “best” students.

Last fall I wrote an article on school funding for Growing Up in Santa Cruz. I was tempted to write the article in first person, about my own experiences with “non-essential” curriculum. Because unlike Zulma Muñoz, I didn’t grow up with any major disadvantages. I was a straight-A student with educated parents living in a small town.

But it was “non-essential” curriculum that saved me, as well. Though I was a good student, I didn’t like school — many of the academic classes were boring, and the social climate was unpleasant for me. What got me through the day were the creative classes — art, music — and my extracurricular activities. In the fall I ran cross country; in the spring I ran track. I don’t remember any particular coach inspiring me, but I do know that there were many days that the only thing I looked forward to at school were the non-school portions of the day.

For my article I interviewed Meri Pezzoni, who recently retired from teaching choral music for PVUSD. She said that other teachers would complain that certain students wouldn’t turn up for math but they’d be there for her choral class. Her point was that at least they were there for singing; once in the door, it’s possible to reach a student. But if you don’t get them in the door in the first place, you’ve lost them.

“Extra-curricular” activities are often the ones that get the kids in the door. They are absolutely essential if our aim is to educate children to become productive members of our society.

Right now throughout California, however, school boards, site management teams, teachers, and principals are meeting and trying to figure out what they’re going to cut. Of course they’re not going to cut math or language arts, because they are “core” curriculum, and probably more importantly, they are what is on The Test.

What’s going to happen is that those schools that still have music are going to have a hard time justifying putting money into it. No matter that music education improves test scores. No matter that at-risk kids might only be turning up at school to play a sport or finish their sculpture in art class. No matter that our best students, who are soon going to go off to our best universities, might also be inspired only by something “non-essential.”

They’re going to have to cut, and cut they will. To save the state money, they’re going to lay off all those teachers, who will then not have to pay income tax, and who won’t buy taxable goods, so the state will make less money. And we’ll end up with yet another generation of kids who will miss out on the inspiration, team-building, and goal-setting that they would learn in their “non-essential” courses.

Soccer Girl

There are a couple of areas of parenting in which I admit freely that I have given up. One of them was enrolling my kids in activities that would teach them the basics of group sports, especially those dreaded sports that depend on catching balls. You see, I grew up in a baseball and hockey family. I also have very bad eyes. So in my youth I did learn to throw a baseball pretty well, and skate well enough to get around, but when a ball came at me, I’d see two of them. I’d have just enough time to think, “eenie, meenie, miney, moe” and then if I didn’t duck the darn thing would hit me in the face.

Not surprisingly, I never tried hockey. I wanted to keep my teeth.

When my son, whose eyes are perfect, expressed his dread of signing up for sports, it wasn’t a big deal to me. I also thought of my sister, whose family schedule revolved around whether her son’s team was winning. And there was that husband I chose, who, like me, prefers solitary, man-battling-his-own-limitations sports. I eased my conscience by making sure that my son is enrolled in a school that has P.E.

So when my daughter mentioned that she wanted to play soccer, it hardly registered. It was like she’d said “I want to be princess of the universe,” one of those passing fancy things. (Well, OK, it is not a passing fancy that she is, in fact, Empress of the Universe!) But then she said it again. And then a flyer turned up in her box at school. “I want to go to soccer camp,” she announced. And she was serious.

The flyer was from an outfit called Santa Cruz Soccer. I know nothing about local soccer groups. But they had something they called “economy camp,” and that seemed to fit the bill. I signed her up. The appointed day was the other day, and we turned up with bells on. “Oh, the economy camp? You didn’t get a call?”

I suddenly knew that things were going to go badly… but then they didn’t! “No problem,” said Bill, who runs the camp. He got a couple of teenagers to take my daughter onto the field, and she was gone, totally hooked in. He explained that they’d had to cancel my daughter’s camp, but that they’d just work her into the one that was going on.

It was at that point that I had to start into my standard speech about my daughter’s behavioral oddities. People sometimes find it surprising at first that I stay to watch her, given that she’s not a clingy kid and seems so completely with it… till she isn’t. Although I don’t want to prejudice people, I think they’re better off forewarned and she’s better off if I’m there to support her and help teachers understand her needs. Bill was totally understanding. He and one of his coaches, Katie, told me that they got lots of kids who have behavioral difficulties, and in fact Katie works with special needs kids during the schoolyear.

I felt like I’d walked into a place where I was understood, and where I just didn’t have to say anymore. It was a fabulous feeling. So was watching my six-year-old out on that field. I noticed that they kept someone — a teenage counselor or a coach — on her all the time, which is what she needs. She was happy and confident.

This is how I wish all the things my kids take part in were run: The people running it don’t bother worrying about whether the mix-up was my mistake or theirs. They find a way to include children who don’t fit in. They’re relaxed about the kids’ behavior, but also prepared to take care of whatever they get. When a kid needs something different than the rest of the kids, they find a way to accommodate.

My daughter was so in love with the experience that she was relatively easy to deal with. Some other kids had various “issues,” though, and I watched the staff take care of them supportively and firmly. They didn’t coddle the kids; they were just realistic about the differences between kids and what they are able to do. I guess that perhaps in this regard they have an easier job than a classroom teacher, but I bet if I saw these same people at work during the schoolyear, they’d be just as impressive.

Some people get kids. It’s such a joy to find them and watch them work their magic.

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