Chalk and Cheese Chronicles

Recognizing All PeaceBuilders

A new crop of young PeaceBuilders was recognized today. The whole school, along with teachers, school staff and invited parents, attended the monthly ceremony.

PeaceBuilders are recognized for modeling various forms of kindness.

Today's line up seems to be a who's who of the model student roster. The quiet ones, the rule followers, the timid speakers, and the do-gooders. These are the children who never move off green (for best behavior) in the classroom behavior chart. These are the children who never stand out to me when I volunteer in the classroom, mostly because they are focused on quietly completing their work.

I applaud the children who do win this sort of recognition. They stay on green, they do their work, they aren't disruptive. But I worry that the more, shall we say, exuberant students, are passed over, their behavior clouding any act of kindness. I worry that boyish boys aren't seen as PeaceBuilders, and aren't they the ones who could use additional recognition and praise as we guide them along the path of acceptable behavior?

Some children bring stressful home life issues into the classroom. Some children have social issues. Some children are immature. Some boys are rambunctious. But a lot of these children have vastly improved their behavior during the course of the school year. These are the children whom I would like the teachers to really notice. I want these kids to be recognized for the effort they've put forth since the first day of school. Surely, these kids have shown PeaceBuilder qualities, but in the midst of "exuberant" behavior, is it ever noticed?

One day, I hope that these types of kids get the recognition they're due. Being a silent, model student in the classroom is not the only pathway to academic or job succes. Rote memorization and a tacit style are not the only means of learning. I want teachers to see worth and possibility in every single kid, not just the model student whose behavior best enables the teacher to get through a lesson plan. I want them to see the child who shouts out the answer as one who is excited about learning rather than one who is hell bent on disrupting the class. Guide that child, but reward him as well. I want schools to see that kindness is being played out even in what looks to be a rough pretend battle of Star Wars. These are the kids who really need that self-esteem boost!

My kids land somewhere in the middle. They are neither the best behaved nor the worst. But they have overcome obstacles such as immaturity (they are the youngest in their class), sibling rivalry (twin boys) and bullying (yes, my son was bullied and he learned to handle it amazingly well) - I know there were PeaceBuilder moments in their journey. While I don't want the world to revolve around my kids, I know a little recognition would go a long way.

There's a PeaceBuilder in nearly every child. Yes, it's more obvious in the obedient children, but schools should take the time to look for PeaceBuilder qualities where it's not obvious.

P is for (Dog) Poop!

Apparently, along with learning the letters of the alphabet, kindergartners at our school are learning the important life skill of how to avoid stepping in dog poop.

I know, I know - I have 7-year-old boys - poop is a really funny word. I hear the word 100x a day. BUT it's not funny when it's dog poop and it ends up on your kids' shoes, or in their clothes while they're at school. No, not funny at all.

Our school is an open campus; our city allows for the public to use the school during non-school hours. So they come in droves, to play baseball, to play basketball... and to walk their leashed and unleashed dogs.

Did I mention that dogs are not allowed on campus?

The school's perimeters are fenced, and the smaller kindergarten area in particular is fenced in on all sides, making it a desirable area for dog owners to unleash their dogs.

The kindergarten area turns into a dog run after hours. When the school children return to campus the next day, there's the inevitable squish of a tiny sneaker in a big pile of dog poop. It's in the grass, along the fence and even in the playground.

Over on the soccer fields, dogs also run wild, tails wagging and tongues unfurled as their owners toss them frisbees and balls. I've even seen what looks to be doggie playgroups meeting up on those fields.

My son plays soccer, and as he was running toward me, we both nearly landed in a big mound of dog turd. Lovely.

Some dog owners are responsible, picking up after their dogs with little plastic bags they carry with them; others just pretend they didn't see it. Still, one mom complained that even though a pile of poop had been picked up, there's still the residual poop that gets caked into the crevices of shoes and such.

There a few signs posted along the school entrance gates an image of a dog with a big red slash overlayed: No Dogs. But the signs depicts an image of a particular breed of dog, the doberman. I saw a pit bull strut right past that sign; he can't read, but clearly, the sign only applied to dobermans, right?

Even families of kids who attend our school bring their dogs there to play. I say, improve the No Dogs Allowed signs, circulate some flyers around the neighborhood (these are neighborhood dogs, after all), discuss the issue with the students, direct dog owners to a nearby park, and send out an email blast to the school community. No dogs on campus! Spread the word! Stomp out Poop -- figuratively speaking.

