Schooling
Education and schooling: it’s a big part of parenting.
And it’s hard, especially in a high-tech world for American-English parents in Argentina where their children are getting educated in Spanish.
We’ve found good schools and bad schools, and we’ve had good and bad experiences.
The good thing? The kids are learning.
MY DAUGHTER CAME out of school and looked up into my face and her eyes filled with tears, her mouth trembled and she broke down crying.
I hugged her and said, “What’s the matter?”
“I got in trouble. I got a note in my book,” the seven year old said.
“Why? What happened?”
“I was in the bathroom during class… without the teacher’s permission.”
Ha, I thought. That’s nothing, that’s nothing at all.
She continued to sob.
Well, it was pretty bad, I guess. Yeah, come to think of it, that was really bad. So don’t do it again, and don’t do anything worse than that. Nothing that I ever did.
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"We can read for a bit, then turn up the amps. And play a game of footie. What do you think?"
OF ALL MY parents’ visits to my elementary school back in Los Angeles, I remember one. An open house. The teacher gloated about how polite I was, what a good student. My father and mother beamed and I felt good and better when I was allowed to bolt out to the yard with my friends, to see them at night. It cast a new perspective on our school, Brentwood Elementary. We ran and ran and laughed and laughed until we had to go home.
My eldest daughter had her first open house in Buenos Aires. The whole elementary school – teachers, the principal and kids, parents, siblings, grandparents, aunts and uncles – arrived for a giant barbeque of hamburgers and choripanes and tables filled with empanadas and cakes and big tubs full of cold drinks.
The kids ran and ran and laughed and laughed. This was their turf and we were visitors. “I can go anywhere I want. This is my school,” my six year old told me on the way over, with her 18-month-old sister along for the party.
Other parents were given the same directive. [click to continue reading…]
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I RAN INTO Pumpkin Face again, this time dressed as a robot for the end-of-year theatrical festival at the childrens’ school. He’s a five-year-old terror who can become a hitting machine on the spot and belt out warnings like, “Move out of my way or else.” He follows through with the “or else.” I know. My shins were sore for days after my first and last confrontation with him.
Here at the school festival, Pumpkin Face is rather pleasant, amicable even.
I thought, Whoa, he must be on a depressant or medication for hyperactivity.
Then I thought, I’m so cruel.
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