My Journal:

Erika's 7-year old well visit check-up was a "little bit late". She turned 7 in April. We went for her check-up on October 2, 2017.

She weighs 57 lbs (67th percentile for weight)
and 51.5 inches (86th percentile for height)

She has 20/20 vision and passed the hearing test. She received her flu vaccine.

Follow-up in one year.

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Erika is currently in second grade. She is a proficient reader and enjoys "chapter books" now (books that contain chapters). Her favorite subject in school is Math, followed by Gym/Physical Education. She enjoys school but wishes the boys wouldn't talk so much, as they can be disruptive. She wished everyone followed the teacher's instruction, so they could receive class rewards, but alas, it does not happen.

Her favorite color is no longer purple, it is now aquamarine. She mostly dresses in black and grays, with a pop of color somewhere in her outfit. She continues to wear mismatched socks, as she has done since she was three years old. She cannot decide if she wants to pierce her ears or not.

She enjoys dance, and spends 8 hours a week at the dance studio (in ballet, lyrical, and jazz). Two weeks ago, she performed with her troupe on the Disney Springs stage in Orlando, Florida. Yesterday, she performed with her troupe for our town's tree lighting ceremony downtown. In the coming weeks, she will participate in Holiday Express Benefit Concerts around New Jersey (https://holidayexpress.org/) - they are an organization in their 25th year of existence that "works year-round to deliver music, food, gifts, and human kindness to adults and children in need, including the mentally and physically disabled, the isolated, individuals in addiction and recovery programs, the poor and the homeless, and children with serious illnesses".  I am proud that the dance studio promotes not only a love for dance, but also for giving back to the community through dance. Erika has performed this year for senior citizens, for battered women and children, for children with disabilities, and for the homeless.

Originally posted by grrm at President Pussygrabber

I've been teaching for 11 years now, and having taught approximately 60 - 80 students every year, I have somewhere in the neighborhood of 700 graduates who have taken my class. My school is unique in that we are not a local high school but one that receives students from all across the district (and actually, all across the state of New Jersey, though realistically since we are a commuter school only, less than 5% come from out-of-county). Our county is approximately 600 square miles, so I am bound to bump into students wherever I may be, and not just the town that my school is located in.

In the 2 months that my cousin has been with me, it never fails to amaze him. We have bumped into my students when:
- We went to the grocery store to buy supplies, and the cashier was an ex-student
- We went to Rite Aid pharmacy, and the cashier was an ex-student
- At the petstore, the dog trainer was an ex-student
- An ex-student was our server at a restaurant
- An ex-student was in front of us in the check-out line at CostCo today
- At the movie theater, a group of students were also going to the movies
- At Buffalo Wild WIngs, a group of students were also dining there
- Randomly in parking lots
- Always at the mall

And I thought about how that influences my life. I never get stupid drunk. I don't curse in public. I never wear revealing clothes. I don't make obnoxious comments or pick a fight in public. In essence, I try to lead a saintly life. Would I do this if I weren't a teacher? If my kids are around, probably. But if I were out with some girl friends, we may get loud! But not in today's digital world, where everything is recorded and uploaded to every form of social media.  Where teachers have been fired for seemingly innocuous stuff like:
- Posting photos of them on personal Facebook page of them drinking wine while on vacation in Italy
- Having posed in a swimsuit for a yacht magazine
- For getting pregnant while being unwed
- For being a transsexual kindergarden taecher
- For working in the porn industry TWENTY YEARS before becoming a teacher
- For making a status post on Facebook that implied she felt that working with middle school students was worse than dealing with criminals in jail
- For making a status post on Facebook that said Black History Month was idiotic
- For using Twitter to call a parent a c***t

See more here: http://community.edb.utexas.edu/socialmedia/node/61

I flew to Malaysia about 10 days ago with my two girls. The 26-hour flight with one transit in Hong Kong was thankfully uneventful; Erika refused to sleep and watched lots of movies until she got on the second flight and just passed out while sitting up with the lights on and a movie playing; Amelia napped a bunch and was restless and attempted to kick the seat in front of her a whole bunch of times, but since I thwarted her attempts, she ended up just kicking me a lot and I have bruises to prove it. When we disembarked from both legs, multiple passengers in the nearby rows thanked me for my well-behaved kids, and Erika said very loudly "THANK YOU!" back at them and Amelia chimed in with a 'ANK YOO!

