Tiger Teacher Mom? No such thing

I am surrounded by Tiger Moms. Sometimes, against my better judgement, I try to be one too. But I have discovered that at heart, I can't be one. I can't keep it up. I've been told I don't have enough resolve to be a Tiger Mom. I'm okay with that because I know the real reason I can't be a pure, true blue Tiger Mom. 

Because I was a teacher before I became a mother and that shapes how I parent. And the teacher is a whole lot more reasonable and sees a lot more long term than the parent does.

I recently wrote something regarding my educational philosophy. 

" children are innately curious and creative and when given the right opportunities will come to love learning and that love for learning will propel them onto greater things. I have always chosen to focus on the former rather than teach with the singular aim of getting good grades. While I do agree that good grades are important, I see them as a by-product of the love for learning rather than an end in itself. My classroom ought to be a safe space for children to discover who they are and it must be a safe space for them to fail, pick themselves up, re-group and try again"

When I try to go all crazy Singaporean parent on my kids, I always end up being chastened by my better angels. I fall prey to fear and anxiety, mostly with the boys who are often careless and messy. With Evan, we saw brilliance but unwillingness to apply himself. So when it came to Muffin, I came down on him with the wrath of a Tiger Mom angered. 

To wrestle with carelessness, the penalty was to do yet another exercise. In theory, it sounded like a good idea. Get rid of the carelessness and increase mastery. But in execution, I saw how I was doing my son a disservice in the long run and all of a sudden those mistakes he was making, did not seem a big deal anymore. What I was doing, was an even bigger deal.

It had gotten to the point where Muffin would not start any work because he was paralysed by the fear of making any mistakes. 

It had gotten to the point where Muffin would cry hysterically when he discovered he had made a mistake. 

It had gotten to the point where he was fearful of the words "You have to get some work done". 

That's when I knew, for a fact, I was doing wrong by him.

As a parent, I was making sure that he feared failing just so that he would give me a good piece of work. 

As a parent, I was punishing him for trying to figure out math for himself; something he had enjoyed thoroughly up to this point. 

As a parent, I was making him fear learning because now, in his mind, testing what he had learnt had become punitive.  

As a parent, I was not giving him space to be okay with not getting it right the first time. Instead, I was causing him to become catatonic at the thought of getting something wrong.

As a teacher, I would have pointed all these things out to the parent and drawn attention to how damaging that was to the child, his self-esteem and confidence.  

As a teacher, I would have known that careless mistakes did not define the person the child would grow up into. 

As a teacher, I know that the fear of failing would limit the person the child would grow up into. 

And so, as a teacher, I would have wanted to smack around the parent who did that to his or her poor kid. 

So, Tiger Mom be damned, I listened to the teacher. Hopefully it isn't too late. 

 

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Respect the child's decision

- There are parts of this post that are spiritual in nature so consider yourself warned before you roll your eyes-

For the longest time, Jordan has been wanting to move schools. Initially, it was because she wasn't settled at her school. But even when she did settle and found her footing, she seemed to still have this inclination to move schools.

By then, we weren't so keen to do so because she had a group of friends that we liked and she could count on. She had strong teachers who were providing her good grounding. It was a good school with simple, decent and strong Christian values. There were no airs to it and we liked that very much.

Unfortunately, she kept picking on things like the girls beingnoisy and sometimes mean and the toilets being smelly and dirty. While we tried to assure her that she would face the exact situations in any other girls' school, she remained like a dog with a bone.

Since there was no dissuading her, we told her that it was then up to her to make it happen. We told her that we would submit her application for her but everything else would be up to her. She would need to

1. Provide consistently good results.

Her edict to herself as she worked towards the year-end examinations

2. Do whatever she felt necessary to get in.

3. Pray for God to open the door for her.

And then we left it. All I had to remember was to submit her results every semester. Jordan on the other hand, talked about it incessantly as if it were already going to happen. When we told her not to get her hopes up, she took it one step further and chose to write to the principal of the school. Jordan then convinced Grandma to drive her to the school and hand deliver the letter to the school office.

