For the past two days I have been home with Morgan and his flu bug. It’s a cute flu bug, all furry and cuddly and in a cage. Nice. But I have been drinking something everytime I got him something to drink so we could pretend we were in an outdoor Parisian cafe. He helped add to the writing of today’s cuppa and his favorite is Madura English Breakfast tea that we got from Yvonne who lives in Australia. He says, “It’s just yummy. That’s all.” Out of the mouths of babes.

One of the things we’re committed to doing for our very active children is to give them:

1. Plenty of exercise (”Damnit. Go run a lap around the cul-de-sac before I sit on your head.”)

2. Lots of water (”No, you cannot have pop for breakfast. Are you crazy? Pppfffttt. WhatEVER. No!“)

3. Daily vitamins (”I don’t care if it’s not shaped like a freakin’ manga character, just take it.“)

and

4. Nutritional foods. (Must. cross. Cheetos off my grocery list now. You would have to wrestle me to the ground to give up my Twizzlers, though. You do NOT want to go there with me, for I am wicked and will devise ways to put them up your nose when you are sleeping.)

Since I’ve been taking classes, however, Kennimus is famous for his frozen pizza dinners. He’s a damn chef extraordinaire with that remarkable feast.

Because of the Frozen Pizza Marathon my boys are currently competing in, I was thrilled to be contacted by Matisse and Jack’s to try their bake-at-home energy bars. There’s no refined flours (Bad! Bad flour for being refined! Normally, being refined is a good thing, but with flour? Bad!) or hydrogenated oils. It’s like a brownie mix, but you add yogurt, applesauce, and vanilla for the healthiest bars possible. Morgan is the best child chef I’ve ever had who makes a mean egg sandwich, so naturally, he helped in the baking.

He also helped in “product placement”, so this isn’t the best picture, but hey! You get lemons! And my dirty tea kettle!

Morgan proved that he is now to be trusted with scissors. We’ll give him that rusty axe to play with next.

Then, we added yogurt and applesauce to the dry mix.

You must have the very best vanilla. I traveled to Juarez, Mexico for this. (Not really. I was there on a mission trip a few years ago and picked this up at the market and I’m making this bottle LAST. It’s divine.)

Furious stirring isn’t necessary, but he somehow felt manly doing this. Not to worry. No chocolate chips were hurt in the making of these bars.

He did well to spread them in the pan, but, as you may be able to tell, we are using the wrong size pan to do this in so we added some foil to the empty part. We probably didn’t need to do so because the batter was thick and didn’t ‘run’.

After baking them and waiting FOR-EVAH (a la The Sandlot) for them to cool, we forgot to take a picture of the entire pan, so you have to settle for what we happened to leave after trying some of the bars. They were chewier than I thought they’d be, but my mind focused on the This Is Healthy part, so we loved them. You have to refrigerate them after they’ve cooled, but I highly recommend heating them up for about 8 seconds in the microwave (Screw the healthy, right? Don’t worry about those electromagnetic waves and infrared lights. We like our chocolate melted.)

This got the Mocha Family Stamp of Approval (ribbon cutting to take place during a ceremony next week) so we suggest you go buy some. They offer free shipping with 5 boxes or more and you can always try the other recipes they suggest for the mix. You know what really helped to sell it for me? The name. Matisse and Jack’s. Honestly, it doesn’t get any more hip than that.

Since I’m all about food right now I have some requests. Two, to be exact, and if you could leave me some help in the comments I would be eternally grateful and promise never to try that Twizzler trick I mentioned earlier (and that’s not all I know about Twizzler fun, either).

First, I’m going to Kansas City, Kansas next week for a business trip and I have an evening free to myself without a group of people so I need help in deciphering where the very best in rib joints in the city are. Suggestions? Do you know of an excellent place to eat and get ribs? Do you LIVE there and know it intimately?

Second, I’m trying to retain my Super Bowl Appetizer Championship status from last year. Not too long ago someone sent me this amazing recipe for battered onion rings that I have yet to try, but are also too hard to make for this kind of party. So, what is a kick ass recipe that will keep me in the winner’s circle? I mean the very best thing you can think of to eat, you know? While surrounded by lots of other people? Aaaaand alcohol? I will accept soul food recipes, too, seeing as this is the Soul Bowl, but I don’t do chitterlings. Nu-uh. No way. Not happenin’.

I never really liked Tang until I learned the astronauts were drinking it. Seeing as I am old enough to know better, I no longer drink it nor do I want to break the sound barrier shooting toward the stars. Today’s cuppa is a mixture of many coffees: a Kona, Starbucks Christmas blend, and Casi Cielo. And it’s working for me with it’s tangy, earthy, vibrant flavors and strong taste. I daresay it’s luscious, but that’s just what thinking about astronauts and spacecrafts does to me. Zing! Tang!

There are a few people I’d take over my knee when they clearly should know better but don’t do better. Many to whom I’m referring are people in my own profession, teachers who have consistently let me down when it comes to helping my child succeed in school when they distinctly are asked to do so as a part of their craft. However, I have to remind myself that everyone isn’t me and that they have their own way of doing things. That’s fine, but when I’m advocating for my son on his behalf, which is MY job, and then they don’t? Well, those are the ones I want to spank.

