My Daughter Danced For Me

April 30, 2009 By 75 Comments

my daughter danced for meEvery so often the cyclones of our schedules succeed in parting the cloudy detritus of our days long enough to illuminate, even if but for a moment, the gleaming wonder of all we’ve built alongside the promise inherent in a well articulated life.

A month ago, before the soothing respite of spring break, our family was over-committed to an ever mounting heap of long term undertakings amidst the grind of daily procedure and educational obligation. Our daughter Mia is enrolled in a ballet folklorico dance program at her school where she and a group of eager children are taught traditional Mexican folk dances. Mia wanted desperately to take part last year but had to wait until she was “finally” in first grade. Available spots were tight and Mia didn’t know if she’d make it. All she could do was braid her fingers, look to the sky and hope that fortune was feeling friendly.

His smile for her was wide the day she made it into the program. Cindy and I bought her the garments and implements necessary for proper twirling and Mia approached her practiced steps with the serious measure one might expect from a comic preparing for Letterman. After 3 months of diligent practice, it was time for the show. Mia couldn’t have been more excited, roses blooming on her cheeks whenever the words ballet or folklorico lit the conversation.

The week of the performance was hemlock for our family rituals, starting on the previous Saturday with an all day practice, then bleeding into the following week with practices stretching until 7:30 (Mia’s normal bedtime) before Cindy could so much as start her engine for the 30 minute drive back home. Practices went every day ending in Y until Friday came and it was time to tear the tickets.

The show was oversold and the auditorium filled with the elevated expectations of every mom and dad who had parted with their share of time or money to make it all possible. Max and I were seated in back, the last row in the room, beside Grammy and a family friend. Cindy was needed backstage and though we couldn’t have been further from the curtain, I felt fortunate to at least have a place to lean my tired head against the wall and knew I was better off than the dozens of parents standing in packs behind me.

The lights dimmed and Spanish started to float through the room like feathers lost to wind. We were treated to a brief introduction for each of the Mexican regions birthing the dances, including the area where both my grandparents, Honey and Papi lived before leaving to carve opportunity from the states above them.

Finally, the Michoacan dance was announced and the first graders flooded the stage.

Mia twirled onto the stage behind the other dancers, like the final curve at the bottom of an apostrophe, and spent six or seven seconds scanning the audience until she found me.  In a darkened room, congested with hundreds of branches from dozens of family trees, my daughter found my eyes and held them. It was almost painful, her spinning across the stage in perfect time with the music, like a million memories all at once that only the deepest part of me could ever hope to process.

My daughter danced for me, and not for a sliver of a second was there pause in her performance. She gilded my vision, gliding across the stage in well practiced pirouettes; the two of us in concert, rocking back and forth in what we both surely felt was a someday reminiscence.

My daughter danced for me, and in those flickering moments everything else was tucked neatly beyond concern. Not the stress of the week nor the million bits of minutia that constantly litter my mind could do a thing to pull me from our silent promise.

My daughter danced for me and gave me the singular reminder that perhaps only children can, and only when you let them. Life is far too short. Even my Papi at 99 years young didn’t get nearly enough. Time is finite. No moment, no matter how glorious or horrible, can ever be repeated.

Sometimes our time is a tornado and sometimes a placid sea. It is up to each of us to recognize our surroundings and know we will never pass that way again.

Writer Dad

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Writing is Fun

April 1, 2009 By 14 Comments

“Children should spend more time writing. Opportunities to write more than a sentence or two are infrequent in most American elementary school classrooms. As well as being valuable in its own right, writing promotes ability in reading.”

~ Exerpt: Becoming a Nation of Readers

writing is funSean and I teach a Writer’s Workshop for 4th Graders at Mia‘s school each week as part of our volunteered hours. Time is the greatest philanthropic gift to our school, and even at its most scarce we are always happy to give it.

Attitudinally, our group of 30 writers ranged from enthusiastic to aw man, we have to write? We started our first class with reasons why writing is important, Sean and I moving the entire class through the writing process from brainstorm to final edit.

    Why Teach Writing?

