What We Do Matters Part 1

Last week, as some you know, I was the lawyer for a Mock Trial for Special Education Law 510. It was a difficult case. The parents of a child with AS had taken him out of school because there was disagreement between the school people and the parents about his special education needs. Because the boy was academically gifted, the school people thought he should be in the general education classroom with no special education component. The parents differed because they were concerned about how being in the general education classroom environment would affect the child's ability to learn. Large classrooms are noisy, confusing places and the sensory over-stimulation can affect an Aspie's ability to focus. The parents also had concerns that the child was marginalized and being bullied. So they took him out of school, but for reasons involving the child's socialization, they brought him to the municipal park to play and sometimes he was in the park while the school children were also playing in the park. Nearly two years later, the principal of the school and some teachers tried to ban the child from the park, saying that his behavior was a problem. They insisted that they should have the right to have the school psychologist re-evaluate the child before he could play in the park.

When we first got the case, my group spent a good deal of time mucking around with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), because we were focused on the park issue. And we were a little angry because, we are not lawyers, and after all, in class we had studied the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and we did not see how the case we were given fit. Here is a homeschooled child being deprived of the right to play on a public playground. I even contacted Judy Aron over at Consent of the Governed because she is a researcher working with National Home Education Legal Defense. However, because I was swamped with my other course, I was unable to take Judy's gracious offer to help.

At one of our rather hilarious group meetings--we coped with the stress with humor--a change of perspective took place. We began to wonder about why the parents were bringing such a case two years after taking their child out of school. And we realized that the real violation took place when the parents' concerns were ignored at the child's IEP meeting two years ago. Not only that, the school people compounded the problem by asserting their power against the family two years later. The parents were most likely bringing the case in order to get the school off their backs and to stop what they perceived to be harassment by a powerful institution. With this change in our perspective, we were able to find our case in IDEA--because Congress found that one problem (among many) with special education was that parents are not included in the IEP process effectively. (And this is very true as any parent who has dealt with the special education process can tell you). And Congress wrote into the law ways to correct that. I don't know if we won or not yet. In the original case, the school won on procedural grounds--in our public institutions you can behave very badly, but if you cross all your "T's" and dot all of your "i's" you can get away with it.

In my closing statement I said, in part:

"...But in our concept of law, (justice) is not in some pure realm. Justice is not justice if it does not reach into the sometimes messy conflicts of ordinary lives. A great scholar and legalist once said: “Justice delayed and justice denied will bring the sword.”
I think what he meant was that what we do here now matters. How we respond to the need of one person for justice matters. How an individual is treated in our public institutions matters. If a child is bullied, if his parents are harassed, if a student does not receive needed services, all of this affects all of us. We have learned this only too well this past week as the details of the Virginia Tech shooting have been revealed."

This shows that government schools, and the people who operate them, don't know winning for losing. When a lawyer came to talk to our class about the IDEA and due process hearings, I saw this clearly. He kept talking about the how the schools can "win." What he did not appear to get is that if a parent is frustrated to the point of bringing a due process hearing, there is a problem that the school has not dealt with in some way. When a school comes off as asserting its considerable power over individual citizens--taxpayers all--then the school loses the public relations battle even if they win the case. This is so, because schools are not generally perceived as friendly places by the people who were and are compelled to go to them, and school people are not held in great respect in our communities. The root of that issue is twofold: the compulsory nature of school attendance in a free society and the virtual monopoly school people have over education process in this country. School people are not required to listen to the people they require to attend, and to pay for their services. Further, the institutional power school people have, which is derived from compulsion, has created in many of them an unbearable officiousness and know-it-all attitude. On top of it all, public schools have not shown great success in teaching their clients to read and write and figure, let alone educating them to think critically for themselves about the issues of our day. This is painfully obvious to anyone who has taught at the university level in the United States. And the name-calling and sound-byte-repeating-nature of what passes for public discourse is another indicator of the failure of schools to educate. For all these reasons, even if the school people have the letter of the law on their side, in any tangle with the public, they lose good-will.

