Anyway, I am kind of on fire about a few things lately and since I can’t form paragraphs right now I thought I would write a list of them. Because recently, when I tried to explore my feelings about such things they came out in such a way that I sounded like a dying polar bear who was also trying to sing an opera, remove a dagger from my lower abdomen, and stop my eyes from bleeding as I took my last breaths. I am not a dramatic person by nature, but this is truly what it was.

First, I am sick to death of some writers who get a platform. Joel Stein, Kathleen Parker, Pat Robertson and Maureen Dowd? You’re on my list.

In politics it’s Michele Bachmann. Lady? You are a special brand of crazy and you should be rendered speechless.

Weather reporters. They are positively giddy when they use the phrase “feels like” and sometimes it’s a bit creepy. Stop that.

Blagojevich’s lawyer painting him as some sort of innocent, bumbling fool. I hope that my defense in a court of law is never that of an idiot. I’d rather you paint me as smart enough to be conniving. Note to myself: do not kill anyone. Those words will haunt me if I do. “Your honor, but I AM stupid and this was an accident!”

Wikileaks. Who has time to read all that?

Ok, that’s it. I’m done. I know I haven’t expounded on any of these things nor have I linked them, so I will mention one of the books I am including in the contest prize package because as I was putting it together yesterday I was so overjoyed about this book that I sat down to read it again before setting it aside for packing purposes. It’s David Shannon’s children’s book No, David! and it is a bit older but always fun to read. It’s got cute drawings and has a great story based on Shannon’s own childhood perspective of always being told No!

With all the things irritating me lately on the news I think I will just yell “No, David!” at them every time they irritate me. Not that I’m going out of my way to pay attention to them, but they keep popping up. So, like the adult that I am, I’ll yell at them using someone else’s name. This is probably why I don’t write much about politics here.

Enter the contest here by asking a good question. There are already some amazing, though-provoking questions and if anything is putting me in a good mood, it’s reading them and trying to decide which to answer. Some of them have me stumped.

Oh, dang. Before I published this I watched as Shaq serenaded Justin Beiber as he proclaimed himself as his biggest fan. No, David!

Skip That: There is a parent who gets upset with me every year and threatens to have her mother, that would be the student’s grandmother, come up to school to kick my ass. Every. Year. Today, I told that story to some teachers when we were sitting in a meeting and then I ran into her at CVS. She told me she couldn’t stand me again. I’m pretty sure she’s on the special sauce side, so I just ignore it.

Read This: My daughter just bought her first house. I couldn’t be prouder or more excited for her. All the cool things she’s doing to get ready for her house are incredibly creative. Like, for instance, taking an old door with 15 glass panels, sanding it down, painting it, and creating a totally amazing headboard out of it. IF I PUT THAT RIGHT ON MY BLOG THEN SHE’S FORCED TO GIVE ME PICTURES. (Surely, someone will ask to see pictures of that and we can guilt her into it.)

Skip That: I went on a road trip after dropping off my nephew to his mom, my sister, when he spent his Spring Break with my family. On the trip home we took back roads and refused to stop for directions. Luckily, I had my camera with me but this gem I snapped with my Hipstamatic camera.

Old, abandoned gas pump.

Read This: Incidentally, Stacey, of Stacey Says won the BlogHer/Lincoln Crossover gift card in the amount of $500. Congratulations, Stacey! My apologies for taking so long to get that written up. You’ve probably spent the gift card by now.

Skip That: There are other contests coming up soon. Skip this sentence since it’s not a contest of any sort.

Read This: Racialicious blog.

Skip That: The incredibly insensitive blog personal narrative written by two hipsters on which that article is based.

Read This: If I just throw in an apology here without any sort of warning and just hope that readers forgive me (OMG, Janie, shut UP already, I will blog when I can blog) (Janie Bird? You know I love you more than my scooter. Don’t be mad.)

Skip That: My throat is all itchy and my eyes are watery. This is the worst pollen season ever. That should make you want to forgive me for being a bad blogger lately. It’s not that I can’t really see through these swollen, hay fever eyes. It’s that I’m on Imitrex as well as Claritin and Zyrtec and the fake Sudafed which, I think, is called Wal-phed since I bought it from Walgreens so my brain is a little bit scary right now. I live dangerously on my polka-dotted unicorn.

Read This: Happy Earth Day? (The jokes will write themselves sometimes.)

Skip That: Sometimes, when I come back from an online writing hiatus, I catch up and read about all the crap that’s happened online and I’m at once ashamed and sad that the blogging community can be so ugly. But, then I count my blessings in bloggy friends and remember that the company you keep says a lot about you.

It’s a safe bet that I’m hungry right now and I’m also home sick from sitting outside where all the allergens in the area could attack my nostrils and sinus cavity so it’s a good time to clear out my head of some stuff.

WARNING: Writing in some sort of linear sequence is not a part of this Sudafed-induced haze I’m in. See that? I just ended a sentence with a preposition. WHAT’S HAPPENING TO ME?

Congratulations to Delaware and Tennessee! They won the biggest chunk of the Race to the Top monies that UP TO TEN STATES COULD HAVE SHARED. This isn’t a bitter sentiment, but Delaware is just so small. Hopefully, they can use the money for some serious turnaround reforms. My education head is kept busy lately with reading, reading, and more reading. I’m looking at a lot of research lately and also keeping up with professional journals as I am always on the hunt for What’s Working in the public school systems in America.

Last week some friends and colleagues of mine were talking about how we would Dream the Dream of getting an unlimited amount of money and the possibilities of what that could do for our schools. As we continue to discuss what we’ve read lately we kept coming back to the same thing: parent involvement in schools. If I’ve heard it once, I’ve heard it a thousand times (and subsequently rolled my eyes at the thought) that parents aren’t involved and that they just don’t care.

