School is a Community

School is a community.  Going to school may be a chore for children or a gift for an older generation looking for more.  Either way, it brings people of all ages together as a community.  Beginning with preschool where young three and four year olds learn how to tie their shoes and count by twos, they are together in a community of learners.  The teachers and staffers add to this community by showing support and nurturing the next generation.  The glue to this community isn’t Elmer’s or a stick; it’s the want and the need to learn.  Plain and simple.  Learning.  Being taught or teaching, it’s all part of the soup that creates the community of school.

The main goal of the school community is learning.  However, there is a plethora of interests and values that contribute to the overall community.  In addition to the learning is the interests and extracurricular activities.  These can range from sports to academics.  This creates smaller communities within the overall larger school community.  For example, a team would be a smaller community.  All of the students, teachers and staffers create the large school community, then within that circle, branches the smaller teams or clubs.  The members would all share the common interest of that team whether it was chess or scouts. The members all attend school and learn, but they also share the interest of their smaller community.   They will help each other to obtain a common goal. 

Obviously, being on a team of any kind fosters competitiveness.  Competition sparks tensions.  There is no way around that.  All communities are going to have tension and school is no exception.  Tensions run high on teams and clubs who strive for one common goal, winning.  In the larger school community, tensions can also run high when family values and beliefs come onto the campus.  As the school community tries to celebrate diversity, it’s the freedom of speech that students will struggle with to be part of their community but also be accepted for who they are.  Differences can work against the glue that holds the community together.  The overall school community may be mainly about learning, but it’s not just academics that students learn.  They will learn from a young age all the way up to a Master’s degree that differences and tensions will boil over every year.  People need to feel accepted, but in the same turn, people will always feel the need to stand apart.  As they try to fit into the larger community of school, they are trying to find their nitch of the branches of the smaller communities.  Standing up for who they are as a member of a club, can cause a ripple effect through the school.  The staffers and teachers try to keep the peace and keep the main goal on learning. 

Thinking that this is an elementary school problem is not the case.  The differences work against the cohesion of the group all the way up into college.  Students stand up for what they believe, whether it’s right for the overall community or self serving.  This can be a good thing or a bad thing.  It may promote the small community, but make the cohesion with the larger school community tense.  This will require more effort from teachers, parents, staff and other students to bring the focus back to the overall objective: learning. 

School is a community of learning.  It’s also a social community.  My children tell me everyday of their experiences academically and also of the social experiences of middle and elementary school.  With the invention of social networks and texting, the school community never sleeps.  What one girl says or does can affect an entire group of girls who then take their experience in the school community to the online community.  They may tell their neighbor who takes it to the neighborhood community and so on.

As a student and a mother of students, I am part of the school community.  The overall objective of learning is always front and center, but the social community of school can sometimes overshadow it.  No matter how much with wish we could get the glue of the social part off the school part, it still sticks.

What's in your Wallet?

What's in your Wallet?  I hear that and instantly the picture of a Viking yelling pops into my head.  His mangy beard down to his chest.  His big sword menacing the people running through the mall.  Most of us are familiar with the Capital One commercials and the Vikings who ask this question.  Has any of us taken this literally and actually looked to see what is in our wallet?  More so, what would others think if they saw inside your wallet?

My wallet is located inside a hot pink and gray polka dotted canvas tote embroidered with metallic flowers, rainbows and Barbie.  Yes, I said Barbie.  I cherish Barbie.  Barbie was my most prized toys as a child and I never grew out of her. As an only child, I spent alot of time with Barbie and her many friends.  I loved the imagination needed to play Barbie.  My Barbies were inspiring.  They were Astronauts, Pop Stars, Cowgirls, working women and fashionable. I stopped playing with her in elementary school, but saved some of my favorites.  As an adult, I discovered a whole new Barbie.  A collector Barbie.  To date, I have 84 Barbies.  All of them still in their boxes.  I adore each and every one of them!  My bag is a token of who I am.  Barbie is a big part of my life and I share that with my daughters who also share my love of Barbie.  So much that my oldest daughter used her own money to purchase the bag for me for Christmas.  Would someone know this just by seeing my bag?  Of course not.  At first sight it may look like an eleborate school bag for a young girl.  It does double duty for me as a school bag too.  My large hard bound Algebra book, journal and grid paper pad is stuffed inside, making the bag heavier that it should be.

My wallet is ordinary.  Black leather with pink trim.  It contains the basic boring old wallet stuff.  My license showing I live in Everett, Washington with my age and my lower-than-truth weight, my debit card from a small Credit Union in Portland, Oregon, a library card with five smaller versions.  All the small ones with names of my kids written on them as their back up cards. There is a pink picture of my girls taken about eleven years ago with they were one and three.  Would you think I was the mother of small children?  Would you wonder where the extra pacifier, baby wipes or ointments are? Instead I am the mother of two teenagers, two pre-teens and a seven year old.  The whole wallet is fat with a multitude of receipts.  Most of them from Safeway.  From any other store, you might think I am addicted to shopping.  Maybe I have a grocery shopping addiction?  With seven in our family, I grocery shop alot.  Would you notice the amount of juices, bread and lunch meat I buy?  I make lunch and brown bag it for five kids every school day.  But why so many receipts?  I have no proper answer to that other than remembering my high school Economics teacher drilling into me the importance of keeping receipts.  I am almost fearful of getting rid of them and never do until I see the transaction has cleared the bank. Maybe I am simply a receipt hoarder.

The next big item is my pink plastic make up bag. Maybe by now you have caught on to the fact that pink is my favorite color.  The bulging bag is barely able to zip although is only contains the needed essentials.  One powder, one mascara, one eyeliner, one lipstick, one lipstain, one lipliner, one lipgloss.  I need options and options are essential.  Maybe all this envokes images of Drew Barrymore in flashing lights and overdone lips like her Covergirl commercial, but honestly, I am more of a mascara, clear lipgloss and a loose, lazy braid type of girl.

Lost in the dark land of the bottom of my purse is pens, pencils, mints, a travel size bottle of Tylenol, bobby pins and change.  Seems ordinary enough to me.   The pens are from The Everett Clinic in Everett, Washington, Clara's Ceramics in Gresham, Oregon and C&C Hair Design in Bullhead City, Arizona.  Would you think of me as well traveled?  I live in Everett and took one of my kids to the doctor last month and picked up a free purple pen while I was there as my Clara's pen doesn't work anymore.  It's a momento from my late Grandpa would ordered too many for their business.  I have been home in the Pacific Northwest for two years from Bullhead City and miss my hair stylist Claire.  She's a miracle worker and I have never found another stylist so wonderful, so I hang on to her pen in hopes of locating her kindred spirit up here.

The side pocket of my tote contains headphones and my Ipod.  Would you plug it in and see what it contains?  Would you be surprised at the amount of eighties songs?  It would seem I hold on to the past.  Holding on to last year's Starbucks gift card, old receipts, old pens, old lip gloss, and an old toy from my childhood.  Holding on to what you love is who you are.  If you let go of what you love, then what would you be?  An empty wallet in a boring bag.

My first blog...here it goes...

I have never blogged.  I have read many upon many beautifully written and well crafted blogs in the past few years.  Hopefully my blogs will have some measurement of greatness!