  • Writing is critical thinking.
  • Writing is a tool for learning.
  • Writing benefits reading.
  • Writing applies language skills.
  • Writing is communication.
  • Writing encourages discovery.
  • Writing reveals the writer.
  • Writing is fun.

Writing IS fun. Working with Writer Dad is a joy because he turns writing into recreation. He’s hilarious, loving, quick witted, smart all the way to infinity and beyond, the best father you could ever imagine, and yes an amazing writer. No doubt, no diggity.

Starting a blog is writing personified. Think about it: when you write a post you are embracing the writing process. Pre-write on a napkin at the stop light on the way to pick up the children, first draft in your mind as you’re driving, sloppy copy in your notebook digital or spiral, revise, edit and hit publish.

Yes, children, writing is fun and let us show you why and how. The response from our parents has been overwhelming. Some admitted their child did not want to come to the workshop. We were shocked when parents confessed. Some of the students that dreaded the idea of writing the most have now taken the ball and are ready to swish it through the net.

We got them where we wanted. Writing is fun. We will continue to work with this group until the end of the year. We have invested in their abilities and they have become attached to the positive rapport, consistent encouragement to continue writing, and now best part …publishing their efforts on the school website. Nothing builds traffic to a school website more than, “Look what my baby did!”

Cindy Platt is an educational consultant and home school expert.

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Building a Bridge

February 5, 2009 By 26 Comments

“Academies that are founded at public expense are instituted not so much to cultivate men’s natural abilities as to restrain them.”

~ Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677)

istock_000005059617xsmall-copy“Would you say I’m a writer, businessman or a businessman, writer” I asked Cindy as we merged into traffic.

We were on our way home from Writer’s Workshop, the writing class we teach to a room full of fourth graders each Thursday. Cindy pondered, giving the question her undivided from one light to the next.  ”Businessman, writer,” she said as I was sailing through the green.

I agreed, but it got me thinking.

I had a brief run of wanting to be a writer back when I was about 5, all the way up until age 8 or so. I use to tap out little stories on an old manual from Sears. I think most of my early work was about robots, space, and probably He-Man, though I do remember one story in particular that featured Spiderman fighting a giant snowman (I lived in Southern California and never left, lending snow a rather mystical quality to my eyes).

Unfortunately, none of these early stories has survived.

At age 8, I stopped attending the private school I’d been going to since I was two; the school where they put books in my hands so early that I have no memory of ever learning to read them.  Eventually, tuition moved from difficult to inconceivable and my sister and I migrated to the best public school our parents could manage.

Our neighborhood school was an abomination.

My oldest sister was in attendance until the day one of the teachers told my father in a conference that some kids are destined for mediocrity, and that they’d both be a lot happier if they accepted this essential truth early on.

The school was a good mile and a half from our house. Still, had the rest of us been home, we could have probably heard our father’s anger echoing across the campus hallways.

That was all he needed to pull my sister, now the senior nurse in her city’s largest hospital, from campus and enroll her in a small private school just beyond our means. My sister and I immediately followed.

The private school had no grades; the students instead encouraged to reach toward their ability. One of the biggest shocks of my life was moving from a school where my brain was given breath, to one where I was bored out of my skull, day upon day, in a never ending purgatory of doldrums and deja vu.

Bored silly and drifting through days without challenge, I acquired the art of commerce.

Baseball cards, comic books, Garbage Pail Kids, repurposed G.I.Joes (don’t ask), etc. etc. I had my own black satchel, stuffed with the stock of my mobile mercantile. I carried the bag everywhere I went and considered it at least thrice as important as my schoolbag.

I opened my first bank account when I was twelve. The bank’s official policy was thirteen, but our family flower shop was spitting distance from the bank, and since our store had an account, the manager agreed to make an exception.

The remainder of my meandering years in school hold countless stories for different days. I squirmed my way through every second, finished left early, and bought my first business at 18. Fast forward a decade and a half until one day I suddenly found myself unearthing a calling that had been buried beneath the detritus of past decades dissipated.

I’ve been thinking like a businessman a lot longer than I’ve been thinking like a writer. Now I know what must be done and I’m building a bridge to balance my abilities.