A day after her final term exams began, we heard from the school. They were offering her a place for next year. It was what we had been half hoping for for the last two years but thought was never going to happen. Once we got over all the hairs on our arms standing because we knew that it was by the Grace of God more than anything else, we were overwhelmed with nostalgia and reluctance. After all, her current school had done her no harm but in fact given her so much room to grow and develop as a person. And by taking her out, we were in some way hinting that it wasn't good enough for her. And by taking her out, we were throwing her into a brand new environment that she would need to get used to and make friends, all over again.

But the decision wasn't ours to make. That conflict was the hardest to bear. As parents, we are used to calling the shots for JED. But we had put the responsibility of her getting into her school of choice, into her hands. So it was only right to let her decide. We waited till her exams were over before we told her. In the ensuing days, Packrat and I went back and forth, weighing the merits of the new school but lamenting the loss of the her current school.

When we did tell her, we did so most dramatically. We pulled her out of school once her exams were over, took her to brunch and showed her the email. And as she read the email and chomped down on her buttered toast, a grin spread across her face, wide enough to split it. That was our answer enough. People asked if we would have pulled rank and demanded our preference over hers. That grin and the look on her face told us that we would be doing her and in the long term, ourselves a great disfavour, if we took that moment away from her. It was her moment. She did everything she could to get it and if we pulled it from under her feet, she would never trust us again.

                                 

Later on, I asked her what she thought were the reasons why she got into the school after such a long wait.

Her response was that
1. She had worked very hard and she had got herself some pretty good grades.
2. She had prayed. Very very hard.
3. She had written to the principal.

I asked her when she had prayed. In the words of those annoying click bait posts on FB, her answer blew me away.

Me: So, Jordan, when did you pray?
Jordan: Today, at recess.
Me: You prayed today, at recess that you would be able to move schools?
Jordan: Yes. And after recess, you came to pick me up and told me I got in.

Goosebumps.

So, with a heavy heart and trepidation on our part and an excited one on hers we're off on this new adventure, all because God heard the prayers of our 8 year old. May she always remember this as her first encounter of God's faithfulness to her.

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What a teacher truly wants on Teachers' Day...

I could go with a nice long holiday without any papers to grade but that would be wishful thinking. I've had lots of friends with school going kids ask me what it is that teachers truly like for Teachers' Day and what were some of the Teachers' Day gifts that I remember.

While I can't speak for other teachers, here are some of my favourites and the ones I remember fondly.

The funniest one, I cannot find a photograph for. It was back when mobile phones had no cameras and my darling class gave me 2 mango fruit which I ate! They had noticed that their teacher, i.e. me, never repeated her wardrobe which consisted mostly of Mango outfits. So come Teachers' Day, their corny 18 year old humour had them present me two HUGE mangoes. And to top it off, a T-shirt that I still have.

2. The most self-aware one was an urn that I still use. It came from a class I had to learn to love because they were really trying. They made me stage a walk out, a strike and eventually swear at them. I put small change in it now but for the years it sat on my desk in the office, it elicited chuckles from both staff and students alike.

The weirdest would be a toilet scrub brush with no message whatsoever. 18 year old humour, I did not and sometimes still don't get. 

The ones I found most useful. 

1. Honey- I always left them in school and I'd always use them up. Teaching for long stretches and a propensity to get laryngitis made it extremely useful. Honey and lemon drinks. No lemon, just hot water and honey.

2. Lozenges- I've come to appreciate all kinds. From the  Nim Jiom ones to the medicated or the honey eucalyptus ones for the aforementioned reason. I started keeping them in my pencil case and when I was really ill, I'd carry a pot of it around.

