Life is Complicated -- and Quieter!

Life has been nuts.

You'd think with a second "me" in the office, it would be easier. But then there is the mentoring and helping of Jr. Me, not to mention the complete and utter clusterfuck that one of our departments has created for us. I've had so much trouble out of them from the beginning -- and some of the mess they made is still not cleaned up despite numerous emails/begging/menacing tone/etc. It's so bad I made a Shit List. And they're on #33. Seriously. I want to blog about it, but so far I can't get past typing "BLARGHH!"

In happier news, I'm up for an Outstanding Teacher Award this year. The downside is that they basically put me up against Super Prof in my department. Seriously, this is like Hong Kong Phooey going up against The Green Lantern. So my chances of winning it are teeny-tiny. But, it still looks great just to be nominated, and there is a chance, however small, that I still might win. Part of what gets weighted in the decision is unsolicited student recommendations, and my first-generation students can absolutely kill in that department. But I'm not holding my breath. Besides, the nominations carry over to the next year, if I'm not mistaken, so then Super Prof won't be eligible after having just won it for another five years.

In other news, we had Dante's first parent/teacher conference since he started middle school. Not Good. While Dante has mostly B's with a high C or low A here and there, he's not going to maintain that much longer because of his work habits. We were a little suspicious that he rarely brought in homework, and we had good reason to be. He was slopping through his math homework and turning it in, getting 50s on it (out of 100). He was missing just enough work to seriously impact his grade -- and his teachers had given him several opportunities to make this work up. But what was worse to us was that he simply wasn't doing much of anything in class. The teacher would say to get started, he'd dawdle around, she'd tell him to get busy, and he would be "defiant" and still not do the work. I think he is basically not paying any attention, so that when they tell him to get started, he has no idea on what and doesn't want to get into trouble by asking. Then there is his organizational issue. I would say most 12 year old boys aren't very organized. But I've seen the inside of Dante's locker, and let me tell you, it should be labeled a crime scene. That's why work doesn't get turned in -- it wanders off to die at the bottom of his locker. Nothing goes in folders. He has to dig and search for everything.

What's really ironic is that in a lot of other ways, Dante has adjusted to middle school just fine. He's dealing with a locker, he meets his close friends for lunch, he seems to be handling the new start time well. He even joined the Technical Student Association and the Robotics Club. This is when I became suspicious that my child had been taken over by the Body Snatchers and replaced with Pod Dante. He's gone to math tutoring workshop during lunchtime. He's signed up for Teen Talk group sessions with the counselor. He even went to see the counselor personally twice, because he thought it was a good idea they had a job just to talk to kids. He promptly reported a drinking problem and parental neglect. He picked these off the information sheet she passed out when she did his class visit. He explained that his drinking problem involved having to go to the water fountain too many times and getting into trouble, and parental neglect as the fact that El Hijo and I don't always like playing Nerf guns and Star Wars video games. I'm still waiting on the call from Social Services.

So after the conference, I was pretty hot. El Hijo and I went home and made a plan before we picked him up from the Boys & Girls Club. We welcomed him home into a whole new world of concentration. We were pretty harsh, because he was fucking up pretty good. We grounded him from going outside for a week. We took away all electronics, including watching TV and playing on the computer. He comes home, he gets to work on his homework or studying for a test; he has to get his planner signed by every teacher in his core schedule, whether he has homework or not, and we sign it at the end of the day; we went after school and he completely cleaned up his locker; I've driven him promptly back to school to retrieve "forgotten" homework; if he doesn't get the planner signed by all teachers, his grounding extends a day for each day he gets; each week we email all his teachers to check on his behavior -- if they tell us things aren't improving, he gets grounded until we ask them again. For a flitty bird like Dante, this was hell. If it would be possible to look up "flibbertygibbit" in the dictionary, an interactive video showing him being him would be available next to the definition. Maybe this punishment isn't as bad as the time I garbage bagged up everything he owned and he earned it back through good behavior piece by piece. But nearly so. Probably ranks as #2 in the list of punishments he's had in his life. But the reaction he's had has been a bit surprising.

Day One: Much weeping, gnashing of teeth, wearing sackcloth, and lamenting for lost technology. To quote the Bible, which was totally speaking about poor school performance here: "For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath. And cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth." (Matthew 25:2). Hath he done his homework, technology shall have been given, and he would've had in abundance. I think Dante would definitely say he had been thrust into outer darkness, given the electronic glare he prefers to live in.

Day Two: Whimpering over loss of technology; eventually gets out Legos and builds an impressive starship that includes a sickbay, repair-bots and mounted smaller gunships. A considerable peace falls over the house. It's amazing how loud technology can really be.

Day Three: Some words mentioned about loss of technology. More gunships built. Sat down and read two chapters of Newbery Award winning fiction book. Played Clue with parents and Quiddler. Self-initiated cleaning of entire room, and did it mostly right. Cleaned out all garbage, sorted papers, dug out dirty clothes from the hinterlands of his tiny bedroom. Put together Halloween costume made entirely from pieces of previous years' costumes. He's going as a Funk Skeleton (his term). What that means is he's wearing a trench coat looking thing, has a full skeleton head with chest piece (which is tucked into trench coat) and a giant afro wig. He tried it on -- it looks hilarious. He looks like a funk extra from the Thriller video. I'll take pictures when he's got it exactly where he wants it.

I may bust all the technology in the house accidentally-on-purpose. He's been more creative in the past few days and gotten more done than he ever has in his life!

-- DV