Mommy's Blog: Wintry Week

This week began and ended as a winter wonderland. In the middle, of course, we had two 60 degree rainy days that melted every bit of snow away. Cleveland + climate change = good times.

I must say I prefer the winter wonderland. Especially when it comes bearing a snow day! Yesterday a nice white-out blew in right at 6am, just enough for Solon, and the other southeast districts, to call the day, but not enough for Cleveland Heights. Which means I had the day off, and no kids at home for a bit of it, too. What a way to start the weekend! Snow days are such gifts. This weekend has continued snowy-wonderful. Our neighborhood is blanketed with such a thick, fluffy layer of white. It is the kind of snow that coats the branches in that just-right, cover-of-an-old-fashioned-Christmas-Card kind of way.

Here we are out sledding last Sunday, one "last chance" to enjoy the snow. You know, before it came right back two days later. The children spent as much time on the playground as they did on sleds...

Tuesday: A lovely birthday dinner and celebration with Becca. I can't believe my baby sister is 22 years old. She's such an amazing person, and I'm so glad she's back in town so we can have birthday dinners together again. The kids, who absolutely adore her, are pretty happy about that too.

Yesterday-- our snow day!-- was a lovely, close to home, no-photos-taken day.

Highlights: starting the day with a swim and time in the hot tub, coffee at Starbucks all by myself, getting to pick up Ivy from preschool (so much cute in one little room!!)

In the afternoon we took the chance to go tour a school we'd thought about for Jack last year- a "charter school" that's actually a collaboration between CMSD and CSU, using the International Baccalaureate curriculum. If Nat does end up with CSU next year (and there are some possibilities in the works...) then we'd have a pretty good chance of getting Jack in there. It was pretty impressive, and it made me regret that I never got around to looking at it last year. Because there are so many more layers of complication to this idea than there would have been last year. And last year it would not have been complication-free. It is hard when our politics collide with our personal desires and with the intense and frightening pressure to be absolutely sure we are doing the exactly right thing for our child at all times.

You see, its not that I am actually unhappy with Jack's current school experience in Cleveland Heights. Its just that I kind of wish I was really happy with it. Jack looks forward to school, he's learning, I think his teacher is lovely. So what's not to be happy about? I want to believe in public, neighborhood schools. It's just that I wish his neighborhood school to actually reflect his neighborhood, to have his classmates be the kids he walks to school with, to see the other parents as we walk or shop. That's the core and strength of a neighborhood school. And that's what's lacking for us so far at Boulevard. Please don't misunderstand me. The children and parents in Jack's class are lovely. I have enjoyed the interactions I've had with them. But none of them live on our street. Or within a 5 street radius. Or anywhere that our paths would cross and friendships and real community can develop. That's what I'm looking for, that's the whole "personal desires" piece, right there. And so I find myself wondering, if we don't have a true neighborhood school to fight for, are we doing the right thing for our child's education? Do we listen to test scores and doubt the level of rigor in our community's schools? Do we fall prey to judgement and fear that class and culture differences will negatively impact our child's learning? How can I not, as a good bleeding-heart liberal, insist that those things don't matter a bit? How can I not, as an over-educated educator brainwashed into worshiping The Test and all its data portends, ignore the nagging thought that they really do matter quite a bit?

Everybody else is doing it, so why aren't we? Should we blindly follow our neighbors and pull Jack out of Boulevard to ...somewhere else...? Or do we stick it out, fight for our local schools, put politics above the personal?

I am working through this. Bear with me.

On a lighter note. Today we had a most wonderful time at the Natural History Museum Groundhog day celebration. The kids couldn't have been better. We dug like a groundhog, tunneled like a groundhog, and made a groundhog puppet. We met Erie Eddie, our local groundhog. I want one for a pet now.