A teacher at school came up with the ingenious idea of what I call the Dog Poop Alert cone.

It probably takes some training to get the kids to stay away from this cone. After all, it's decorated in cute stickers of doggies. I even wanted to get a closer look! So the cone is not home base, or a place to collect cute doggie stickers - it's a warning that a mushy or dry pile of dog turd is either inside it, or just nearby. Stay away!

So dog owners (and I was once one of you), please, please don't take your fur babies to the school to run around, leashed or unleashed, poop pickup bags or not. The poop is nasty and it smells and it comes into the classroom. Please take your dogs to the dog park instead - and do pick up after them. Nobody likes to step in dog poop!

Boring little me gets censored

I am not a controversial figure. I don't start flame wars. I don't swear (in front of the kids). I don't hold extreme opinions. But when it comes to public school, it seems I belong in the corner.

This time, it's the school's Yahoo! group. Yes, they are still on Yahoo! groups and - it gets worse - it's a moderated group.  Every single post must past muster with a volunteer moderator. Every. single. post. This must mean that at one time, someone, probably a parent, said something unpopular. Perhaps they complained about Star Testing or about their kids having to make missions in 4th grade. I'm sure they were quickly quieted.  Negativity is unpopular.

I've posted twice to this group, and twice got rejected. The first time I posted a friendly reminder to please drive carefully around the school. My kids and I had nearly been run over by an inattentive mom who'd droppped off her kids at the curb and nearly sped right into us while we were in the crosswalk. She didn't look! But my comment was denied and that mom is probably still out there driving carelessly.

The second time I posted to the group was today. I wanted to reach the parents whose kids, like mine, participate in the after school soccer program. The after school soccer is run by an outside organization who'd somehow ended the 8 week session after just 7 weeks. We'd paid for 8 weeks, we got 7.

I emailed the organization until they finally replied that yes, there would be a make up practice and that they'd emailed us parents to let us know.  Apparently, nobody showed up because 1) The week of the makeup practice was an early pickup week and 2) I don't think any of us parents received that email. So I pressed them once more and the soccer coach in charge said he'd move the final practice to this week (today), again saying he'd emailed the parents once more. That email never reached me either.

Out of options and worried that no kids would show up, I posted to the school Yahoo! group that today would be the final practice. The message was directed at parents whose kids were enrolled in after school soccer. (I don't know these parents and have no other means of contacting them.) Just as I thought, the parents who replied seemed to have no idea there would be a final practice today; none of us seem to be getting emails from the soccer coach. I told myself it was a good thing I'd emailed the Yahoo! group.

A few of us parents went back and forth trying to clear up confusion. This is a pretty quiet Yahoo! group, so this little burst of email activity would probably feel annoying to some.

I replied-all to a question I thought had been sent to the entire group and the moderator turned me down. In fact, of my 3 or so postings to this thread, I think only the initial one made the list.

I come from the social media world, where it's all chatter, all the time. The people in my social media circles are all over the place; they are a noisy bunch of over-sharers.  They fill out their G+ profiles and pin and tweet and comment. I'm also used to moms in my twin's club and their lively and sometimes judgemental postings about anything and everything - bring it on!  I'm actually quite quiet in the social media world, comparitively speaking. But when outside of that bubble, and back in the world of public school, I guess I'm a bit of a trouble maker.

I find our school's Yahoo! group to be too confining. Really, I'm not out there complaining about school lunches -- though when I think about it, why couldn't a school parent complain about school lunches, or about teens who run along the rooftops at night? I figured out the posting guidelines there pretty quickly and that is, keep it inocuous, informative and positive. My humble opinion? Open up the forum to more conversation and you bring a community closer together.

But forget I said that. I'll be even quieter there now that I've left our school's Yahoo! Group. I don't think I will miss it.

 

 

 

The Joy of Walden West Summer Camp Registration

The morning was not pretty for me.  Today was summer camp registration for Walden West, a date I'd had circled on my calendar for months, with auto-reminders coming at me once a week.

I remembered the date for weeks and then, this morning, I forgot. When I saw the reminder pop up on my phone at 7am, I flew into panic mode.

Registration opens at 7:30am and every session for 2-7 grades fills within minutes, with the exception of the week of July 4th.