Writer Dad

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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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Red Furry Monster Vs. High School Musical

August 25, 2008 By 54 Comments

Childhood is a short season. 

~Helen Hayes

We went to the performing arts center to see Elmo in a Sesame Street stage show.  Of course the merchandising was out of control (ten dollars for a red mylar balloon, beaming with Elmo’s furry face is ridiculous), but the event was otherwise very sweet. 

What thrilled me most, wasn’t the delighted look on our little rascal’s face as lights dimmed, music swelled, and an Elmo who looked three times taller than he should have ran out clapping to take center stage opposite an even taller Big Bird. 

I’m thrilled he loved it, but wasn’t surprised.  

My surprise was from the obvious joy and steady amusement hanging on Mia’s face. 

I’m thankful that at six, Mia isn’t too long in the tooth for something as innocent and wonderful as Sesame Street.  I was a bit surprised, more than a few times during this last school year, with some of the things Mia’s friends were in to. 

High School Musical, specifically. 

There isn’t anything wrong with High School Musical.  It’s just that Mia’s still a little girl and we’d love to keep her that way as long as possible.  If she were in high school, then I’d be thrilled that something so innocent could charm her.  But she isn’t.  She’s in Kindergarten.  And I’d prefer if she wasn’t emulating a life lived behind the walls of high school, no matter how antiseptic the version might be.

Daisy and I put the flick on our Netflix queue, just to see what all the fuss was about. 

There were no surprises. 

The film is exactly what you’d expect from a Disney produced musical set in a middle american high school: almost garishly idealistic, with a lot of discussion about topics that are not yet a part of a kindergartner’s world. 

We don’t shelter Mia. 

At least not when it comes to things such as music, or language. 

She is exceedingly articulate, can exchange verbiage with any adult, and can separate the distinct instruments from the many tracks in almost any song.  

Still, we try to nurture the innocence inside her, knowing full well it won’t last forever. She has plenty of time to grow up, and Daisy and I aren’t in a hurry. 

Mia’s been made fun of at school this year (for certain a few times, and perhaps more than she’s told us) for still liking “baby” things like My Little Pony and Strawberry Shortcake. 

I’m glad she does. 

We canceled our cable almost two years ago.  We live off the Imac and Netflix.

I’m proud to say, the number of commercials our children have seen or heard in their short lives can be counted on a single hand.

Time will march and take our little ones.  For now, I’m glad that the harmless la la la la, la la la la from a red furry monster can still cause my six year old to smile.

Writer Dad

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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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Her Face at Odds

July 9, 2008 By 3 Comments

In six and a half years, I don’t think our Mia’s ever lived through a week with such an obvious paradox etched across her face.  Those last few days of school were hard on her. 

And the two sides of her heart were having quite the skirmish.  

With the end of the school year just a few hot lunches away, Mia didn’t know whether she should be feeling sad, happy, or a healthy percentage of each. 

The resulting confusion bled across her face like one of her watercolors left too long on the porch.

Haven’t we all been there before; probably more times than we care to count (or admit)?

Mia’s excited about spending Summer at home (no schlepping in the car and racing across town before her breakfast is even digested), and she’s looking forward to a quality of downtime that she hasn’t really had in any significant measure for the past nine months, but Mia also knows that it’s going to be ten weeks before she sees any of her friends again, and that next September, when we pull up to the school with a fresh backpack and fresh expectations, her Señora will be Maestra to another class.

Mia’s first teacher was tremendous; everything Daisy and I had hoped for.  She loved our daughter, and, even better, she checked her in all the ways that our little girl needs to be checked.  Like any great mother, Señora gave Mia a generous amount of rope, but also knew when it was time to pull it tight.  

She encouraged Mia’s assets, discouraged her deficiencies, and stretched her mental rubber band (sometimes to the snapping point).  She spoke to her with a strong voice and direct language, inspiring her to try countless new things and admirably succeed at many of them.  

Mia will miss her terribly, and so will we.  

But it was good to see her work through such conflicting emotions and arrive on solid ground.  The summer’s going swimmingly so far.  She misses her teacher, but she’s using her feelings to make herself a better writer.  

