My Life is All About Homework and Itchy Rashes

Everything here is just bobbing along.

Merlot has a rash. I’ve been to the ped twice in the past week. Once for the virus and again for the post viral rash. Yuck. She spent the weekend stoned on benedryl.

My kids have had mountains of homework. I’ve said here before but homework is a big deal in the nest. My kids go to magnet schools that they had to test into to get into and if they don’t keep their grades up they are out. Our districted schools are not an option, so we save 50K between the 3 of them by making sure they can stay in these excellent schools. It requires us constantly staying on them though, checking agenda books and grades and making sure that they are on task and on target.

We had Jumping Bean’s school meeting a few weeks ago. Stanley and I met at the school with her teachers to discuss her progress. Her English teacher told us first thing that he was worried about her adjustment to middle school. He said,

“She wrote this letter to her favorite author and now I’m really concerned about her relationships with her peers here. Is she okay at home?”

Oh shit.

Backstory: She came in a month ago with an assignment (required) to enter an Arts in Literature contest. The assignment was to write a letter to their favorite author about how the book made an impact in their life. She said she had done it. I looked online at the assignment and requirements. It was not supposed to be a fangirl letter, but a real letter outlining how the book impacted you in some way. I requested to see it and it was horrid. It was also worth a test grade and this is her lowest class. She had written the ultimate fangirl letter.

“I loved your book so much because I loved the characters and I can’t wait for the movie!!!!”

Umm, no.

That wasn’t going to bring that grade up.

So, I sat her down and went over the rubric for the assignment with her and tried to get her to think of all of the reasons that she loved the book. You loved the book because…it made you feel… gimme something here kid, gimme something.

The book she chose was called Divergent, which is a scifi post apocalyptic story for tween/teens and was all about people being assigned a ‘faction’ based on their primary personality characteristic as determined when they were 16 years old. There was no diversity within ‘factions’ at all. Then of course there is a revolution and yada yada. So, I’m asking her how Divergent is like middle school… like maybe the kids in middle school all want to fit in… like maybe no one really wants to be different… gimme something, gimme something… maybe middle school would be more fun if people didn’t want to be just like their peers and it was okay to be different. So, with my significant imput, she writes this letter to the author of Divergent to be submitted into this contest. The letter basically says that she loved Divergent because in middle school everyone wants to be like their peers and no one wants to stand out and be different. They all have to like the same music, clothes, bands, in order to be popular and she can’t wait to get older because then it will be cool to be different again.

Because, middle school is, you know, a drag…

So, she turned it in and a week later brought it home graded.

We got a 93. I was insulted.

On the top was a little handwritten note from her teacher that said

“I enjoyed your essay, you did a great job! I’m sorry you find middle school to be difficult but I’m sure that by the time you are in high school you will have found your tribe.”

Back to the meeting: Stanley and I were sitting there and her English teacher talked about his concerns she has social problems for almost 30 minutes. He asked if she had friends, if she was shy, if she is “a loner because based on her letter, she appears to be a loner and struggling but I really don’t see that in class.” Her other teachers were like, “No, she’s really social, maybe we should see the letter!?”

Stanley was like, “What letter?”