One Year Later

One year! This blog began one year ago, yesterday. Oops, please excuse the passive voice. I started this blog one year ago, yesterday. (Surely, the "I" is central in blogging: something that still makes me nervous). One year of sharing my reactions to dramas big and small in my family, in the media, and in the world.  I'm not sure what possessed me. I'm sure it doesn't feel like a year.

This is actually my second blog. The first one was meant to be an expat-family-log, and only lasted a few posts. When we were preparing to leave New York, a friend told me I should blog about our experiences, and it seemed like a good idea. I stopped because I felt very self-conscious writing about tiny everyday things as they were happening. Our two-and-a-half-years in London were enlightening, life-changing, even--but I was barely able to register how, and in what ways, back when we first arrived.

I knew I wanted to write while we were there, and instead of journaling about the present, I began writing fiction. I wrote story after story, and then, a novel. Just about everything I wrote took place back home in New York. Interestingly, though I had two young children and was pregnant within that time, I wrote very little, if anything, about motherhood. My writing tended to focus on young adults, forging their emerging identities. Perhaps part and parcel of the impulse that kept me from writing about my life in London. Ah, to live the life of the expat writer, examining the familiar from afar.

So, thinking back to a year ago, I wonder what changed. I began this blog soon after I decided I wanted to be a childbirth educator (and have since, indeed, become a LCCE -- Lamaze Certified Childbirth Educator). I imagined a forum in which to write about why birth is important, and why every mother deserves a good birth experience. Identities are formed and re-formed throughout life, and the identity of mother is a big one. How that begins, those first minutes and hours and weeks of motherhood, matter.

But then, as I began to write about the world through my two central identity lenses (that old classic, the Jewish mom), I found that the topics on here varied far and wide from pregnancy and birth. The becoming is still interesting to me. But the journey is equally important.

I love reading everyone's responses to posts, and the feeling of community--that we're all in this together--is heartening, indeed. Thanks for reading, and for giving me the support I've needed to keep it going.

What's It All For? Kids' School Reflections

Ruby, my third grader, told me the other day that the end of the school year is tiring. Why? "We have to reflect about everything."

Oh yes, it's that time of year when students in progressive schools everywhere are asked to write reflections on their favorite and least-favorite subjects, on their strengths and weaknesses, and on their progress as learners.

My kids have been doing these kinds of reflections since the start of their education. Here's a reflection that Bella wrote at the end of first grade. She was shown a sample of her writing from the beginning of that year, and was asked, "What do you notice about this writer? What were you like as a writer back then?" 

"I didn't have as good handwriting and now I can spell better. I thought that writing has to be really interesting and fun but now I really understand that writing can be anything. You can write about what you did in the weekend, like going to the movies or cooking with your mom."

Wow, education has come a long way. In my day, the teachers wrote the reflections, if they wrote anything at all (didn't they just write a letter grade?). We knew what kind of learners we were, depending on whether we were in the "smart" group (in math, or English, etc.), the "regular" group, or the "slow" group.

Now, it's a bit more like a corporate evaluation, where kids evaluate themselves, and teachers are able to see how those reflections correspond to or deviate from their own professional sense of each child as a student. There are benefits for the teacher: for instance, if Shira keeps saying she's terrible at math, even though the teachers know she's on target, there may be a problem with the teaching strategy or the overall message.

But even better, in my view, is that this method makes the children conscious of the purpose of their education. School is not a place where we stick kids until they're old enough to get a job; school is a place to learn things, and reflections help students become aware and take ownership of what they've learned.

Sometimes I think we'd all benefit from more reflecting. How am I doing as a mother, compared with this time last year? As a friend? As a writer? As a family chef? Am I meeting my goals, and if not, which ones have I let slip? It's easy to get on the treadmill and just keep walking, without taking the time to notice the changing scenery.