I believe that one problem common to much of our institutional life in the United States is that at our core we have forgotten how to treat one another as unique, irreplacible human beings. When, as in the case above, the needs of the child are eclipsed by the need of an institution to deny responsibility for mistakes it has made, for unthinking power asserted over children as if they were interchangable parts, we all lose. As I said further in my closing argument:

"...(my clients) ask that the ... Public Schools recognize that this is not about power. It is not about money. It is about the future of one child. And if justice means anything at all—if it is to have a reality beyond abstraction, then what we decide here in the midst of a real and messy conflict matters."

Ultimately, it all comes down to this: What we do to one another matters. What we say to one another matters. How we treat one another matters. It matters in communities where we are acting as individuals, and it matters even more in institutional settings where the institutional power of what we represent can become oppressive to our brothers and sisters.

If we are honest with ourselves, we all know we make mistakes in our dealings with others. And when we do, we are obligated to make things right. To admit that we are, all of us, fallible human beings.

I think that when we insist that events like the VT shootings are about gun-control, or about surveillance, or about the evil in one individual, we are missing a critical point. And by this I do NOT mean that we do not need need to have a conversation about gun-control, or about surveillance, or about the fact that people can do evil. What I mean is that all behavior has causes--whether the behavior itself is rational or not. And if we are really honest with ourselves, we can see where a fragile mind and heart can be broken when cornered and bullied in an institution that does not care to stop it. An institution in which those with power turn a blind eye to the responsibility that power entails. And in many cases, that institution is the local public school.

Were the Virginia Tech teachers and students who were murdered in cold blood killed randomly? Yes. They were innocents who reaped the whirlwind sown by others; those who, when given power, chose to turn a blind-eye to the consequences of that power. It is wrong to start pointing fingers at the administration at VT, and blame the victims who were killed because they did not to fight back. The shooter made certain choices and is responsible for them--that is true. But it is also true that those choices were influenced by a broken mind and heart. And that mind and heart were damaged, in part, by terrible emotional pain inflicted by other children who were allowed to bully someone in a public institution that compelled his attendance. Bullied by children who were not taught what it means to be civil, to be compassionate, to be able to put themselves in the place of another person.

And in our case, we began to understand that we were seeing the same thing. A situation in which a public school refused to solve a problem with parents and a little boy by talking to them, treating their concerns as important, stopping the bullying.

In The Uncertainty Principle, a masterful episode of his PBS series, The Ascent of Man, Jacob Bronowski takes us to Auschwitz. There he discusses the importance of the the spiritual component in our dealing with each other as human beings. He says that ultimately, we must remember when making judgements that we are fallible, that we cannot know everything with certainty. In making choices about how we deal with one another, Bronowski says, we must "touch people." And he plunges his hand into the pond--into the ashes of those who were murdered because an institution, the Nazi party, was certain of their unworthiness to live. That scene has stayed forever etched in my mind. And I wonder, can a compulsory institution--one that is given absolute power over the lives of students, one that regularly passes judgement on the worthiness of students by standardized test, one that refuses to be questioned or reformed--can such an instition ever really "touch people?"

Perhaps the spiritual shallowness of the institution is no accident of law or custom. Perhaps the lack of spiritual depth comes from the very nature of the beast. After all, we know that many of the people who make up the system, start out with the best intentions in the world. And yet, when stripped of their own spiritual nature, forced by the nature of the institution into a mold that insists that no one is responsible and that all values are relative, when acting not as individuals, but at the behest of the system, they behave without regard to the sacredness of the individual.

This is something to think more about.

Oops! I Made A Mistake

It happens now and then.

Frankie, over at Kitchen Table Learners reminded me that her son Thomas does not have AS. He is, however, twice-exceptional. That means that he is intellectually gifted and has learning difficulties.

It is late, but I did not want to let another day go by without correcting my mistake.

Frankie, I'm sorry. I wasn't thinking! But this does not get you out of being nominating for the Thinking Blogger Award! See, you've made me think twice as hard today! :)

Frankie has a great post up about some ducks that are visiting her yard. Do go on over and check it out! The ducks' names are Fred and Ethel. Hmmm. They do look a bit like Fred and Ethel Mertz. Remember I love Lucy?

The Thinking Blogger Award

I have been tagged!

