MotherMorphosis

This article was published on The Groton Line today. After hearing from my boys that there is no recess for the older grades in middle school , I decided I’d find out why. (I’m not typically someone who questions authority, but having kids inspires me.) I talked to Steve Silverman, principal of Groton-Dunstable Regional Middle School (G-DRMS). He told me that Grades 5 and 6 have recess every day for 15 minutes (not the 25 minutes and 11 minutes respectively, as reported by my children), during which time, there are 8-10 teachers outside with the kids to supervise. Recess is not counted towards time on learning. According to the MA Department of Secondary Education : all schools shall ensure that every secondary school student is scheduled to receive a minimum of 990 hours per school year of structured learning time. Time that a student spends at school breakfast and lunch, passing between classes, in home room, at recess, in non-directed study periods, receiving school services, and ...

Due to my middle son’s renewed interested in Legos, there are Lego structures all over the kitchen, dining room, and living room. Occasionally they get knocked over by his brothers or the dog, when any or all of them are being rowdy. “What do you expect, honey, when you leave your creations in the public domain? We all can’t tiptoe around them!” I admonish him before he yells at his brothers (or the dog) yet one more time. One of his designs needed to be rebuilt a few times. It looked kind of random to me but he was very particular about how it was put together. When I asked him about it, he told me it represented heaven (yellow), earth (white), and “H-E-Double Hockey Sticks” (red). (He’s not entirely comfortable with the word “he**.”) “Wow, hon, look at that: it seems that there is hell on earth here.” (I, on the other hand, am not uncomfortable with the word at all.) “What do you mean, mom?” “Well, see how the white part and the red part are on the same level here?” “Yeah.” “Well, it...

[caption id="attachment_356" align="alignright" width="300"] My brown dog[/caption] "What kind of dog is he?" "A brown one." This is the answer I started to give people when they asked me about my dog, Niles. I got tired of them recoiling in horror when I told them he's a pit bull, mere moments after they've pet him and told me how cute and well mannered he is. It's what I told the nanny that works down the street who wrinkled her nose, sniffed, and pursed her lips when she commented in her exotic Slavic accent, "Heez ed. Eet iss soh beeg. Vy eez heez ed soh beeg? Vuht kindoff dohg eez e?" (When I really wanted to tell her, "Your mouth. It is so big. Why is your mouth so big? What kind of person are you?"). Most people don't even know what a pit bull is. That is because a “pit bull” is not a breed, but a term used to describe three different breeds with similar characteristics: American PitBull Terri...

This article was published in The Groton Line . Did you know that the older grades at Groton Dunstable Regional Middle School (GDRMS) do not have outdoor recess? I didn’t – until football carpool during the first week of school, when my 7th grade son informed me that instead of outdoor recess, his class gets 20 minutes of sustained silent reading. This comment sparked some lively car talk among the four boys on the way to practice. According to my middle-school-aged sons, “5th graders get 25 whole minutes” and “you get anywhere from one minute to 11 minutes in 6th grade, unless you have to stay in to make up work.” My 6th grader announced that he had to miss recess for the first time ever to finish typing something one day. Since then he has had to miss recess for telling a classmate how to spell something (disrupting the class) and for forgetting to have a test signed. According to a parenting section on website “ Need to Know ,” one of the more debated educational issues right now is...

Ten minutes before we’d-be-late-if-we-weren’t-exiting-the-driveway, my oldest son told me he needed a pair of pink socks. “What!?” “It’s a team requirement.” Alarmed, “I don’t recall hearing that from your coach.” “All the guys are wearing pink socks.” “What do you mean, ‘All the guys.’ I’ve only seen one guy – on the other 7 th grade team – with pink socks.” I was a little annoyed, but not entirely unfamiliar with the concept. At the previous weekend’s football game, when I noticed the socks, I commented to the boy’s mom that it was nice to see him so secure in his manhood that he would choose pink socks. Occasionally my boys have chosen pink, as in toothbrushes, cotton candy, or Frisbees®, but this has never extended to apparel. She answered, “Yeah, I don’t exactly know what’s up with that. I didn’t realize he was so supportive of breast cancer.” I peered more closely – yet discreetly – at the socks. Indeed, they were adorned with the awareness ribbon. “Hmmm,” we’d shrugged. “Well, ...