I logged in, brought up the registration page and waited, my first choice session circled on the calendar beside me.

At 7:30 exactly, I refreshed my page. Scrolling quickly down to the session I wanted, I clicked the add button but nothing happened. The site was now live, but it kept asking me to enter a name.

I remember having trouble with this before -- and we've been to this camp two summers so far.

What was happening? I kept clicking add, hoping it would bring up another screen so I could then enter my kids' names, but nothing came up. I was stuck.

At this point, I may have yelled out some not-so-nice words in front of my kids. Mind you, this was at 7:30am, the time when most parents are busy getting breakfast ready and kids out the door.

So there I was, with this screen that was doing nothing while my kids were doing nothing when they ought to have been getting dressed for school. In a panic, I called my husband over. "Look at this screen, what do I do?" I cried.

"You need to put in their names in those fields right in front of you. Right there," he said, pointing out the obvious. But he added, "Welcome to a website circa 1998!"

Sure enough, the fields were there on the same screen I'd been staring out this whole time. It just doesn't pop out. All I saw was the "add" session button, that's it.

All the sessions were filling, spots left were zeroing down. The session I'd wanted was gone. The time was 7:32am.

So I went for another session and got in by the skin of my teeth. The rows of sessions were hard to eyeball and I very nearly registered my boys for two separate sessions. My hands were shaking.

I stumbled out of my office and down to the kitchen to finish making breakfast. I could barely think of what to do... my adrenaline was still racing. It's ironic to have to go through this stress just to register my sons for a week of stress free summer camp in the mountains!

Walden West is the only camp on our list that fills so quickly. The others usually have more availability because their programs are bigger and spread out amongst more locations. Walden West has one location for summer and that's it. Parents are limited to one week of camp per child unless there's availability later on.

It's crazy. I hate having to go through this just to get my kids into Walden West. But that said, even though we didn't get into my preferred week, they will have fun. Walden West is an amazing summer camp experience, the kind that kids will talk about when they're grown. It's a true summer camp, with no heavy curriculum, just kids and nature. It's probably a lot like Hidden Villa camp.

We are also going to Camp Galileo, a science camp with a curriculum. My kids love it there, too. I like to mix things up, a little bit of free roaming at Walden West and a little bit of structured camp at Camp Galileo, plus some other camps and mini vacations thrown in for good measure.

What are you doing this summer? If you registered for Walden West, do you have a method to the madness? Do you have two laptops going at registration? There was no joy in the process of registering for Walden West summer camp, none.

The take home message? For newbies, set up an account in advance so that all you need to do is the registration part on the big day. For returnees, make sure you log-in and do a registration run-through in advance, even if you've gone through registration there in years past. This will be our 3rd summer at Walden West and I still didn't remember what to do on registration day. I'd totally forgotten to do a run-through and registration day crept up even though I had reminders buzzing everywhere. I'm just lucky my laptop remembered my Walden West password.

See you at camp!

 

 

 

 

Camp Galileo: These Stars say it's all good!

It's February, the month I usually start thinking about summer camps.

This will be our second year of Camp Galileo (aka Camp G). Check out my son's video in that post and you'll see how engaged he was (at age 6) during his week of sleuthing about impressionist paintings as a "detective in Paris" this past summer.

My boys almost never vividly describe their day to me at pickup. They say that everything was "good." School was good. Camp was good. The birthday party was good. Basically, it means they're blowing me off. It means, I did it and it was GOOD and now I'm busy playing so leave me alone! I have to wait a few hours or days for the details to come pouring forth. Some details never come.

I mention this because last week, I recently had the chance to sit down with the team at Galileo Learning and explore beyond my kids' one word descriptor. Turns out the word "good" is just a springboard for the Galileo Innovation Approach which means, always: Be Visionary, Be Courageous, Be Collaborative, Be Determined and Be Reflective.

This mindset, repeated in the curriculem for every theme, at every camp, year after year is important. Children will learn, over time and with repetition, to use this mindset when faced with a challenge; and they'll learn how to gather knowledge in the process of creating and bringing a new idea to fruition.

School gives my kids the basics. Camp Galileo teaches kids what to do with those basics in a variety of disciplines such as art and science. I wish that Camp Galileo were an after-school option for kids, so that they could take what they've learned in school and apply it in a way that's fun and reflective of real life matters.