In answer to Aimee’s question in the comments yesterday, I have to address this one simple fact: teachers are not allowed to diagnose a student with dyslexia. They can, however, suggest that a parent see their doctor who can refer them to specialists who can test them. The brain research on reversing dyslexia is astounding because there is a way to reverse it. It’s intense and requires a lot of work, but it is possible. My own school district doesn’t have a policy about paying for such testing, but we certainly aren’t culpable for proposing that a student get outside assistance.

As to the question about teachers being prepared to deal with learning disabilities outside the special education realm, I can only say that I, too, was unprepared and had to learn much on my own. While mine came in the form of marrying a man with ADHD and bearing two sons with it, it’s fair to say that no matter how the learning comes, the important thing is that it be learned. Recently, the newest buzzword in education is “RtI” (why they don’t capitalize the “t” is strange, but it’s R-T-I). “Response to Intervention” is a way for special educators to spearhead efforts to get students the help they need. Mostly, this addresses reading and you might want to read more about it here.

Another route is to have students tested in your school district for a label of “special ed” which many people take issue with, but that’s not ever been a problem for me. It didn’t work with Mason because he tested too high so we aimed to get him a 504 Plan and that failed miserably, but I take issue with his middle school for that. They were adamant that he could “just do it” if he wasn’t so “lazy” and “tried harder”.

Those are the most frustrating words for a parent to hear.

“He’s just lazy.”

It speaks volumes about the philosophy of education when the system (in this case, a team of teachers) blames the child for not learning. I believe that every child can learn and that is the pedagogy which educators are supposed to hold to, yet new laws from NCLB haven’t addressed that. While I appreciate much that NCLB has to offer it’s important to note that those laws strictly enforce what the system must do, what the states must hold as standards, and what teachers are responsible for, yet it missed one crucial piece: it doesn’t ever address the responsibility of the student. A tragic mistake because it never holds them accountable.

Mason’s middle school teachers simply didn’t listen. Every year we wrote his teacher’s a letter from the time he was in 3rd grade until 8th grade highlighting his strengths and weaknesses as a student. It was a plea to have them help him organize and we added suggestions as to what might work for him:

Don’t have too many distractions in the classroom. If there were lots of posters he would stare at them and not pay attention.

Keep him close to the teacher whether that was his desk near the teacher’s desk or having the teacher walk around the room constantly (Because, you know what? Too many teachers SIT while teaching. I wrote a poem about it once entitled “Get Up Off Your Fat Ass And Teach My Kid” but I’m not sure where it is right now)

Don’t require him to keep a lot of papers for which he will have to organize unless you are TEACHING ORGANIZATION. My problem with this was a math folder they were to keep with every paper from the beginning of the quarter. I told them he would lose it and it would be messy, but they kept saying “We’re trying to teach him responsibility!” and we would counter, “No. You’re grading him for something which you have NOT been specifically teaching and IT’S NOT ONE OF THE STANDARDS.” We didn’t get anywhere with that one. It only fueled my desire to eviscerate a few people.

Allow him to move and walk around. Do NOT take away recess as a punishment. For a child to miss the physical activity that his body needs is not punishment. It’s torture. After a while, I just started saying, “Fine. If you make him miss recess then YOU will be paying for it in the afternoon when he’s bouncing off the walls and we will NOT punish him at home when you call us telling us he’s not sitting still.”

Poor Mason has had it rough and had to learn that not every teacher cared about his learning. It’s not about what you TEACH, teachers. It’s about what the student LEARNED. If you have an entire class fail a test it cannot be blamed on all those students. What could you have done differently to ensure that every child learned the material? What are the multiple intelligences you used to help every learner?

Most of the time when Mason would get in trouble as a young child, we spanked him because that’s what would get him to stop long enough to pay attention to our words and the seriousness of the situations. If it was because he was running in a parking lot, so be it. It saved his life because he would then hold my hand while walking to the car. We gave up on spanking him for things which were out of his control and started changing other things.

The students in our classrooms aren’t going to change. We deal with what we’ve got. Just because some students are able to be still and make eye contact with the teacher and do what they’re told is no reason to ignore the other learners. You can’t pound a square peg in a round hole, so why even try? In education we tend to punish the capricious, difficult learners and reward handsomely the ones who are able to work in silence with empty smiles or unoriginal thoughts. That tragedy is for us educators to deal with and if we ignore it, then we’re the ones who need a spanking.

With a sick child home from school today, I have the opportunity to make whatever kind of coffee I want. At 11 am, I am on pot number 2. Both were Kona blends that have been fueling me to cater to his every whim and honestly I’ve been swilling it so fast that I barely am tasting it. If you’re looking for some coffee info today, try this Bean Spiller article. If you’re looking to simply enjoy your coffee, pour yourself a cuppa and ignore the whining child who wants more juice.