Write on Mia!

November 19, 2008 By 70 Comments

Note: This is another one of those posts where I unabashedly fawn over my daughter. I’ll try not to be too sloppy.

“To bring up a child in the way he should go, travel that way yourself once in a while.”

~Josh Billings

Last week was our parent-teacher conference for Mia.  As some of you know, Daisy and I send our daughter to a dual immersion program where eighty percent of her day is in Spanish.  She’s in first grade now.  Last year, that number was ninety.

Daisy and I were keen to hear what her teacher had to say.  We felt we had a clear idea, for better or worse, but were looking forward to a dot at the end of our sentence.

Our daughter, it turns out, is quite the the little wordsmith.  Her magnificent maestra is pleased when students can line up three well articulated sentences.  Mia is penning five paragraph papers… in a second tongue.  She has a mature grasp of punctuation, and an apparent fondness for the quotation mark.

Mia isn’t a genius, but she is willing to work hard, and push through most any barrier impeding her comprehension.  She’s been drawing, or writing since she could hold a pencil. She is rarely afraid to try, and therefore most often succeeds.  For Daisy and I, this is a calliope of validating inspiration.

We’ve known Mia for seven and a half years, if we travel back to when she was no larger than a grain of rice, which I think is perfectly fair.  Even then, she was dangling the strings and making us dance.

We were thrilled to have a discussion with an outstanding practitioner who spends the better part of seven hours with our daughter, each and every weekday.  At school, Mia is undaunted.   She’s fearless, and flies without worry, unafraid to fail, but anxious to produce.

At home, Mia sometimes moves with the mayhem of a tornado, juggling several ventures at once.  She twirls from table to table, coloring Christmas ornaments, writing a letter to Santa, all while playing the architect to one of her famous “contraptions.”

It is easy to picture her in the classroom, and we acknowledge our fortune that Mia has a teacher who understands her student and wishes to articulate her productive, capable mind, yet also knows that her enthusiasm must be channeled.  Our maestra will help teach Mia to be organized without squelching her spirit.

Mia’s a wonderful writer because she has an example to follow, and for this I am certainly proud, but there is a caveat.

I sometimes juggle topics like a sideshow attraction, and Mia’s a good enough listener to know that I frequently work on many different things at once.  I must not only crow about the kudos, I must also look upon the side of the coin that is kissing the ground.

Our children are reflections in a puddle; rippling with an image not quite ours, but no doubt our distant double.  To truly know who they are, we must have a clear understanding of who we are.  Only then can we walk them toward their best.

Writer Dad

Sean Platt is a ghostwriter for hire, specializing in SEO web copy and custom blog posts.

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Just Pay Attention

August 20, 2008 By 92 Comments

If you can speak three languages you’re trilingual.  If you can speak two languages you’re bilingual.  If you can speak only one language you’re an American.

~Author Unknown

Speaking to my children in Spanish, like the morning cup of coffee or hot water beating on my back, is a small pleasure that polishes each one of my days.  

I exaggerate my accent and send my gestures sailing over the top of ridiculous.  My voice swells, especially when my tongue rolls along the outside of a double R, or when I’m delighting in the oral treasure of an Ñ.  

Amid the million must do’s of any given day, it’s brilliant fun to steal a moment and step inside the skin of a character that isn’t quite me.  

Like I’m dressing up for a kind of verbal Halloween.  

I am not fluent.  In fact, I struggle for every well constructed sentence.  This is part of the reason for my inflated accent.  I treat Spanish exactly like singing.

I cannot do it well, so I make sure I do it loud.

I long for the authority of a second tongue.  Spanish is my first new language, but I plan to follow it with something more eclectic… Klingon perhaps.  

I never learned Spanish as a child, despite my Honey and Papí both being born in Mexico, and raising their daughter with fluency.  As an adult, I struggle to absorb new vocabulary into a mind already littered with everything from next week’s list, to every thread from the last four seasons of Lost.  

I want my children to have what I did not.

As some Writer Dad readers already know, Mia attends a Dual Immersion program. 90% of her school day is in Spanish.  

Yes, I love my daughter, and no, this isn’t cruel.  

“Why don’t you just drop her off in Tijuana?”

That’s what one of my best friends said when I first told him (quite excitedly) that we wanted to place Mia in this particular program.  This beautiful philosophy, not everyone understands.

Music and language are highly beneficial to the development of the mathematical mind.  The internet is an awfully big place, filled with towering terabytes of text, but you’d have to comb it all day to find a half pile of research that disagrees with this elemental truth.

But Writer Dad, how will I know when my child is ready for music, or a second language?

Because you will look down and see their ears.

Children are sponges, and we should not ever underestimate them, because they will absorb what we ask.  Delivery is important, of course, which is why we would never throw her into a school in Tijuana.  