My kids are Camp Galileo campers, that is, they are between Pre-K and rising 5th graders. When they become rising 5th to 8th graders, they will be eligible for Galileo Summer Quest (one week format) where I'm sure they'll beg me to sign them up for Video Game Design camp. Rising 4th to 8th graders can apply hands-on learning in science and technology at The Tech Summer Camps. And new this year, is the Chabot Space and Science Camp for rising 4th to 8th graders. All of this falls under the guidance of Galileo Learning.

There are four Camp Galileo weekly themes lined up for 2012. Nebulas (pre-K and kindergartners), Stars (rising 1st/2nd graders, like my kids were last year) and Supernovas, rising 3rd - 5th graders) can look forward to themes that can be divided into art, science and outdoors.

Briefly, some highlights are:

Galileo Olympics: Greek Art and The Science of the Games

Nebulas will construct a leaf-adorned victory head wreath and make a foam stamps to embellish their ancient Greek tunic.

Stars get to mold their own gold and bronze medals and fling about new terms like "fluid design."

Supernovas will be crafting with paper-maché and using impulse force. My kids have never done paper-maché so I'm sure this will be a fun, messy project. Then they'll learn about owls and as any Harry Potter fan will tell you, owls are not only wise, but they're magical as well. Then, if that were not enough, my boys will have the chance to test out a bow and arrow during an archery event. 

I'm thinking we might go with this theme, as it might awaken an interest in this summer's 2012 Olympics in London.

Celebrate the Golden Gate: SF Art and Bridge Engineering

San Francisco is our backyard stomping grounds and I know it like the back of my hands. Sometimes, we go about as natives and other times, we just play tourist. I love how this theme is relatable to the day trips we make to San Francisco.

Nebulas will learn the history of the Dutch Windmill (the one out by Ocean Beach) and then make their own out of clay.

Stars will craft a Lombard Street collage and learn to build a bridge.

Supernovas will make a 3D painted lady (Victorian house) and engineer a suspension bridge. I'm sure it will all be trickier to do than it looks!

Leonardos's Apprentice: Renaissance Art & Inventions

Evidence of Leonardo's influence is everywhere. My boys and I recently watched a Nova episode called Mystery of a Masterpiece. I have a massive coffee table book on Leonardo which my grandmother passed down to me. My boys have read many books in which Leonardo appears as a character (like Monday with a Mad Genius). I like that I'll be able to round out what my boys learn during a week studying Leonardo just by looking around me.

Nebulas will embellish a Renaissance sketch book and explore the concept of sink or float, to name a few of the activities they'll be doing.

Stars will pratice shading and painting to make clouds. I'm an Art Vistas docent at my kids' school so I enjoy anything that ties into the work we're doing there, and yes, we have learned to make clouds!

Supernovas will paint their own frecoes.

Galileo Rocks! The Art and Science of Music

This theme links art masters like Picasso and Matisse to instruments depicted in their works.

Nebulas will make sea masks and design drums of different diameters.

Stars will use a kalimba to explore prong placement and length in relation to pitch. Then they'll get their groove on and practice rhythm and movement.

Supernovas will create a mixed media collage (think Kandinsky) and make a guitar out of nylon, cardboard and wood!

My kids will be doing two weeks at Camp G (some people do 4 weeks or more!). We've yet to nail down the themes, but one thing is certain, I will NOT be packing lunch! New this year to Camp G, lunch and snacks will be provided by ChoiceLunch. It's an additional fee, but after 9 months of packing lunches this school year, I am done. And it's not like I'm giving my kids the license to gobble down pesticide laden junk food, either, no - it's ChoiceLunch, which provides healthy, hormone and antibiotic free meats and dairy. We're going to give the lunch option a go.

The other thing I like about Camp G is the counselors. All the lead instructors are college graduates. With less than 10 percent of applicants accepted, landing the role of a Camp G leader is prestigious indeed!

A camp is a camp is a camp, right? Wrong!

So what I learned from my kids is that in its simplest interpretation, "good" equals fun. But what I learned from the hard working team at Galileo Learning is that good and fun equal the Galileo Innovation Approach. It means that slowly and without realizing it, my kids will pack along some helpful tools they'll need as they go out into the world. They'll learn ways to be visionary, courageous, collaborative, determined and reflective.

According to my Stars, it's all good.