I have received the Thinking Blogger Award. My blog was listed on the blog Falling Like Rain as one of 5 blogs that causes readers to think.

This is a meme that has rules!

1. Link to 5 blogs that make you think.
2. Link to the original post about the Thinking Blog Award so that people can go find the exact origin of the meme. (I have linked above).
3. Optional: Display the Thinking Blog Award with a link to the post you wrote. (I am working on this).

It is always a pleasure to find out that what I write makes someone think. At Falling Like Rain, my blog was praised as follows: "This mom has a unique perspective and a writing style that always makes me think about whether or not I am living what I believe."
This is touching praise, indeed. In order to live with integrity, every person must consider this question every day of life. Writing my blog requires to constantly ask myself this question, too.

So now I will list 5 blogs that make me think. Those of you who are listed, please go to the original site (link above) and then, if you choose, follow the rules above. I am imagining a whole wonderful tree of bloggers that make us think!

Disclaimer: I am an equal-opportunity thinker. I enjoy blogs whose authors have very different perspectives that come from many different experiences. From considering the words of others who are different than me, I learn the most.

"Ben Zoma said:
'Who is wise? The person who learns from all human beings. As it is said: From all my teachers I have gotten understanding.' " Pirke Avot 4.1

Five Blogs That Make Me Think

1. Homeschooling Aspergers : Megan in Queensland Australia regularly posts very educational information about life in Australia. Her perspectives on children's safety, raising a son with AS, life "down under," and on homeschooling keep me thinking all the time.

2. Barefoot Meandering : Kathy Jo is homeschooling her kids in my old stomping grounds in Illinois. Her posts keep me laughing, crying and thinking. I am always eager to find out what new developments have happened in the Land of Lincoln. She makes me think about all the details that go into constantly improving the homeschool experience.

3. Kitchen Table Learners : Frankie is a homeschooling mother of one, a child with AS. She shares her perspective on many different aspects of homeschooling and raising a child with an ASD. Her blog brings up a myriad of different ideas and things to think about.

4. Homeschooling the Doctorate? : This was the first homeschooling blog I looked at. The name intrigued me because I am also working on my doctorate. Sarah and Stephen are both working on doctorates in theology and they homeschool one son and are expecting another child. Their posts are informative, funny, touching and wonderful! A good mix of all aspects of their lives can be found here! They make me think about the fact that although their beliefs are not mine, their commitment to living them is.

5. Woman of the Tiger Moon : Beth is homeschooling her children and working on her degree at the same time. She is raising very unique children. She blogs about her experiences and those of her children with a great deal of insight. Her blog makes me continually expand my maps of reality and consider the importance and value of each person I encounter.

It was hard to limit the blogs to five! I was helped by the fact that a number of blogs I read have already been nominated. In fact, someone nominated the Edie Neurolearning Blog just yesterday! There are several others that displayed the award already. In the interest of sharing the wealth, I have nominated other blogs.

And One Year Ago Today...Part II

In the days after we closed on the new house, we began to feel that we might as well move into Lowes and Home Depot. We did a lot of searching for just the right paint colors, we had to get all the painting supplies, and we needed more boxes and tape!

Here is the bedroom sitting room as it looked in March--before we closed. The sellers were in the process of moving out. The walls were a color called Chaps Suede--the same as the living room and upper dining room. The bookeshelves were a kind of light green-blue. We thought it was too much contrast. Although it looked good with the sellers furniture when we first saw the house.




I wanted something warmer and not quite as dark. MLC and I ran around the house on Friday, April 28, 2006, with those three-color paint samples--the ones with the holes in them. For the master bedroom/sitting room, we chose a light color called Champagne Glee. The wall of the fireplace, we painted the middle color, called Badlands Taupe, and the bookshelves were painted the darkest on the sample, called Victorian Rose. In some light, these colors are pinker than I thought they would be, but they are light and warm--making the rooms seem very airy--even in the winter-time. Here is the sitting room after we moved in. More books have gone on the shelves since the picture was taken, but it is otherwise about the same.

The master bath was the same green as the bookshelves in the sitting area. It was very striking with the purple curtains. But there was no purple in the tile, and it was dark in the morning.