We landed on Tuesday night and the kids were extremely jet lagged. They ended up getting up at all odd hours of the night like 2 am and 4 am and wondering if it was time to get up and then upset that it was not. And then at 1 pm in the afternoon, they'd be so zonked out and non-functional. This lasted a few days and is horrid as their parent, because while working on my own jet lag, now I had to deal with their jet lag; so even when I was ready to sleep in the night, if they weren't, I had to be up too.

We had plane tickets to then fly to Singapore on Sunday after resting a few days, to see my extended family especially my 96-year old grandmother. But unfortunately she passed away on Saturday morning, a short 24 hours before I was scheduled to see her. I only get the chance to see her once a year, so the last time I saw her was August 2015. I was 24 hours too late to say goodbye to my grandmother; just like how I was too late to say goodbye to my own mother. The silver lining is that I was present for the 5-day wake and the funeral ceremonies. I started freaking out about small things like not having funeral clothes and nothing for the kids to wear; at Chinese funerals, we do not wear any bright colors, so we wear black, white, or gray; and the kids had NOTHING in those shades. So I had to run to the mall and try and find some, but every store appears to be vehemently against childrens clothing in those shades. (I miss New York and the classic black/gray tones, lol)

I was one of three cousins who gave her eulogy. My grandmother had three children, so one grandchild from each was chosen to speak: I spoke first (her daughter's first-born child), then my 26-year old cousin (her youngest son's oldest daughter), and then my 24-year old cousin (her middle child's youngest son). I sobbed hysterically and could barely get any words out. I told the story of how she always puts all of us first, and how we said we were going to go out to dinner for her birthday at her favorite restaurant, and she looked around the room and did a quick head-count and said "oh, I am not hungry tonight, you guys go ahead" and no amount of pleading could convince her. She went to her room and lay down, complaining of a headache; and luckily my uncle caught on to her, and said "hey, we are taking TWO cars to the restaurant, okay!" and she said "oh? We are? So there is enough seats? Okay, I'm coming! I do LOVE that restaurant!" That is how she lived her life. I was nowhere that eloquent because I mostly sobbed and blubbered at the podium and then cried my way back to my seat.

My cousin then spoke about how she was very loving and strong, and always talked about how "we girls never have to depend on a man" which is very modern-thinking for her times; and the third spoke about how she was always thinking of others and loved us so much. And I cried and cried and cried some more. She was cremated, and then we collected her ashes the next day, and scattered her into the sea.

I have no grandparents left.

On Sunday, I ran the senior awards brunch, a two-hour event where scholarships and awards from various organizations but particularly the PTSA, gives out awards to recognize seniors. I had to emcee the event and keep the pace going; we also do Senior Reminiscences and the first showing of the Senior VIdeo. It all went smoothly. Then as the senior class advisor, I'm expected to give Closing Remarks. I worked on my speech 48 hours before the event, rehearsed it a few times, had some edits from Brian and my sister Carol, and then went with it. Apparently it was mind-blowingly amazing because I had rave compliments from my principal as soon as I stepped off the stage and all my colleagues had their jaws hanging open in awe, and after the event was over, moms were coming up to me with tears in their eyes saying it was the most touching and beautiful speech they had heard. I might have to dig it up and post it on Livejournal haha, though now I've probably hyped it up too much and it'll be anti-climatic and it'll be an awful read.

On Monday, when I returned to school, I found out that I was awarded a $1000 EcoSchool grant to work on coastal dune replenishment, so that was awesome! I'm super excited to get started on this project, and my principal was thrilled to win another award.

And today, I took a group of my students in the Marine/Environmental Science Club that I run to a 4H Climate Change Summit. The goal of the summit was to raise awareness about climate change in middle and high school students, and task them with conducting a community-based service project that addressed/mitigated climate change, raise awareness within individual communities, and then report back on the results. We ended up finishing in second place and won $200! Hurray!

I didn't write this post for a few weeks, because I wasn't sure if it would come off in a similar vein as #firstworldproblems, a sort of condescending #blessed post, one that is a thinly disguised braggart post, which is really not my intention. I am genuinely concerned about how to emotionally nurture and raise a child like Erika.