3. Red pens- I generally graded in red. Occasionally pink or purple if the mood hit me. And we used to lose our red pens all the time because we would take our papers out to grade every time we got a chance and we would leave our pens all over. Years after I stopped teaching in school, I opened a handbag I hadn't used in a while and found 2 red pens in there. But woe was the day that I had planned to go out to work, settled down nicely with a drink somewhere only to realise I had no pen! I have also on occasion graded with a coloured pencil and a crayon because I wasn't in proximity of a pen (of any colour). So we never ever had enough red pens and were always thankful for those.

And then there were the ones from students who knew me and understood that teachers were human and appreciated the same things they did.

So they've come bearing  cups of MacD's iced tea because they'd seen me come into class with it and we had chatted enough for them to know that I would mainline the stuff if I could. (This is no longer relevant as MacD's iced tea has changed to the run of the mill Heaven and Earth stuff that doesn't work.)

Others pooled together to buy a Starbucks card with enough credit for one drink so that I could grade their papers there (this after spotting me at a Starbucks grading away furiously). All much appreciated and remembered after all these years.

That's the advantage of teaching the older bunch; they remember funny things and have enough freedom to go out and get what they want for their teachers. 8 year old Jordan has, however, very observantly commented her form teacher loves Hello Kitty and that we should buy all her gym coaches bubble tea because they, like Mommy (*guilty here*), drink bubble tea all the time. (Since MacD's doesn't do it for me anymore!)

In a nutshell, the gifts that have meant most are the ones that are the personal ones, the notes, montages, cards or ones where there has been thought put into it. So if you're wondering what to help your kid get or make for their teachers, ask them about their teachers and what they know about them. 

 Disclaimer: Note that all opinions are mine and are not endorsed by schools of any kind!

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Choosing our battles with Chinese

We're almost at the end of the first term of Primary 2. Things are moving at an infinitely faster pace. It isn't frenetic yet but it's slowly getting there. There is something on practically every day and the twins take it in their stride as long as they get some time to run around downstairs and shout on top of their voices. But the day they hate the most is Wednesday. On Wednesday, they spend two hours in what Packrat and I have labelled Nazi Chinese class. This was the same holiday class that the twins were doing at the end of last year. This was the same class that Evan didn't want to continue and we insisted they had to because it was good for them.

Admirably, they've stuck to the strict regime of homework that would require the entire week in between classes to complete. Chinese compositions to re-copy, spelling to practice, paragraphs to memorise and passages to practice reading out loud. But the thing is while they've definitely become more resilient in the face of great difficulty and in their eyes, drugery, we have decided to concede that it isn't for them. 

We discovered this about 3 weeks into the term but decided that we had a responsibility to the twins to make sure they see through the term. The reasons why we felt this way were that

1. Evan was demoralised. Every single Tuesday night, he would tell us how much he dreaded going to class the next day. He felt like he was being picked on by the teachers because he was slower writing. I didn't believe him until I saw the teacher rolling her eyes at him above his head. So he didn't see it but the Mommy peeping in to check if they were done caught it in full.

2. The school and therefore the teachers work on a different pedagogical philosophy than we subscribe to. We don't and have never believed in putting down a child to motivate him or her to succeed. Perhaps some children respond to that but we have never treated JED that way and therefore they recoil from being treated in that way. It has a lot to do with my mother reminding me to "teach a child from what he knows to what he doesn't know" rather than "This is what you ought to know, I don't care how you get to that point, but you bloody well get there or suffer wrath." And it didn't seem to matter that what they ought to know was various standards above what they actually knew at this point. This actually makes this Nazi Chinese class a great class for kids who want to excel. But for kids like mine that still need to have the love for the language cultivated and the pillars of the language strengthened, nope. Akin to building a skyscrapper on swampland.

3. We spent many of their pre-schooling years in schools that were bigger on nurturing than demanding excellence for results. This school was markedly different. Nurture? Where is there time to nurture? We have things to do and places to go. Flail? Learn how to swim? Can't? Then, drown.

4. Jordan was becoming too competitive. Because they put so much emphasis on who finished first, she always wanted to finish first regardless of the quality of her work.

