Pow Pow

You would think that the best part of this past Sunday's family adventure in the mountains would be that the G got to go skiing for the first time.












that his face looked like this most of the day








That at lunch I ate a burger and fry combo like a lady in lust breaking all my "i'm not eating another carb" promises and loving every minute of it

That the G thankfully did not pee his pants as we whisked him from the slopes and desperately tried to peel him out of five bazillion layers

That everytime someone wiped out on the bunny hill the G was right there in their face offering some words of comfort"lady are you ok? i hope you're ok."

No, no the best part of the day was watching the Docta teach the G to ski.
"He's doing it! He's skiing" he would shout up to me.






"He's loving it"






To be honest I think the G was just projecting all that gooey happiness beaming from his giddy Papa who can't wait to show him the vista from the top of the mountain very very soon.






And the Pow Pow, the powder, in Utah is so deep G that you need a snorkel. We'll go there someday too little bugabug...

3D

The G's drawings and paintings have always looked like this...

With a furrowed brow deep in concentration the tip of his tongue darting in and out of his mouth, he sets down to paint windstorms, spark plugs dripping and grampo's eyebrows.

And while no two drawings ever look the same he pays no mind that his classmates have been moving on and turning those wild crazy scribbles into faces and stick figure bodies.

Should I worry he's not drawing faces yet? I ask his teacher
That he chooses not to paint anymore? Its a milestone right that at three they should start drawing circles and faces and move from the abstract to the concrete?

He has... she tells me, you just need to shift your perspective to see it. The G prefers to create things that are three dimensional. The faces, arms and body parts that he makes are not flat on the page but objects he can hold and manipulate. Just look at this creature he made out of legos, the arm can shake hands. How about this man he made out of building materials.
++++++++++
A week later she hands me an article by Brenda Engel "Considering Children's Art"

Preschool (ages 2-5)

scribbles, loops, zigzags, wavy lines, jabs

chance forms or shapes

trying out different effects

the meaning is in the act itself, not in the results or product

Shift your perspective and you can see it... my new mantra

You can be that Servant Too

This morning I sat amongst 500 chatty middle schoolers who crowded into the small gym as we always do every January to celebrate the life of Dr. Martin Luther King. I brought kleenex this time because Dr. King's voice echoing off the bleachers and filling a crowd of young eager minds gets my mascara running every time.

"Everybody can be great, because everybody can serve.

You don't have to have a college degree to serve.

You don't have to make your subject and verb agree to serve.

You don't have to know about Plato and Aristotle to serve.

You don't have to know Einstein's "Theory of Relativity" to serve.

You don't have to know the Second Theory of Thermal Dynamics in physics to serve.

You only need a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love, and you can be that servant."

What will you do? Our student body president asks us all at the conclusion of the assembly.

How will you serve?

I can answer that.

I'm for ending the vicious cycle of illiteracy that closes doors for my students and breeds ignorance, self-loathing, shame and apathy. My plan to serve entails empowering my students to be reading role models in their homes and communities. The idea is if I can teach my students the tools to crack the code and they can share it with their brother, their sister than perhaps I might not see these names again on my roster two or three years down the line.

Before break my students got their first taste of community service on a field trip to the neighborhood elementary school where we sprawled out on the floor in pairs, reading books like Chicks and Salsa and Captain Underpants. Boys whose pants low ride, who have gritty My Space pages and behavior files thick as dictionaries suddenly turn fatherly. They hold books up like master storytellers changing their voices in sync with the characters they are portraying, smiling, nodding their heads, patting their buddies on the back.

Today after the assembly I rolled out part two of my plan and passed out reading logs and arm loads of picture books.

We can all serve even in our own homes. I told them.

Take these picture books and read them to your brothers and sisters. Read every night for a month. Ask questions, point to pictures, discuss interesting ideas and facts, laugh, listen. You only need a heart full of grace for this assignment and a soul generated by love and you can be that servant too.

I am for real...

The G is digging hip hop all of a sudden.

Ok not by mere coincidence....on a drive to the city the Docta decided to knock the dust off the i-pod his parents had given us years ago and fired up the groovy track "Me, Myself and I" by De La Soul.

Do you ever temporarily forget that you have a child along for the ride? Well this was one of those moments...when the Docta switched tracks to another song in the shuffle and the F bombs started to drop I almost lost control at the wheel as I desperately tried to lower the volume.

Too late the heavy bass and fast paced rhyming gave G just enough of a taste to pique his interest. You see the G loves anything with a drum and cymbal baseline that is why we introduced him to Jazz early as a little lad. Now he won't go to sleep without some ba boom ba bah zah zaroni and those sultry sax solos belting out in the background. He enjoys it so much that on our recent trip to San Fran we had to play John Coltrane and Miles Davis on the laptop just so he would settle into his guest bed. We've also exhausted the possiblities on this PBS kids website which is perfect for the budding jazz lover.

What is that music? The G perks up from his catbird seat in the back.

It's hip hop, the docta replies rapidly scrolling through his i-pod for something else.

I want more hip hop. more. It's fast, fast.

He beings to drum his hands against the carseat and starts imitating cymbal crashes with his mouth.

Do they make G rated stuff? the Docta asks me.

Uhhhh..How about we make up our own hip hop G? I tell him turning off the radio altogether.

Two days later. The G starts busting out rhymes in the cadence of a rap.
ana banana bow chicka bow had a fanana bow chica bow....then he starts running words together so fast I can't understand him most of it is gibberish but he knows he needs to be quick and he knows that he needs to rhyme.

He also knows he needs to accentuate certain words too like when he is singing Outcast's song"I'm sorry Miss Jackson I am for real.... "a song he heard only one time on New Year's eve but can't seem to get out of his head.

In the corner of our living room he has set up his own musical studio complete with a makeshift drum set which consists of three tambourines configured into a triangle.

This set must not be touched by mama and dada hands.

As a reading teacher I am over the moon that he is rhyming like this at 3 and exploring language in this way now the only trick is to find him some G rated stuff that will quench his thirst for the hip hop beast.