“If parents would get involved more we wouldn’t have these problems in schools.”

“The parents just don’t care. They send their kids to us and expect miracles in fixing their social and emotional issues.”

“Parent involvement at my school is at an all time low.”

“Parent support is a joke.”

Of course, I roll my eyes. It can’t be just like that everywhere. Elementary schools have an enormous amount of “support” or what we define as support. It begins to wane once students hit junior high school and then by the time they are in high school it seems as if the only job of a high schooler is to completely keep parents out of the picture and tell them NOTHING. That’s the way it works in my house, too. My children are not as successful with that one because I’m on several email listservs and I check their grades online daily as I check the grades of the students at my own school. When my students get wind of the fact that I have my own high schoolers they always ask, “Why don’t they go to school here?” to which I reply, “Do YOU want to go to high school where you mom works?” and then they just nod their heads and say, “Oh. Yeah.”

But those quotes (and they are an amalgamation of ones I have heard consistently over my 16 years as a teacher and administrator) assume that values aren’t held by parents once they have teenagers. In many cases it also implies that the middle class holds the keys to the morality and codes of behavior where “parent involvement” is concerned. There is little corroboration to that belief and no research I’ve ever read on the topic confirms it.

My current reading list is as follows:

• A weekly newsletter called The Marshall Memo that has all the hot trends and topics and research in education.
• The newsletters and books from an organization I belong to called ASCD.
• Just about anything from Pedro Noguera. You should read him, too, because he is both oh-so-smart and oh-so-easy on the eyes.

• Fires in the Bathroom by Kathleen Cushman (with a forward by Lisa Delpit whose books I have devoured.) It’s a genius of a book based on a program with teenagers and the book is broken up into chapters where high school students offer teachers advice on how to teach them. Most of it has to do with relationships we solidify with students and that is where my life work depends.

When the topic of creating a school comes to mind, we all dream of that and what it would look like. Many of my teacher-friends were complaining how much reality television is ruining and lowering the standards of class among other things. I saw an opportunity, though, and suggested that we create school curriculum based on some reality television shows. It was silly, but still kind of fun to create this list:

Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution (Health, PE, Foods)

Biggest Loser (PE)

American Idol (Music – choir and band)

Good Eats with Alton Brown (Chemistry, Foods)

Millionaire Matchmaker (Relationships, Health)

Undercover Boss (Career and Technical Education)

Project Runway (Fashion Merchandising, Business)

America’s Next Top Model, The Bad Girl’s Club, and the Real Housewives series (Mental Health)

Even this “dream” is nowhere near reality, but at least I got to amuse myself for awhile when there wasn’t anything sparkly and robotic catching my attention. But the question we keep forgetting to ask in matters of restructuring and revitalizing educational systems is this: what really defines parent involvement? We don’t ask what that really looks like from the parent’s point of view. To our detriment, we fail to get the perspective of one key member of this equation.

So I ask, parents of kids: what is your definition of involvement? What does that include? How do you help your child be a successful student.

Because I, for one, really want to know.

In the context of someone actually asking the question it must also be said that there really was no context. There was no reason for someone to ask this question because it wasn’t relevant to what we were discussing at the time. We meet, as teams, each week to discuss teaching and learning and part of the reason I’m there is to frame the learning for teachers. When I work with educators outside of my building it is sometimes in the role of consultant. For lack of a better term I guess I would say that I facilitate meetings. Each week I work with the Teaching and Learning team to determine the professional development for teachers so that we can stay abreast of scientifically-based research practices, introduce them to the teachers by providing examples and defining the expectations, and help their own learning to become skillful and proficient in teaching.

This question came out of nowhere.

Speaking to the group as a whole this teacher walked in our meeting and asked this seemingly arbitrary inquiry.

“What are we gonna do with all these pregnant girls?”

She sounded exasperated when she asked it, like she’d been irritated by it. Like she was weary of these pregnant girls. As if we’d had a rash of girls who had just come forward en masse to exclaim that they were pregnant.

When she asked it she was looking directly at me. AT ME. As if, because of my title or position, I was to answer this question for the entire group of teachers sitting together because I was leading the group and could offer some insight as to what we would “do” with all these pregnant girls.

“Other than, um, educate them with the free public education we offer?” I asked her.

“Well, there are just so many it seems. They can’t fit in my desks and…” she sighed and her voice trailed off as if I didn’t give her the answer she wanted. All the while she is talking I can feel my veins exploding and a twitch forming in the left side of my body and then I lost control of my bowels and my head just popped right off my shoulders and rolled onto the floor while my brain silently and slowed screamed, “WHAT. THE. HELL?”

Perhaps it wasn’t really the word “hell”, but you get my drift. It cut me off at the knees, this question. It struck right at my heart and the aim was true. Instantly, I was 15 years old and I got a glimpse of what teachers, when behind closed doors from students, said about me.

Oddly enough, I have the answer. I mean, I suppose I already gave it to her, but she didn’t like how I responded.

I know exactly what to “do” with these pregnant girls. How about we teach them? How about we educate them so well that we encourage them to go off to college with their babies? What about encouraging them to be responsible parents that can work and be productive citizens that contribute to society? Then, we could embolden and stimulate their knowledge and get them to further their education by getting a Master’s degree in education. Would that work? Is that okay with you? Because if they do really well and work hard at that then maybe, just maybe, they could work their way up and find themselves leading YOUR professional development.

That’s definitely the right answer.

Not really all that safe for work. You know, the work that the men in the Dodge commercial were sooooo upset about going to for fear that they’d be, like, responsible or something.