I did blog about sticking to our guns and letting them go through it. Well, guns have been stuck to and gone through they have. We've given our notice and we're done with it.

Practically, it does leave a big hole in supporting their Chinese. And we've been trying to plug it ourselves, the way we want them to learn while we find something of the right fit. This has meant that I've had read to JED in my very rusty and patchy Chinese. It's also meant that Packrat and I have spent a whole afternoon on the floor drawing up matching flash cards for the twins just so that part of their revision becomes a game rather than mundane memory work. Perhaps this way, they retain it past the test next week.

It would be so much easier to concede as necessary the whole rote, over-teaching schtick that everyone is buying into. That way, I can, in all good conscience, keep them in the Nazi Chinese class because it is good for them and I can be sure that they won't fail at the language. My way? They truly might fail But that is looking at it only from my perspective. From their point of view,  Evan hates the language already and barely tolerates it. If I stuck him at the Nazi Chinese Centre for the long term, it might end up with him having such a revulsion for the language that once he figures out how to be more rebellious, he won't care if he fails at it. Jordan, she might pick up a bit more from it but at what cost? Becoming uber competitive and crying every time she doesn't come in first?

I wasn't fantastic at Chinese but I had neighbours that I played with, who spoke only Chinese and I loved the Channel 8 dramas. Those two things saved me from the fate that awaited my very anglo, mission school- going brothers. I didn't hate it like they did because I used it and I was conversant in it and it helped me do relatively well for it. Even if I'm no longer there, it's where I want JED to be at and my sense is that forcing what seems to be the industry's standard of what is the best down their little potato-banana throats is really not going to help this cause.

So we fight smart. We forsake this war in the hope that we will have energy for the longer battle and it might be a little bit more painless.

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Challenging the stereotypes

One of the most frustrating parts about being a teacher is realising that my students bought lock stock and barrel the racial/ religious stereotypes that were virulent in Singapore. I have lectured, nagged, corrected, ranted and raved at them for making grievous assertions.

Evan came home announcing that there was a food drive in school where they were supposed to bring can food to donate to the underprivileged. While Evan tried to explain the mechanics of the food drive to me, I felt the familiar sensation of my blood boiling. But I had to remind myself that this was my son and he was 7 years old and he was reporting a message he had been told in school.

He had said "We need to buy can food to give to the poor people. And the food must be Halal because the poor people are Muslims."

In my mind, this was a precursor to the ignorant assertions I hear from 17 year olds about how all Muslims are terrorists and all poor people live in Africa. I am very sure that their stereotypes come from bits and pieces of misinformation as well.

I don't think his teacher actually said any of that to him. I suspect the message was that
a. We are running a can food donation drive for the underprivileged.
b. Please make sure the can food is Halal so that if the underprivileged we are going to give the can food to are Muslim, they can eat it too.

So, donning my teacher hat, I proceeded to try to correct the misinformation and explained to him that it wasn't that all poor people were Muslim and that it was so that we could bless everyone equally with our donation.

I could see he was having a bit of a hard time understanding everything I was explaining to him but he tried to correct himself later on. And he was very pleased with the stash of can food he had picked out. Of course, he's footing half the bill so perhaps, when I tell him that he owes me $6, he isn't going to be so pleased.

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A rare peep

When people ask me how the twins are doing in school and more specifically, what the twins do in school, I give vague answers. From 7.30 to 1.30 pm, what they do is a black hole to me. Most of the time, they can't quite tell me what they did either. On occasion, they report homework and some learning.

This morning, I got to see for myself, a little bit of what it was like in Evan's class. Some mums went in to conduct some activities for the boys and I was one of them. We told them stories and ran some activities.

I came away with a few observations.

1. My son is doing just fine in class. He has friends, he is surrounded by boys (in his group) like him; slightly endearingly geek like and he is well behaved and polite. I could ask for nothing more.

