Today's Photo Friday challenge was softness.

This picture is from last December, shortly after we'd brought home the newest addition to the family.

~Easy

Here's another re-run for you while I play WoW:

Specify Color of Goat

 Originally published 6/3/2004

~Easy

(The link works now.  Mea Culpa.)

Last Friday we finally had our meeting with Youngest child's teacher, Ms Crazy and the school principal.  Needless to say, she denied saying anything about my wife, saying that the children must have misunderstood, but she did acknowledge that she does not believe that there were ever any dinosaurs.

I did find it interesting that the onus was put entirely on us.  The first words out of the principal's mouth were "what do you want to do?".  Fortunately, I do have some experience in adversarial meetings like this, and I had already marshaled my thoughts.  As I saw it, there were three options available to us:

1. Demand a full investigation 
2. Switch our daughter to the other teaching group
3. Let it go, and hope for the best

The first option was what we were hoping for, though I was never optimistic about it.  Barring a police report, schools are loathe to initiate investigations involving the children.  The school would need to interview all of the children, and in the process get parental permission for all of these interviews.  This would blow the issue way up, and make our daughter the center of a controversy.  Since Ms Crazy is popular with some of her students, there would invariably be some kind of blowback on Youngest child.

My wife and I had discussed option 2 at some length.  The way things are set up at this school, there are two "teams" of teachers in the core classes: Math, Science, Language Arts, and Social Studies.  We already knew that it would not be possible to simply switch Social Studies teachers, Youngest child would have to switch out all of her teachers in these four core classes, and get placed in different classes for all of her other subjects.  Youngest child really loves her homeroom teacher, and switching her would be somewhat traumatic. Additionally, we've had experience with the Science teacher on the other team, and we would rather take our chances with Ms Crazy than go through the probems that this Science teacher will create for us.

In the end, option 3 was what we ended up with. 

Our concern here was that somehow our daughter would not receive fair treatment in the class.  Until now, there have been no problems with her grades, and the gist of the parent teacher conference that started this whole thing was that Youngest child was a good student. Ms Crazy assured us that she had no ill feelings toward our daughter, and that Youngest child would get a fair shake.   The principal apologized for the misunderstanding, and stated that he would monitor the situation.

Since then, Youngest child says that Ms Crazy isn't treating her any differently, and things are more or less back to normal.  We have heard that the principal has been spending some time in the classroom with Ms Crazy, and I did get the impression that this is not a done deal with him by any stretch.

So we'll see what happens.

~Easy

That's how many years are on this body.

Today I celebrate the fact that I've lived this long.

Tomorrow I'll bring you up to speed on the problems with the teacher.

~Easy

Another Halloween is in the books. 

~Easy

This was a new concept to me, but apparently these have been going on for quite some time.  Basically, you park your car in the lot, and then decorate the trunk.  Then the kids go around to each car the same way they visit house on Halloween.

Needless to say, this was right up our alley.

~Easy

Today's challenge was Well Groomed. These two are my wife's cousins, and they are two of my favorite people in the world.  They are brothers, just over a year apart, and they are so different in interest, temperament, and personality that if they were not related I doubt that they would have ever even spoken to each other.  Yet they've been inseparable most of their lives.

As you can probably see, they do like to have a good time.

~Easy

One good thing about a rainy day?

It gives me time to feed my internet crack habit.

My main character is now at level 70.  6 months ago, this would have meant he was maxed out, but now that Wrath of the Lich King is out I need to buy that to get him up to 80.  Of course, I do have a birthday coming up on Monday . . .

~Easy

PS: Somehow yesterday's post didn't actually get "posted".  I was so busy on WoW that I didn't notice. :-P

Today I got something that I've never seen before.  I'm sorry that I can't go in to too much detail here, but let's just say that a decision was handed down by an administrative authority that no one, and I do mean none, in my office has ever seen before.  It's a decision that makes the insanity of the last few days just pale in comparison.  Perhaps I'll write a Tale of Sir Oscar about it at a later date.

Once, this would have upset me, but now I just throw my hands up and say "fuck it."  It's gotten to be pretty clear to me that most of the time the politicians don't really want me to do my job, though they do like being able to showcase me around election time.  This doesn't mean I'm going to stop doing my job.  I have managed to do some good things in spite of them, and if I can do one good thing and get fucked on ten others, then that's going to be OK.

Meanwhile, I have a meeting with the principal on Friday at Youngest child's school about the incident on Monday.  I actually have some optimism about this, though unless they're going to fire the teacher, my daughter is the one who will lose out here.  The principal seems to want to be proactive here, but if my daughter is removed from this teacher's classroom, then she also get pulled from all of her other classes and switched to a different homeroom.  Right now I'm very happy with her math, language arts, and science teacher.

If she gets switched, her new social studies teacher will be great.  The new math and language arts teachers will be a crapshoot as I know nothing about them.  However, we'll be in a similar situation with her new science teacher.  3 years ago we went round and round with that woman when the Teenager was in her class.

We'll know more tomorrow.  My fingers are crossed.

~Easy

I knew there was a reason to be afraid of what might happen next.  No sooner had I posted yesterday's entry when my wife called me to let me know what had happened to Youngest child that day.  Before I get to that, a little bit of background is needed.

Last month, Youngest child came home and announced that her Social Studies teacher informed the class that she didn't believe in dinosaurs. Needless to say, we quizzed her more closely on this.  Is the class studying dinosaurs?  No, they're studying contemporary societies. What was the context of the statement? Just casual conversation during one of the many digressions that happen in a middle school classroom.  Was she certain of what the teacher said? Sadly, yes.

Needless to say, we were concerned, but opted not to say anything immediately.  We figured we'd wait to see if anything else happened.  Nothing else did, and so we considered it done.

Then we had the parent/teacher conferences last Friday.  The teacher asked us if wwe had any concerns or questions, so my wife asked her point blank about what she had allegedly said in the classroom.  The teacher seemed to get slight;y uncomfortable, and said that she "didn't like dinosaurs".  She said she used to teach middle school science, and so she knew about dinosaurs and had taught them in class, but she "really didn't believe in them."

My wife said that she was entitled to her beliefs, but that her beliefs really didn't belong in the classroom.  The exchange was cordial and not at all heated, and although we were still uncomfortable with her we opted not to pursue things further so as not to cause Youngest child any problems.

The teacher had other ideas.  The following Monday--yesterday--the teacher made a point of telling Youngest child that her mother was a very mean woman, and proceeded to re-enact the conference, doing a mocking imitation of my wife in the process.

Emails went out to the principal this morning.

~Easy