In the fall, Erika entered the Brickfest Lego building competition with a classmate. They spent two playdates together for a total of maybe two hours of constructing and three hours of playing with non-Legos, and the final product that they made, a celebration of 100 days in school, a mesh of bright colors and Shopkins creatures, ended up winning first place in the Kindergarten category. There are about 60 Kindergarteners in her school. Her photo was taken and she was featured in the local newspaper, and her model was displayed in the school's hallway for a month.

In the spring, there was Dr. Seuss art contest, where students were tasked with drawing a wacky or funny comic strip, imagining what would happen if Thing 1 and Thing 2 were to come to their house. We forgot all about the contest, until the night before the contest deadline, so I threw a blank sheet of paper at her, she sat down and did a quick sketch with some color pencils, and next thing we know; she won first place in the art contest. She won $20 credit at the next book fair, and was again featured in the newspaper.

She has won two math contests in her class. In fact, because she's already mastered addition and subtraction in class, and is now moving on to the concept of multiplication and negative numbers, she ends up spending her time in math class doodling math equations and writing out new math problems for her 2-year old sister Amelia to solve. Her teacher has a habit of having them engage in a head-to-head contest, where the twenty students in Erika's class form up in two lines, and they have to solve math problems in a rotational-style head-to-head combat, much like Family Feud style. And when her peers see her move to the front of the line, the opposing line ends up scrambling out of position, as no one wants to face off against Erika any more.

Erika's one struggle, which I wrote about last year, is Chinese. I am not a native speaker and it is awkward on my tongue. We do not speak it at home, though I am trying harder to do so with her younger sister, Amelia. Because everything else in Erika's life has come very easily to her thus far, and Chinese was something difficult, she had a very hard time coping with the notion that she was not good at something, and because of this, she fought the idea of going to Chinese school for a very long time. It broke my heart, to see her so upset, so unwilling to try.

This is her second year attending Chinese school. She goes on Saturdays for 4 hours, and three weeks ago, there was a Word Recognition contest. In Erika's Kindergarten class, they were tasked with recognizing 30 different Chinese character sounds (a Chinese alphabet of sort). In the higher grades, they had actual words to read. In her class of 10 students, she scored 27 out of 30, easily taking first place (2nd place was 24/30 and third place was 20/30). She will be getting a trophy at the end of the school year for her achievement.

And I am so proud of her accomplishment and I'm so happy to see how far she has come with her Chinese. But when we left school that day and I hugged her and told her how proud I was of her hard work, she gave a little shrug and there was a sense of expectancy to win, a notion that her hard work should always be rewarded with a win, since that is how it has always worked for her. In fact, most of the time, she is rewarded for not ever having tried (something she says--- like the art contest, she says "I just drew something I thought was funny, it wasn't hard") and I fear that as life gets harder, and life throws her more curveballs, she will not be equipped to hanlde the disappointments in life. Because right now, everything comes so easily to Erika. She has the perfect smile and a sweet personality; she makes friends easily and she stands up to bullies; she does well in school, whether it be mathematics or reading or gym class. And maybe I should celebrate that right now, the way she wins at every contest, the way victories come easily to her and not her peers, but I worry that I am not preparing her for the real world. That when she falls, and she will fall some day, she will not know how to get back up.

Erika came home from school yesterday and casually mentioned that she made a new friend. Now this is rare, because (1) she's somewhat of a social introvert, even though she is very confident and friendly with adults, and (2) she attends a fairly small elementary school, so at this point, she knows all 60 Kindergarteners that she hangs out with during recess and after school, and such.

She shares the story, and I imagine it went something like this:

School had ended and she was at the YMCA After Care program, working on some art work, coloring with some markers between the lines. She heard someone fall and yell "ow, stop that!" and when she looked up, she saw a Kindergarten boy named Ryan on the ground, and a bigger boy hitting him with balls. A ball bounced off his face, and as the ball rolled back to the bigger boy, he grabbed it and pelted it off the fallen boy's back, who lay huddled and curled up on his side.

She looked to her left, and then she looked to her right. She had been given a talk by teacher last year about "tattling" and that they shouldn't always run to her with their problems and that they should "try and work it out" between themselves first as she was "very busy" (yes, can you imagine a pre-K teacher saying this to children...!) She noticed no one else was responding to the situation. She looked at the YMCA providers in the room, who had not noticed what was happening. She looked at the older kids, who had now turned to watch this commotion, but did not get up from their benches to help Ryan. Still gripping her marker, she looked down at her paper. She knew what to do. She stood up, and walked over to the boy.