2. We don't give them enough credit for their abilities. Even though some of the activities we had were challenging, they figured out how to eventually do them. If they didn't, they would ask and they would eventually produce something approximating what we asked them for. And admirably, at 6 years old, many of them were able to work together collaboratively quite successfully.

3. Class dynamics are always the same. There is a class clown, there is one that disrupts the class, there is the brat but the kids are generally good kids.

4. The teacher is strict and values are always communicated. Within the first half an hour, she had reminded a boy that by not touching another boy's possessions, he was according his classmate respect.  She also reminded the class that self- control was about not opening the prizes that we gave out on the spot.

5.  I am in awe of their class teacher. In fact, any teacher who chooses to teach Primary One. Even though the boys were generally well-behaved, they needed a lot of reminding to keep quiet, to be on task and to only answer questions. Even though their teacher, a teaching aide and 3 of us mommies were around to keep things running, I felt that I had been run over by a truck after. And I am a trained to do this, albeit with older kids. But after 2 hours with Evan's class, I was confounded, dazed and badly needed a nap. Anyone who could do it daily and with as much dignity and quiet sternness that Evan's teacher does ought be awarded the Purple Heart, a National Day medal and a super Performance Bonus. Well, that is if it were up to me.

So I've come away proud of Evan, overwhelmed by 30 six year olds and humbled by his teachers. It certainly has been quite a day.

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Achievement unlocked: Climbing a volcano

We're leaving Hawaii tomorrow. It's been 2 1/2 weeks of doing things that JED would never get to do in Singapore like hang at beaches with white sand and clear waters, waking up to the beach at the balcony and turtles swimming up to shore or seeing dolphins close up in the wild. 

They've scored many firsts this trip but the one that we are bursting with pride over is the fact that the twins, not Muffin because he had just woken up and it was too much to expect of him, trekked from the crater of a 300 000 year old extinct volcano (Diamond Head) right up to the rim of it. This meant a 2.6 km hike up to the rim and back down and that included 226 steps, much of it, steep or spiralled.

Between the two, Evan is often the one that will complain about how hot, exhausting, uncomfortable or painful any experience is. But this time, the sheer idea of being able to climb to the rim and look into the crater to where we had actually parked our car was enough to motivate him up the endless flights of stairs.

They stopped once, to drink some water but pretty much soldiered all the way up. I recently remarked that our vacation was extremely cushy and comfortable. This, after finding out that a friend of mine had taken his family to trek the Himalayas. Climbing Diamond Head doesn't really rough up our holiday much more but the fact that there was no whining, no dragging their feet and no one asking us to carry them/ piggy back them any distance of the way was enough to unlock a whole new level of achievement. And the looks on their faces, as they looked down and discovered how high up they were from where we started and how far they had trekked, showed that they had surprised themselves as well.

Their reward? Telling them we were most proud of them as well as a big bowl of shaved ice complete with that red, artificial sugar syrup drizzled all over it.

Evan has been telling us about how he has to do NAPFA in primary school and how scary and tiring it sounds. We're hoping to tell him that if he were able to climb the crater and back, he wasn't going to have any problem with any of the stations in his NAPFA test.

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And it's a wrap

The last 2 days have been the whirlwind windup to the end of term. It was 2 days of just plain playing with their teachers and friends while also getting a few practical lessons in to do with using money to buy food from stalls (this time at depressed and controlled prices with stall holders being mostly mommies ready to over dish the food to the queuing, hungry children.

The highlight for both of them was water play though Evan got more water time than Jordan. Jordan started out the day with a mild fever. On any other day, I would have her stay home but this time I was torn between it being her last day in school and us flying half way round the world on Monday night ill. Eventually, her teacher let her play for a little bit before sending her off to do something dry.

No last day can be complete without reminiscing and trying to capture memories hence the customary pose-awkwardly-with-the -teacher shots; especially teachers that they are oh-so-fond-of. Jordan's class also had a little autograph book of sorts where they exchanged phone numbers with everyone so that they would be able to keep in touch with one another.

