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Published Wednesday, December 05, 2012
One day when I picked Amy up from school, she climbed into the van, buckled her seatbelt and announced, "One of the girls said I'm cool." This was a highpoint of third grade.
I was more than a little surprised. "Wow. How does she know?" I asked.
"Mom, that should be obvious," Amy said, implying my ignorance. Probably, I had inadvertently armed Amy with something I didn’t even know was cool, like the time I bought her a pair of Phat Farm sneakers.
As we drove ou... Read more...
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Published Friday, September 07, 2012
Our kids are not as well educated as their peers around the world. In fact, they’re no better educated than American students of two generations ago— despite massive real-dollar increases in education spending.
The reality is that American kids have fallen way behind the international competition. According to the 2010 assessment administered by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the U.S. ranked twenty-third or twenty-fourth out of sixty-five countries in most subjects ... Read more...
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Published Tuesday, September 04, 2012
Ruth and Eric Brown didn’t expect anything to be wrong.
At 20 weeks pregnant, Ruth had no indications her baby was anything but perfect.
So they were completely unprepared for what they learned at a routine obstetrical ultrasound: Their third child, daughter Pearl Joy, was profoundly underdeveloped.
Pearl was diagnosed in utero with alobar holoprosencephaly (HPE), a neural disease in which the brain and facial features do not form completely. Usually, babies with HPE do not survive a full-t... Read more...
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Published Sunday, August 12, 2012
Amy is taking honors US literature this fall, which requires two reading assignments. Obviously, she saved these books until the last week of summer vacation. She's only four chapters into "My Antonia" by Willa Cather and still has to tackle Steinbeck's "Grapes of Wrath." How's it going?
She just sauntered into my office claiming not to know how in the world she managed to fall asleep. It's going to be a long week.
But at least Amy's required reading is worthwhile. In West Knoxville, TN, there... Read more...
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Published Friday, August 10, 2012
I just said goodbye to my only son. Literally. As I write this blog from the passenger seat of my minivan, the tear tracks are still drying, making embarrassing trails of maternal emotion across my make up. I’m hoping to get all the way through this message without dripping on the keyboard.
Jimmy is the third of our four children so we’ve done this before. Each college move-in has had its own flavor, reflecting our children as well as the schools they chose. As I think about saying goodbye toda... Read more...
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