Still, the sellers made a lovely room there with the candles and the towel rack in the corner. I am still planning on doing something like the that in wrought iron. I have to save my pennies up!

MLC noticed that the Badlands Taupe picked up a color in the tile border, so we painted the master bath that color--except the corner wall by the shower (right in the picture) is the Victorian Rose.

The water closet had pure white walls and one purple wall. That seemed too stark for us. I painted the water closet the Champagne Glee and the purple wall is now Victorian Rose.

Painting a bathroom is a real project, let me tell you! We had to take the medicine cabinet down. And getting a ladder into a 4' X 2.5' water closet without removing the toilet was a challenge. Especially in order to reach those 10' ceilings! But it came out looking nice! The after picture was taken really "after"--I mean after we got the new tub in!

Thanks for indulging my nostalgia about the weeks in which we picked out colors and painted. And made at least one trip a day to a home-improvement store! At the time it felt frantic because we had a deadline for moving in. But I also remember the fun we had--picnicing on our new dining room floor. Camping out in the living room. Driving back to Albuquerque at dusk when the deer were feeding by the road. It was a pretty good time.

NOT that I want to do that again any time soon!

One Year Ago Today...

One year ago today, we closed on our mountain house.

After closing, we picked up N., loaded Henry with the first load of many boxes and drove on up to see our new home. Because we planned to paint some of the rooms before we moved in, we actually moved on May 19. We took our camera on that first afternoon. Above is the house as we saw it the first time we drove up as proud new owners.

This was the kitchen as it looked on Wednesday evening April 26, 2006. The sellers left us a card and loaf of bread. The wall below the wainscotting on the far right is dark blue.

Here is what the kitchen looked like after we moved in. We painted the wall below the wainscotting on the far right Belmont Green.

On the right is the dining room as it looked on April 26, 2006. Note the blue walls below the wainscotting, the chandelier and the blue flowered curtains. Although very pretty, we thought the blue was too dark. Which is why we replaced it with a color called Belmont Green.

This is the dining room after we moved in.

We replaced the curtains to match the walls, and we put in a new chandelier that we thought was more elegant and matched the upper wall color and complimented our dining room furniture.

To the right is the living room south wall on April 26, 2006. We did no painting in the living room at all. We liked it just the way it was.

We did paint Bruce's office, MLC bedroom and bathroom, N.'s bedroom, my office and the master suite and bathroom, however.

Here is the living room as it looked after we moved in. It is amazing what furniture and pictures on the wall will do.

Last year at this time, we embarked on a three-week project. Every Friday evening during that period we drove up, painted until it got dark, and had a "picnic" Shabbat dinner in our new dining room. Saturday afternoon and all day Sunday were devoted to "working on the new house." N. and I would drive up on Wednesday afternoons as well. I was teaching part time and left early on Wednesday. In Albuquerque, the elementary schools let out early Wednesday afternoon for teaching planning time, so N. was available as well.

Every time we came up, we loaded Henry the Big Red Truck up. By May 19--a Sunday--we had brought most of the boxes. That day, the Bruce and Friends Cooperative Movers rented a U-Haul and moved the furniture, washer, dryer, and other "big" items up. MLC and I brought up the cats and then the dogs, cleaned the new house and directed traffic. N.'s BSA troop obligingly had a camp-out that weekend, so he was safely out of the way.

It was a good move. We were able to pay off the new house with the proceeds from selling the old house--which was our plan. It all worked out very well. But I am glad that that three week period of chaos is over! I always forget how much work making a move is.

But at the same time, I remember that time with a certain nostalgic fondness. It was exciting to be picking out paint, going up to the new house as a family and working together to get it ready for a new phase of life...

But please, do me a favor. Sit me down and give me a good talking-to if I ever start mentioning wanting to move again!

B-B-B-Busy as a BEE! Carnival of Homeschooling

Almost there!



Last night we did our Mock Trial for Special Education Law.