The day eventually came to a close, no matter how much the kids didn't want it to end, it had to and they closed with a finale encore of their concert pieces. This time I got to see Evan perform it up close and Jordan lamented how she didn't want to leave the school.

Then just like that, the noise and buzz in the school died down, the children left reluctantly, after a million hugs with the teachers and kindergarten is over.

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I don't wanna grow up

-Crazy momma post ahead!-

Following on from the last post as we finish up kindy, we've been busy with Primary 1 orientation. It's where the kids meet their teachers and classmates for next year. They get taken on a tour of the school. Evan's eyes gleamed when he saw the complicated playground at the back of the school. Jordan just wanted to walk on the balance beams that they had.

Another reason why they do orientation is so that the children don't get too overwhelmed by the sea of students that will engulf them on the first day of school. And to the school's credit, they do a pretty good job. Even though in each of the orientations we attended, they were screamers and a lot of tears, Jordan and Evan held up admirably.

But they weren't the problem. I was. Both schools required us to drop off the children with their classes. At Jordan's school, as we rushed into the hall without stopping at the bathroom or anything, Jordan gets whisked off by an older student without so much as a wave and a bye to Mom. With Evan, it was pretty much the same thing.

I was then left to wander off and find a seat by myself to listen to the principal's briefing. And as she did so, it dawned upon me that while the kids seemed cool bananas and aptly prepared the face this new environment, kudos to the kindy for prepping and psyching them, no one really prepared the Momma!

Packrat rolled his eyes at me when he realised that I had tears in the corners of my eyes and I was asking him anxious, paranoid momma type questions like "What if he/ she is hungry? They hadn't eaten yet?", "What if they need to pee? We didn't go to the bathroom before coming in?", "What if they panic?" and a thousand other paranoid, crazy 'what if?' questions.

And then, there was the buying of their school books from the bookstore and as I did that, I kept thinking, it wasn't that long ago that I was doing it for myself in secondary school and now I'm doing it for my kids. Why am I doing this for my kids? How can they be big enough for me to buy primary school books for? Cognitive dissonance and overload. 

So my conclusion is that while the kids are ready to move on and grow up (they can't wait apparently), I'm desperately clinging onto their last vestiges of baby-hood. Once they head up to primary school, by no stretch of the imagination will they still be my babies! And I'm not ready to deal with that.

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It's Official! We've survived kindy!

The twins have graduated kindy.

I am proud to announce I did not cry during the graduation walk in even though I did tear a little bit.

And then, just like that, there was a finale and it was over. Just like kindergarten is for them.

I am sad for them. But at the same time, proud. The principal made a point in her speech about how when the little ones entered, at what was Muffin's age at the beginning of the year, they had problems with separation, focus and the inability to take instruction. She pointed out their complex dance choreographies and their stage presence as an example of how they have grown.

*Nods*


The concert did feel like the apt end to the kindy years; the showpiece that seemed to epitomise their years there. And Packrat and I are massively proud of how they have turned out. But by their successes, I don't mean their ability to read and write though I am proud of that too.

But they are confident little beings. Evan had confided in us that he was nervous and excited about the whole thing, the dancing, the walking up to get his scroll and ensuring his motar board does not fall off his head. But he did great. His performance of Mary's Boy Child was earnest and he did everything right. He even looked like he enjoyed himself. Jordan was part of the main cast, as one of the narrators. She did her speech bits with flourish, standing all alone on stage facing thousands of parents and immersed herself in O Holy Night.

They have become social beings. Every where we went, we were met with shrieks of "EVAN! COME HERE!" and "JORDAN! TAKE A PHOTO WITH ME NOW NOW NOW!!!". Evan had a bevy of girls trailing him (we were told later that the girls liked him because he was gentle and not loud and rude) and Jordan flitted from group to group somewhat celebrity-esque, with girls making space for her to insert herself into their photographs. Packrat and I gazed on with a tinge of envy and bewilderment. Envy because neither of us were social like Jordan and popular like Evan. We were always the odd ones out in the class. And bewilderment because we had no idea where the two of them got it from.