Did I mention the discount? Refer friends and you both get $40 off. In fact, you'll get a $40 reduction with each referral. That's a crazy discount.

This is an original post to Chalk and Cheese Chronicles.

Disclaimer: Galileo Learning invited me to a discussion centered around the Galileo Innovation Approach. They are giving my kids one free week of camp each because they want to hear my feedback, both positive and negative. So stay tuned for our post-camp write up later in the summer!

I Make Trouble for the School Office Lady

Somebody is always getting their hands slapped at school. It's not either of my kids, as you might expect.

It's me.

I don't do it on purpose, but I always get caught doing something I shouldn't. 

The first time it happened, I think I had my hand reaching over the counter, trying to fetch a pen. I hadn't realized the flower pot on the counter was actually full of pens whose ends were attached to fake flowers.

I thought they flowers.

The second time it happened, I had walked my sons, my visiting niece and my tiny visiting fur nephew over, just to ask a question. We were all smiles, mouths full of summer popsicles, a tiny leashed dog at our side.

He can't be here, she said, sternly, eyeing our dog. He is not allowed here.

It had been a short trespass, from the sidewalk to this place, which, on weekends and after hours is indeed the stomping grounds to many a neighborhood dog.

I thought it would be ok. Actually, I hadn't even thought about it.

Another time and another time still, I'd forgotten to get an excuse note, from the dentist, from the pediatrician and we had inadvertently tried to slip back in without official papers. This is a pattern I keep repeating.

The one time I had to pee while there, I'd chosen the wrong restroom. There are two from which to choose, one for kids and one for adults. I had a 50-50 chance and I chose wrong. Of course I did. Embarrassing.

I get the sign in/sign out binder confused with the other binder that's always there. It is a terrifying choice to have to make.

My biggest blunder occurred in the cafeteria. Someone had asked me to warm up a dish for a party we were having. So I headed to the tiny, empty cafeteria kitchen and placed the dish in the microwave. Just as I did, footsteps approached and a voice pleaded, "No, no, no, not there, please don't use that one." I was to use the microwave in the staff room, the voice instructed, after I'd stared back blankly, and asked the proper place to go. Yes, the staff room. I should have known.

These are just a few of the blunders I've committed. I know the list will grow through the years. It's a learn-as-I-go process. I'm sure when my kids are in, say, 5th grade and I arrive to help out at the school fundraising event, I'll do something wrong like move boxes to the wrong location or wear my badge on the wrong side.

I'm like that, you see, the mom who is the bane of the school office lady. I swear I don't try to do everything wrong, it just happens.

Still, I go back for more, volunteering in class and all that, mindful that my every step could lead to another reprimand.

I exasperate the schoool office lady, but I assure you, it's not on purpose!

 

 

 

Scribbling Away at Self-Esteem

My nearly 6-year-old son is a scribbler at school. When he was 4, his jerky scribbles would reveal surprisingly accurate doodles of dinosaurs and light saber battles. Rarely, though, would he fill in the lines of those doodles with color. I loved those doodles, even using them as gift tags, proud mother that I am.

The scribbling didn't bother me.

This year, in 1st grade, the scribbling continues. A couple of times, he's been made to re-do his coloring work. Don't scribble, he is told. Do it slowly and carefully. His observant 1st grade teacher is working hard to make him care about his work. The message is clear: Color within the lines. Cover up all the white spaces. He showed me how he colored in a drawing of Columbus and rather than praise the process, I pointed out the scribbles.

My son's penmanship and overall fine motor skills need improvement. Desperately. At home, we have an art station. We have every imaginable type of writing instrument. We have lined paper, handwriting paper, blank paper, coloring books and even a Toy Story handwriting practice book. Everythiing my son needs for remedial coloring 101 is at the ready. We work on it every day. It's not really that he can't do it, it's more that he doesn't want to do it.

Abandoning School Portraits

Say cheese! Today is picture day at my boys' elementary school. I was able to convince one of my boys to kick up his outfit a notch and wear a collared shirt but as I looked over the order form, I just couldn't do it. With payment due in cash or check and no option to order digital files, it's just not where I'm at right now. Now if the school photographer would let me preview the prints online, order the digital files and allow me to pay via credit card or Paypal, then I might be on board with this.

