This picture was taken after Greg forgave Wiley for eating one of his hiking boots. They weren’t on speaking terms for an entire day. So this is lovey-dovey make-up stuff.
Sage has a homeschooling blog. I’m teaching him to edit photos and using the blog as an opportunity to practice authentic writing. HERE IT IS. He’s really enjoying working on it, and has comments to reply to! Do feel free to leave your own–he gets really excited when he sees new comments…:-D
I’m scared, but am working on interpreting this feeling as a normal scared feeling instead of a full-on freakout scared feeling. It has to do with my thoughts about quitting my job. When I’m not scared, I’m thinking, “I’m free, I’m free!” and totally enjoying all of the possibilities and the time I get to spend with Sage, outside, exercising, etc. When I’m scared, I’m thinking crap like, “I can’t earn enough money,” and related stuff.
Fact is, I’ve been wanting to homeschool Sage for a while–it was a goal two years ago, and I’m darn lucky that I finally realized that I have to live life consciously and not on some sort of perceived safety autopilot sort of thing or my REAL goals will never be met. So I have to keep on reminding myself of this fact in order to avoid being terrified by the whole thing.
I’m reading a book right now called John the Baptizer, which is just an astounding story of John the Baptist. The guy who wrote it did an amazing amount of research, and so reading it is like diving into this life of Jewish mysticism and learning about the different groups (Essenes, Zealots, etc.) and this really extraordinary man. Strangely, the descriptions of John remind me of Sky. I can totally see Sky living in the wilderness on locusts and honey, wearing a loincloth, having wild hair and intense eyes and decrying a materialist, blind society. Perhaps that is one reason I’m enjoying this book so much.
Sage and I are really digging the whole homeschooling thing. Sage has his own blog, which I set up as a place for him to write stories and basically do whatever creative thing–it is called Sage’s Homeschooling Blog. That may change. His brother added to the story Sage has been writing. That made Sage ecstatic. It’s good to feel that connection from Portland.
We’ve been working on multiplication–doing different things to get the “hard ones” into memory.
We’ve also been going on long “field trips” which turn into two hour long walks in the beautiful weather we’ve been having here. It’s done wonders for my mental health. Today we went to an art gallery. This week, Sage mastered long division. It’s been a good, good week.
Wiley had a moment of passive resistance. He saw Greg and Sage leaving to go somewhere in the car, and jumped out of the window to join them. When Greg told him to go in the house, he ran into the park, where he sat down and refused to move. As you can see, Greg had to carry him all the way from the park to the house. It was ridiculous.
It feels good to be living more mindfully, and not rushing around all the time. I’ve realized that I’d rather learn to cook rice and beans 20 different ways than have my kid in the public schools.
I’ve been having vivid dreams lately. Early this morning, I met a man who had been working for himself since 1981. If I believed in “guides,” I’d have to say he was one. He asked me, “Why do you want to work for yourself?”
I started singing. “I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more…” He looked at me, and I answered again in a different way. “I don’t want to work on the plantation.”
We walked downstairs to a small bar, and sat down to have a drink. On the jukebox, Bob Dylan’s song, Maggie’s Farm, began playing. It was beautiful serendipity, only in my dream of course.
They say that Dylan wrote that song because he felt his creativity was being stifled working for too many people (fans). I suppose it meant he was going to write songs more from his heart than for a crowd.
The dream coincides very well with reality right now. Reality is a long story, and it ends with me being on leave from my job and most likely resigning in a week or two.
Reality is this.
Last Monday, Sage walked over to my classroom after school and told me that a girl in his class had called him Stupid, Geek, Dork, and Retarded while kicking him repeatedly. He showed me the marks on his legs. He said, “Mom, our school has a policy of no physical contact.”
I marched right over to the elementary school and spoke with the teacher, who had been out of the room at the time. The teacher asked my son, “What did you do to offend her?” She then proceeded to tell me about problems Sage had been having in class paying attention. When I told her that I was there to discuss the incident of Sage having been kicked she rolled her eyes at me. At that point, I told her she’d better get someone to mediate our meeting.
The principal came in and made nice noises about fixing the situation, meeting with Sage and the girl the next day, being safe, blah blah, and contacting me in a couple of days.
The next day was the class field trip. The girl went along on the trip with everyone else. There was never any meeting, or any consequences that I could see.
I’m pretty sure that if my son repeatedly kicked someone else while name-calling, he’d be wearing the gray uniform at my discipline program. Here’s the thing. There are a lot of children in our school district who are apparently raised by wolves. (I know. That’s an insult to wolves.) At any rate, many teachers and administrators make excuses for it because otherwise, they’d be expelling these kids left and right. And TEA and other government agencies are very concerned about the number of minority kids expelled, so race comes into it, and basically, rules are not implemented in a fair and impartial manner.
If I kicked my kid and called him names and someone found out, he would probably be removed from my home.
I’m not sending my kid back into an environment which, through inaction, tacitly supports this abuse.
I was about to take leave anyway, because I’m in a lot of pain and having to leave work frequently due to panic attacks. This was pretty much the icing on the cake. There’s a reason for everything, and I feel as though a huge burden has been lifted from my shoulders, because I’ve been worried about Sage and school for a long time. Experience has pretty much given me the ability to see into the future as far as kids with special needs and high school are concerned. It’s not good.
I’m very excited about homeschooling Sage. He has been asking me to anyway. He is tired of the bullying, and not understanding the teacher because she is talking too fast and classmates are causing background noise.
As for money, I’ll continue to do the freelance writing. It’ll be the meat and potatoes, rather than the gravy, but that’s okay, because I have other things in the works as well.
No more plantation. No more sending kids home from school because the pockets on their jeans aren’t right (yes, true, daily). The kids and I both know what stupid rules are. How long can you work in a sick system before you become sick yourself?