She noted the boy was not hurt. He was embarassed to be on the floor and a little agitated that the bigger boy wasn't letting up, but he seemed to be otherwise physically unharmed. She picked up the ball that had landed near Ryan's feet, and held it in her two hands, close to her chest. She was unsure what to do next. The bigger boy smiled and came closer, with outstretched arms, and said "pass it to me." She knew better than to give it back to him, but she still wasn't sure what to do.

That was when a bigger girl came up to the situation. She took the ball gently from Erika, and looked the bigger boy square in the eye. "If I give you this ball back, do you promise not to hit Ryan again?" The bigger boy agreed; they even pinkie-swore on it. (Erika says this part with great emphasis, her eyes widening with emphasis). But as soon as the bigger boy gets it back (as you notice, Erika never learns his name), he throws it right at Ryan's head, and knocks him back from a sitting position to the ground.

"Hey!" Erika yells, and puts her body between Ryan's and the bigger boy. She holds her hand up in the universal "stop" sign, and she is frowning. Her heart is pounding and she's afraid the bigger boy will take another ball and throw it at her, but she says "No! Ryan said stop!" The bigger girl picks up the ball, takes her by the hand, and together they go over to the YMCA teacher and tell her what happened, pointing and gesturing at the bigger boy. The teacher handles it from there, and the bigger girl smiles at Erika and says "hey, my name's Krista. What's yours?"

"Erika," she replies a little shyly.
"Nice to meet you, Erika," she says. "Wanna be friends?"

And that's the story of how Erika gained a friend yesterday.

Jan 13 - classroom echomyst
Here is a picture of my classroom. I actually teach in two different rooms-- this is my freshman Marine Biology classroom, which is a lab science. It was recently renovated and completely redone after Superstorm Sandy in 2012-- new desks, new chairs, new cabinets, new walls, new floors! There is ample cabinet space with the redesign, and I increased countertop space along the edge (previously had 3 sinks along the wall edge, but now only 1 at the back of the room). The student desks didn't exist in this configuration before the storm; before the storm they sat at lab benches in groups of six, which meant that some students had their backs to me as I lectured! It was installed in the era when they believed that all science learning should be done experientially with no lecture, so there wasn't even a whiteboard or projector. Kids were supposed to just do labs on their own and discover science--- which works I guess in theory until you realize that we're not all geniuses, so we do need some guidance to get the "ahah" moments in life. Just because I give you a beaker and some chemicals, it doesn't mean you're going to figure it out on your own without some background notes or some lecture material... I like the student desk configuation in pairs, and then allow them to push the tables together to work in teams, or to work around the edge of the room with the microscopes or other equipment...


Jan 18 - something iconographic of where you live like the place you would definitely tell tourists not to miss zhelana
I snapped this photo on the way to work. I am taking this photo from the student parking lot for my high school, so we are within a stone's throw of an iconic lighthouse. The Sandy Hook Lighthouse (pictured below) is the oldest operating lighthouse in the United States. I like how it looks so stormy and overcast in this photo. It is a great sight to visit, and I think very informational about the history of how this land came to be a National Park. And tours are free!

Jan 22 - your desk zhelana
The first photo is a picture of the teacher desk in the classroom (first picture in this post). It's a huge mess. I share this classroom with another teacher, and we each have it for half the day. Things on the desk include: handouts to be passed out to students, work that has been collected from students, stationary (pens, scissors, markers, paperclips, stapler, and hole-puncher, which apparently no high school student has in their homes), and a phone.

The second photo is the desk in the teacher's room which is directly next to the classroom. It is a communal teacher room, one of two available on campus, that is shared by 30 teachers. Space is at a premium in this room, and we don't really have the luxury of storing our teaching materials in this room because it's only the size of about 15 x 30... and yes, again, for 30 teachers. It's actually one of the main gripes of teachers at our school, that we keep losing teacher rooms (we've lost 2 in the last 4 years) to become permanent classrooms. For example, my classroom pictured above is utilized for all periods of the day (I use it for half the day, and the other teacher uses it for the other half of the day), which means I can't access any of my files or materials during my prep. I also can't prep for my classes during my prep, like getting test tubes or teaching materials ready in advance. If I teach during the morning, then I have to come in early to do the prepwork, and if I teach in the afternoon, I have to give up my lunch to do it. Major gripe.