Visit to schools has been a learning experience

I wore my 1985 wedding dress to Summit School last week. The shoulder pads in the dress are so big that my husband says you could land planes on them. I wore my wedding shoes to school, too, because Terrina Appa’s first- and second-graders were studying the 1980s.

I planned to give the children a little lecture about the clothing styles of the ‘80s, but lectures aren’t the learning style at Summit. So I wandered the classroom in my wedding dress and listened to the children brainstorm together some questions about the ‘80s. Was coffee invented yet? Were the police forces good or bad? Why did they talk really weird?

Last fall, I made a commitment to spend more time in Inland Northwest schools.

Once a month I volunteered in two schools – Summit in the Spokane Valley and Adams Elementary on Spokane’s South Side. I also did a dozen writing workshops in several different schools.

As the school year draws to a close, I’ll share five things I learned in school this year.

Children’s needs are taken seriously.

How many boomers remember daydreaming about those Hostess snowballs in our sack lunches? We were hungry in the late morning. No one talked then about low blood sugar.

Now, younger children get a morning snack. They also can go to the bathroom when the urge strikes, and teachers seem to know which students really need a break and which are working the system.

Their emotional needs are also monitored. The last week of school is stressful for children, despite the fun. The parties, field trips and parades are goodbye rituals masquerading as time-killers.

“These are their social relationships, and letting go is hard,” said Summit Principal Lyle Krislock.

Kids are chubbier, taller and smarter.

In my school days, the overweight children were the exceptions. Now, the skinny ones are. Kids are taller, too. Miss Appa is 5-foot-2-inches. A couple of her students – first- and second- graders, remember – come up to her shoulders. Some of the kindergartners at Adams Elementary are as tall as third-graders and some third-graders are as tall as middle-schoolers.

Smarter might not be the most accurate word. Rather, the pace of learning has accelerated. By the end of first grade, many students are reading books with complex plots.

Compare this with my first-grade experience where we read simple Dick and Jane books.

And my friends with older kids often feel stymied by their children’s complicated math homework.

Teachers should be more exhausted.

They teach all day, plus keep track of which children have food allergies. And which children’s parents are going through divorces or debilitating illnesses. And which children are getting shafted by peers.

Teachers also sit on the floor with their students, lean over desks all day, move those desks around.

In Miss Appa’s class last week, we danced to Madonna, part of our exploration into the ‘80s.

God bless the subs.

They need it. When subs take over, children grow wild. My theory: Modern life is so frantic that the routine in school helps ground children in some calm. Remove the regular teacher, and craziness ensues.

Schools are imperfect.

I wish someone would donate a state-of-the-art copy machine to Adams. I wish they’d clone the friendly office staff at Summit. I wish chronically crabby school employees would find other work. I wish adults who bitch about our imperfect schools would volunteer to help perfect them.

Thanks for the memories, kids. Enjoy the summer. See you next year.