I suspect the school has a great deal to do with it. I know little ones who have told their parents without a doubt that they were staying on at St James, that they weren't going to primary one till they were ready and till then, St James would be there for them. While that amuses me, it also shows that great amount of attachment the children feel towards the school. I don't know if the twins realise that they are leaving yet but I sure do and I felt more than a tinge of sadness when Jordan brought home this yesterday.

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Lest we forget

Some people may think that the Americans being over-sentimental and over-dramatic make too big a deal about their tragedies. When I was in Epcot on December 7, the family wondered if some important American had died and that was why the flags were flown at half mast. I said it wasn't and it was to commemorate Pearl Harbour. The reaction to that was a great amount of eye-rolling about how the Americans were over-dramatic.

Perhaps.

But at the same time, I was very awed to see the flag flown at half mast. My mother was born on December 7 she was 2 that day. It was helluva 2nd birthday in Singapore because it also heralded the attack on Singapore.

I felt the same way when I was at the 9 11 Memorial.

I remember the cold autumn night when I was watching television and the news cut in to announce that a plane had flown into one of the World Trade Centre towers. The television show I was watching was cut short and for the rest of the night, we watched the news not knowing that we were watching what would be a defining moment in the world and our lives.

No immediate friends or family died. But we had had visiting faculty from the USA who had returned to the USA and one of them, together with her daughter was on the flight that hit the South Tower. No one could work the next day and television only resumed a semblance of normal programming the next evening.

It's been more than a decade on. And the horror that I felt that night, actually wondering whether the world would go to war and Packrat would be called back from reserves and whether we would actually have a Singapore to return to at year end as well as more comically, if war was declared, would I have to finish my dissertations?

There were many things that moved me about the 911 Memorial.

1. How big the memorial pools were. The memorial pools are in the exact footprints of where the towers were. And it made me think about how large the craters were on that day and how many people died and how much rubble and debris had filled the craters that size.

2. Every single victim was named. And some of them had, after their names who they were; the first responder policemen or firefighters who did not know that they were running into buildings that were about to collapse.

3. The thoughtfulness that went behind the memorial. Yes, light shoots out from the second crater in the fountain every night as an example of an electric eternal flame of sorts but what touched me was how every single name was hollowed out so that family members or the public who want to honour the dead by placing flowers could do so by placing the flowers in their names.

 

4. The new Freedom Towers are still being built. National memory and the economy are tightly interlinked.

5. There were two thousand over people who perished that day and 7 buildings collapsed not counting those who died elsewhere that day. The debris and the toxic gases remained over New York for months after. Amidst of that debris, a tree was found. And that tree was then taken to a botany clinic and actually revived. It now stands proudly in the middle of the 911 memorial and is known as the Survivor Tree.

I remarked to my brother that as a mark of respect and honour that the memorial should actually be closed on 911 itself so that families could visit it without the gawking eyes of visitors and onlookers. 

It is hard not to be overawed. But it is also easy to forget tragedy. When I was there, I remembered, it was September 11 2001 that I had decided that I needed to become a teacher. I had forgotten that, and much much more.

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Spoil Market

I get very stressed with Teachers' Day because JED aren't old enough to fully take charge of Teachers' Day gifts. But Jordan and Evan can do some of the bits with minimal supervision. They can make cards.

Except, Jordan doesn't just make a card. She insists on writing a book for her teacher; fully illustrated and coloured. She even tells us very specifically where the 'conflict' is in her story.

Evan looks up at his effort, looks over at hers and while he doesn't say anything, it's written all over his face "Spoil market!" and possibly the formings of expletives that he doesn't yet know. I work with him and we come up with something passable but he doesn't allow me to photograph it. To his credit, he ties bows on their gifts to their teachers much more deftly than she does (his shoes have laces). And Jordan's reaction to his being able to do that was pretty much the same as his was earlier.

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