It doesn't feel right to break with tradition. My mother still has a drawer full of my old school portraits, a testament to an awkward stage that lasted until my senior year of high school and then some. We always bought a variety pack and each year, we'd dutifully send a few wallet sized photos to various aunts and uncles, keeping the 8x10s in their original packaging for all of posterity.

Now that I have become a mom, I also have the drawer of unused school portraits of my two boys. Our school does both fall and spring portraits, lest a child should change during the great expanse of winter.

My boys' kindergarten portraits last year were flat and dark with no personality. I have a thousand better photos of my boys that I took myself. I have a couple dozen better photos of my boys taken by my photographer friends. That said, I do have friends whose school photographer did an excellent job of capturing their childrens' portraits. Some are really quite good.

I realize that in abandoning a long tradition of ordering school portraits, I won't have that drawer full of unused wallet size photos. My kids won't get to one day post one on their Facebook page when they get older, as a joke. I won't get to embarrass them when a future girlfriend comes to our house and sees old school portraits of her boyfriend smiling awkwardly in front of a mottled blue/gray background, in an oak frame in the hallway.

But there's still the class photo which at our school, takes place in the spring. Now there's a picture I know I want to keep. Maybe my kid will be the one with his eyes closed or or better yet, frozen in mid-motion for all to remember.

I could have fun with that one, too.

This is an original post to Chalk and Cheese Chronicles.

Meeting the World in Fourth Grade

The following post was inspired by the book Close Encounters of the Third Grade Kind by Phillip Done. Mr. Done is certainly the type of teacher whom some of his students will never forget. We can all scan through the list of our grade school teachers and pick the one who made the greatest impression on our young selves. For me, it's a teacher who once invited our entire fourth grade class over for a swim in her condominium pool!

I still have her letters. One is typewritten. A few are handwritten in her familiar cursive. Another is addressed to me in the bold lettering of calligraphy.

She was my fourth grade teacher and when she left our school to get married and move to Honolulu, she and I kept in touch for several years. As Ms. Kirby became Mrs. Izumi, I followed her trail through letters to a world bigger than my own. She wrote to me about her travels to Fiji and Guadalajara and about her life in Hawaii with her new husband, a lawyer.

In her classroom, she brought the world to us. We spent a lot of time talking about different countries. I spent a lot of time with my nose in encyclopedias, turning to the page of the country we were studying, finding the big map (Kenya!) and then tracing its outline onto tracing paper for my book reports. I loved doing those reports. Back in the classroom, the posters would change from Africa to Mexico to Japan. We watched many films about various countries, following the narrator into homes of the world. Our classroom felt like a museum.

Boys Will be Boys

I am the mother of boys. I'm trying to raise them as globally minded citizens of the world who appreciate the pine needles they're standing on. Smell the pine needle, feel it, remember this moment, this tree, this adventure. Look at a map. Look for the treasure, run barefoot in the sand. Here's another map, find yourself on the map, find Paris, find Portland. Look, feel, smell - use all your senses. Take it in. Notice things. Ask questions, seek answers. See that person - he has a history. Run into the world, feel the wind. Read.

My boys are marvelous creatures. Working within my limited means (read: money!), I'm trying to give them the tools they need to seek their places in this big world. Which is why we're always on the go, why I'm always giving them teaching moments, why we're always looking, smelling, and eating up the world. They climb, they play, they imagine and slowly, they understand just a little bit more.

I won't keep my kids in the dark, sheltered in the living room, eyes glued to the television.

Inside, I celebrate my boys and the beautiful human beings they've become and yet, I have an uneasy feeling that society does not celebrate boys in early childhood. While I have no doubt that my boys' talents and abilities will take them far later on in life, society does not seem to celebrate the accomplishments of boys when boys are young. In kindergarten, for instance, there is great emphasis on fine motor perfection. Can you write your name in deneliean, dear block letter boys? In my experience, girls seem to favor fine motor activities. I was one of those little girls. I'd spend hours, in fact, I preferred to spend hours in my room coloring and drawing and writing letters over going outside. My brother, on the other hand, was always and I mean always, outside playing. Who would have had the advantage in kindergarten? Why me, of course. I think it skews parents' perceptions of how well their children are doing in school. Parents of girls get to coast with pride over their daughter's accomplishments, while boys who are accomplished at so many different things, get overlooked, their kindergarten experiences soured by the emphasis on fine motor perfection.