I was worried because the case was difficult and had only one obvious strategy for the plaintiff's side--which was my group's job. Since I am the "Doc" student, I had to be a lawyer. Most groups had 4 people and 2 lawyers, but one student walked out on our group two weeks ago, leaving us with three students. That meant only one lawyer. Me. Have I said that I don't LIKE lawyers very much? Or maybe I should rephrase that--I don't like BEING a lawyer very much. But the others in my group worked hard and helped out a lot last night. Also, the other side did not anticipate our strategy and in fact, by adding a condition to the child in question, made our job easier! We'll find out who won next week, but we did a credible job.

It took hours for the adrenaline to wear off last night!

Today, I have to defend my hypothesis in Neurobiology. This morning I got up early to finish the slide presentation and practice. I couldn't sleep well last night due to that dratted adrenaline! So today I am tired. I hope I can get myself "up" for the presentation. It is 10 minutes with 5 minutes of questions.

Tonight is Guinness Time!

Tomorrow is "take your offspring to work" day at Sandia National Labs. Bruce will take N. I have the day off to recover. I intend to spend part of it over at the Carnival of Homeschooling at Sprittibee! It very appropriately has a "Bee" theme--that works for me!

I still have a reflection paper to write for the Mock Trial and a final to take for Special Education Law. I think the final is overkill after the work it took to do the Mock Trial.
Sigh!

I am counting the days: ALMOST THERE!

Field Trip Friday

Yesterday two big events were on the agenda.

First, the National Weather Service ABQ office held it's annual open house for weather spotters. We have maintained a NWS issued precipitation meter and we are weather spotter station 53 for their "CityNet" program--although we are now outside the city. They have added several other spotters in the East Mountains--soon they will have to change the name to "CountyNet."

So, despite looming paper and presentation deadlines, Bruce, N. and I hopped into Henry for a trip to the NWS.

Here you see N. standing in front of the antique computer that launches weather balloons twice a day, at 4 AM and 4 PM (Zero and 1200 Zulu). (Bruce has a cute way of stepping in with sandwich in hand when I snapped a shot. I lost a few because all you could see was the sandwich).

It is an antique, but it still works--so far.

It is telling that the NWS is one government agency that citizens get services from every day, and important ones at that, and yet they have severe budgetary restrictions going back to Ronald Reagan's presidency. It took them 20 years and countless lives lost in weather emergencies befure they got Doppler Radar in place. The TV stations had them long before the NWS! (They did not say this at NWS--they are good civil servants--but I read it elsewhere).

Here is N. at the forcast desk.

There are several stations at the NWS. There is the Aviation Desk, the Forcast Desk, the Long-Term Outlook Desk (which does 7 day forcasting) and then there is a communications center for talking to the weather spotters. If we get serious rain, wind, hail, snow or see a tornado, we call it in. We also call in temperatures and barometric pressures twice a day. With our terrain, they need this information to forcast winds more accurately. Communications is also important for weather emergencies--like the New Years Snowstorm!

We had a tour of every desk and learned how the meteorologists do their work. N. learned that most of them now have a B.S. in Meteorology and that there are only a few schools that have the degree.

After the NWS, we ran some errands, including getting supplies for N.'s Scout Camp-o-ree.

The Sandia district of the Great Southwest Council had their annual Camp-O-Ree at Cedro Peak--just a few miles from us. We took N. there instead of meeting at the church where his troop meets.

A Camp-O-Ree is not just a regular camping trip. Rather, many different troops gather together and they practice various field exercises. Two things N. mentioned were night orienteering and field first aid.

This year, in honor of the scouting anniversary, the theme was the Boer War. Lord Baden-Powell got his idea for a scouting movement for boys during his service in the Boer War in South Africa. So the boys learned a little something about the Dutch "Afrikaaners" and the English Colonists and the war they fought at the turn of the 20th century.

Here is N. all ready for his Camp-O-Ree experience.

He was not thrilled about my taking his picture, but I told him that was my job as his mother. "Someday..." I started.

"I'll thank you for it! I know, I know!" he completed my sentence.

These boys learn some amazing things in scouts.

This afternoon, I picked up a very tired and wind-burned young scout from his experience. He said the best part was crawling through a simulated mine-field at 3 AM using their compasses in the dark to orienteer.

Only a dedicated scout would be enthusiastic about that!