That would be immersion, not dual immersion.  

What makes dual immersion successful is the consistent practice of full body response.  This means that the teacher employs language, in addition to gestures, when teaching their class.  

This was wonderfully illustrated one day at the dinner table, sometime toward the end of Mia’s first month of Kindergarten.  

“Is it hard sometimes,” I asked. “Not knowing what Sra. is saying,”  

“Only if I’m not paying attention,” she said, barely looking up.  

Exactly.  

How is this different from life?  How much do we miss, simply because we’re not paying attention?  

Being in the Dual Immersion program has not only taught our daughter the basics of another language, it’s taught her some of the fundamentals of a fulfilling life.  

If you really want to learn, you have to pay attention.  

This summer has been wonderful.  I help Mia with her Spanish, she helps me with mine.  I have more vocabulary than she, but Mia strings what she has together as beautifully as if she were born in Barcelona (Gracias Señora Mochila).  

The two of us exchange words in a room full of toddlers, without anyone wise to what we’re saying.  

It’s like we have our own secret code.  Of course, we’re using our bodies as we speak, so if the toddlers are paying attention, eventually they’ll get it too.

Writer Dad

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If you click here, you can read Writer Dad’s thank you to Señora.

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Gracias, Señora

July 18, 2008 By 4 Comments

 

Two years ago, when Daisy and I were first looking for a school for Mia, our main criteria was finding an environment where she wouldn’t be bored.  Fortunately, we found a fantastic public school in our city that had a Dual Immersion program where ninety percent of a Kindergartner’s day is taught in Spanish. 

Surely, that would keep her eyes open.

There aren’t a lot of schools like this, at least in our district.  There was quite the waiting list, and though we collectively wore the armor of optimism, Daisy and I were silently worried that our alternative education wasn’t going to happen.  

Fortune prevailed and Mia was accepted.  Her school year is over, and now we can reflect.  

The school year was so much more than we ever imagined.  Mia grew beyond our expectations, and learned a mass of lessons that we could not have taught her.  

Daisy and I each wrote letters to Mia’s primary teacher, as well as her principal.  In addition, I wrote this little verse for the two of them.  I thought I’d share.

Names have been changed to protect the innocent:

Dear Maestras,

I knew we were lucky, though I had no idea, what a year would be like with Señora Mochila.  As the curtains draw closed on my first year as a dad, with a child at Lincoln, I’m a little bit sad. My children grow older (it seems faster than me) and one day their changes will get harder to see, but the changes this year I can not even count, because they arrived every day in a countless amount.

We’ve watched our girl grow from inquisitive and ready, to just over six, now skillful and steady.  Before, she could not roll the “R” in burrito.  Now she orders in Spanish when we’re at El Torito.  We’ve lost nine pages from the calendar since her first day in dress.  May I have a moment Maestras, so that I may confess?

Daisy and I harbored no second choice.  It was Lincoln we desired to give our girl voice.  We waited and lingered with anticipation for a letter of acceptance to provide us elation.  We received our letter in the post, but the program was filled and a small part of my spirit was a little bit killed.  But it doesn’t come close to stinging my pride to tell you straight up, I actually cried.  

I called on the phone and asked, “What can I do?”  Sra. Reina said, “Be patient Señor; just see it through.”  So I listened to her, swallowed my tears, and allowed encouraging words to flood through my ears. 

Two weeks passed, then on Good Friday it was, we unfolded another letter and read with a buzz.

We stayed unerring, sound in our choice, and now we could finally begin to rejoice.  Not only for Mia, but for our Maxwell as well.  We were so happy, we started to yell.  A wonderful institution had become in our reach where our children would learn things that we could not teach.

The next four months fell like leaves in the Fall, taking Mia that first day we’ll always recall.  Señora was perfect.  She had command of the room, like a pregnant mamí has command of her womb.  We knew without doubt, as we knit hands with our boy, that our next nine months would be brimming with joy.

And they were, mis maestras, es todo verdad.  Nunca en su escuela es una facade.  Mia’s learned how to read and then how to write in a new tongue by doing assignments each night.  She’s learned how to sing with such beautiful grace, I can easily picture my gone grandmother’s face.  She knew how to learn, but now she digests, and she does it all with such flawless finesse.

Lincoln’s a school that’s surpassed expectation by providing a solid, substantial foundation, and that is the bedrock of great education – a group of teachers who offer such deep dedication.  Please believe me when I say: this is no aberration.  You have earned our family’s sincere admiration.  It would be a benefit to the whole of our nation, if such practice were applied to the next generation.

We wanted for our child to be challenged, not bored; a wish which was granted, instead of ignored.  Thank you kindly for all that you do.  Daisy and I are so grateful for you.  From nuestras corazones, quiseramos to say.  Gracias por todo hacen every day.

Writer Dad

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