What more could a writer dad, or a writer mom for that matter, ever ask?

Writer Dad

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Adios!

June 12, 2008 By 2 Comments

Today, Mia said farewell to school for the summer, and Kindergarden forever.  In six years, I don’t think Daisy or I have ever been more proud.  Mia pulled straight fours on every report card this year, and she did it in another tongue. 

Her school’s farewell program was adorable; a chorus of sixty kinders, half awkward, and half not – the perfect harmony for a Kindergarden performance.  The morning was as predictable as a late eighties sitcom with only one exception:

I certainly didn’t see myself crying.

I am, at the least, a reasonably sensitive guy.  Often thoughtful, and sometimes too tender, but also every bit the thirty something version of the rascal that our little Max is right now.  But I didn’t expect to cry, not like I did anyway.

I teared up a bit on Mia’s first day, of course.  Who wouldn’t?  If there isn’t a bit of salt on your cheek when delivering your first born into the arms of strangers for a nine month eon (no matter how qualified those strangers may be), then I’d have to say you need your ducts checked, if not the valves of your heart. 

So, yes, on the first day of school I got a bit misty, but the tears today were the real deal. 

Mia’s Señora had assembled a portfolio for each child in her class, stuffed with nine months worth of their best effort, and crowned with a handwritten letter home.  I made it through reading the letter to myself just fine; it was reading it out loud to Daisy that did me in.

We’re so grateful for the education that school has given to our family.  Before entering the program, I have to admit, I did’nt have the highest regard for public education, having been a product myself.  

This school shows me the very beginning of what is possible.

Writer Dad

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Glad to Have Him Home

June 7, 2008 By 5 Comments

 

Yesterday was our little rascal’s last day of Pre-School, at least until September; a transition he understands perfectly. 

All week, he’s been telling anyone who’d listen, “Friday is my last day at school, and in three months I’ll be in room 4 (room 4 said as though it was the most important thing he would say all day, and possibly all week).” 

Still, the reality of leaving his friends for such a long intermission didn’t seem to slap him until he was climbing into the backseat of the mini-van, where he buckled his belt and sat in thoughtful silence for the entire trip home; not at all what I expected, and completely uncharacteristic of any previous Friday, a few minutes from lunch time.  

When we got home he said, “I have a little bit sad.”  He pinched his fingers together to asure me that it wasn’t too much.  

“Why are you sad?”  I asked. 

“Because I won’t see my friends for a long long time.”  His bottom lip started to quiver.  I took his hands.

“But you’ll be at Mommy and Daddy’s school.”

“Yeah, I know.”  His pensive look went nowhere and his lip continued to shake.  He sighed deeply and fell into my arms, wordless.

Fortunately, Max rebounds quickly.  By this morning, he was already talking about his Summer with Mommy and Daddy, and how much fun he would have with all his friends.  

Daisy’s had the entire Summer schedule plotted for our pre-school since the second half of April.  She has about thirty thousand things she wants to teach the children (we have two groups: tater tots and hot dogs) and she figures she might have time to address around a hundred and fifty. 

Mia’s Spanish is off the hook, but her writing in English needs some attention.  She spells everything exactly as she hears it, and since 90% of her academic day es en español, her English words tend to assemble themselves within the borders of the Spanish alphabet. 

We’ll help her, and she’ll help the other children.  

Daisy’s gathered all of Mia’s homework from the last nine months and made a review book that Mia will use to teach the rest of us, tiny ones included.  Everyday, each student (including Max and Mia) will spend time in Reading, Writing, Art, Stories, Violin, Tennis, and Technology – for ten weeks straight.

Max’s school is finished for the Summer.  Mia’s will conclude this coming week.  That cuts our weekday shuffling down to nearly nothing.  I, for one, am happy to have my children home for a few months.  I miss them when they’re gone. 

I look forward to teaching them and seeing what they have to teach me.

I’m glad that Max goes to another school, away from ours.  It’s good for him to make his own friends in his own environment, with different teachers and different rules, without his mommy and daddy constantly around to supervise.  He needs a place to go where he can practice all the things he tries so hard to learn.

Still, I’m happy it’s our turn.

Writer Dad

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