Month: August 2020

(Sophie and her bells & Mouse)

The third and final gift we got from The Jefferson School (TJS) is the music teacher from the charter school we did not get admitted to.

I am not gonna mention the teacher by name; I don’t want to get anyone into trouble, but I cannot ignore what a great gift this teacher has been to our lives.

During the school year the teacher started teaching Sophie the xylophone, also known as mallets or bells. When we went on quarantine, the teacher skipped right over into Zoom like a life-long Zoom user. It was seamless.

We still thought (remember the lied to part from post # 1 on this topic) that Sophie was getting into the charter school, so we asked the teacher, now on Zoom, to also give Sophie piano lessons, as our local piano teacher quit about a year ago. The answer was yes.

When I tearfully told the teacher that Sophie had not gotten into the charter school, the teacher was also tearful, and agreed to keep teaching her… forever.

She has two lessons a week with this sweet and talented teacher and she has flourished. Her playing is wonderful. We cannot thank this teacher enough!

And so,

when everyone is screaming that they want their kids back in school no matter what,

and when people make arbitrary decisions about who gets into which school and who doesn’t,

it is a failure to treat the students or their teachers as human beings, with feelings and attachments and needs of their own.

I hope that, if the charter school goes back to business live and in person, Sophie’s teacher will be safe. I hope this teacher means as much to that school as our teacher certainly does to us.

 

This is Mouse.

As you can see quite easily he is debonair, civically-minded, and a sucker for cookies.

Mouse has been in our house about 11 years now, and his personality has evolved as he’s grown up. Once syrupy sweet (and a bit boring, if I’m honest, dear Mouse, with a voice to match) he has grown-up a bit and in the nicest way. His voice is still a high-pitched, for he is a very tiny fellow, but it has a certain mellowness to it that is so nice. And, being more grown-up, he doesn’t pull any punches with us anymore. If, say, we forget to include him in the cookie dispersal, or he is left behind on the sofa instead of snuggled into bed, he will often say to us, “You bastards! I’ll cut you!” I know it sounds a bit violent, but it’s just Mouse. We know he’s just kidding. And given his petite stature, we can understand that he may wish to make himself as difficult as possible to ignore. I mean, no one wants to miss out on peanut butter cookies, or snuggling under the covers. Mouse demands not to be ignored, and in a world were the little things are often bulldozed over, we are so glad that Mouse makes us pay attention.