Desk, Meet Head

Hoping to prevent the inevitable brain drain of summer, I spent a small fortune on activity books and flash cards for my seven-year old daughter last June. And since school starts in just twelve days, I figured this might be a good time to start thinking about cracking those puppies open. Sure, it means I’ll lose a very efficient doorstop (that kid can prop open a door like nobody’s business!), but I’m willing to make the sacrifice. Also, I’m kidding. I’d never use my daughter as a doorstop. Not when she’s awake, at least.

Anyhoodles, I spent the morning reminding myself why I’d make a lousy teacher. We started out great, my child practically drooling from her all-consuming hunger for knowledge. Or maybe I forgot to feed her breakfast. Either way, the novelty of playing school with Mommy wore off faster than you can say, “I’m calling CPS.”

The hemming began halfway through the first worksheet, followed quickly by the inevitable hawing. And as everyone knows, hawing is the gateway drug of dithering about.

Thus we entered the five stages of W.O.R.K. (WTF, OMG, RAWR, KMN). For you web neophytes, that’s what-the-fudge, oh-my-gosh, rawr (it means “I love you” in dinosaur), and kill-me-now.

Stage One: Whining

For readers without children, try to imagine the sound of a thousand fingernails scraping across a chalkboard. Now imagine your last nerve as said chalkboard, and the scraping sounds as every word emitted from your child’s mouth, mixed with all the tears that no one hears you cry.

It usually goes something like this:

“But whyyyyyyyyyy do I have to write the alphabet?”

“You said this would be fuuuuuuuuun.”

“How much mooooooooooore?”

“I want to go play MySims Agents on the Wii. This is haaaaaaard.”

Okay, so that last one was actually me. Whining begets whining, apparently. Also, that game is super fun.

Stage Two: Denial

This stage is categorized by toddler-onset dementia with elements of willful ignorance. Common symptoms include the inability to hold a pencil correctly, not remembering how to write one’s name, and claiming you didn’t learn how to do that in first grade, despite the HUNDREDS OF TIMES I’VE SEEN YOU DO THIS VERY GODDAMNED THING SO STOP STALLING AND DO IT ALREADY.

Ahem. I mean, “Just keep trying, Sweetie. That’s all Mommy asks.”

Stage Three: Arguing

The Arguing Stage can occur independently, or concurrently with the Denial Stage. Note that logic is not a requirement for Stage Three. Neither is the use of critical thinking, reasoning, or concentration. For further discussion, refer to the following transcript from today’s session.

Me: “What’s eight plus seven?”
Child: “House.”
Me: (blinking) “Um …”
Child: “That’s a picture of a house.”
Me: “Yes. And above it is a box labeled “Instructions.” What do the instructions say?”
Child: (reads) “Add the numbers inside the house. Oh.” (writes answer)
Me: “Honey, that five is backward.”
Child: “No, it isn’t”
Me: “If you don’t believe me, just look at the gazillion examples on the same page as the backward five you just wrote.”
Child: “Well, that’s not how we write it in French.”
Me: (takes a deep breath) “Numbers are indeed pronounced differently in French, but they’re written the same as in English. The language doesn’t affect it.”
Child: “Not if they’re in Chinese.”
Me: (twitching) “Grrrbbllk.”
Child: “Mommy, why are stabbing yourself with that pencil?”
Me: “Just write the $%#& number already!”

Stage Four: Bargaining

Expect a drastic shift in tactics, should the subject fail to reach its goal through the use of whining, denial, and arguing. Ranging from subtle cajoling to outlandish suggestions, the Bargaining Phase can include such gems as:

“Can I get you another cup of coffee? Including distractions, I’ll only be in the kitchen for an hour.”

“Instead of math, how about I make your bed every morning for the next 82,000 mornings?”

“If you tell me the answers, I’ll write them down and pretend I did it myself.”

“I’ll give you a dollar if you just finish this @#*% worksheet!”

(Again, that last one was me.)

Stage Five: Acceptance

If we ever make it to this stage, I’ll let you know what it looks like.

And so ends Day One.

I’m exhausted, my head is screaming, and I owe that sly little child four dollars.

Honestly, I don’t know how teachers do this week in and week out. Even our recess breaks wore me out, although that might have had more to do with playing badminton in August, in Texas, when it’s over 100-degrees outside. But, still.

I have always respected teachers, and today was an excellent reminder of the love, patience, and effort they bring to the profession. I had ONE CHILD to manage over the course of ONE DAY — and I’m already Googling the rates for Kumon Learning Center. How the heck do real teachers haul themselves to school each year, knowing they’ll be imprisoned with a roomful of noisy, misbehaving miscreants? I wouldn’t trade places for the world. I’m just glad we show appreciation for our nation’s teachers with super high salaries and the collective bargaining rights of organized labor unions. Oh, wait …

Seriously, folks. Now more than ever, it’s important to rally around teachers. Our children are our future, our best hope for fixing the continual clusterfuck in which mankind always seems to find itself. Without our teachers, the lives of our children — indeed, our very future — is beyond bleak.

At back-to-school time especially, I offer the teachers of the world an enormous THANK YOU. Thank you for coming back, thank you for signing up for another year of torture, and thank you for the mountain of work under which you'll soon be crushed. This country holds legions of parents, from helicopter to absentee, who will do everything possible this year to make your job harder, blame you for their parental failings, and issue blood-pressure-popping statements like, “Teachers get off at three each day and don’t work over the summer … what an easy life!”

Forgive us, please, for we know not what we say.

Also, how much looooooonger until school starts? This is haaaaaaaarrrrd.

Every STEM Needs a Flower

My 7-year old daughter was so excited to start her week of Robotics Summer Camp today. She’s talked of little else but how much fun it will be to build her own robot and control it via remote.

“And I’ll get to make new friends,” she told me last night. As an only child, she loves to meet new kids.

Unfortunately, her extroverted nature all but vanished when we arrived this morning. The camp was being held in one of the training rooms at the massive Boy Scouts’ Center in town (it was slated for a hotel conference room when I signed up, although there was a disclaimer that the location could change).

“Are you sure girls are allowed inside?” my daughter asked when we pulled up.

I assured her they were, but her doubts seemed founded when we entered the training room. There sat twenty-five boys, ranging in age from seven to fourteen, in front of twenty-five robot kits. My daughter, dressed in pink from head to toe, didn’t exactly fit in. She was told to place her lunch in the corner with the others and find a seat in front of a robot kit.

I can’t explain how incongruous her hot-pink Barbie lunchbox looked in that sea of camo, superhero, alien-ninja bags.

She surveyed the room, her body pressed against my hip, and whispered, “I don’t want to do this.”

My heart broke.

It’s been several decades, but I can still remember that first-day-at-a-new-school feeling, the sweaty-palms panic of everyone looking at you, judging you. Rejecting you. I hate that she had to experience that.

I reminded her of how cool it would be to learn how to build a robot, and I helped her find a seat. She was unnaturally quiet, but she did seem interested in the circuitry inside her robot kit. I kissed her goodbye and left, and although I was a little anxious for her I have a feeling she’ll have made a new friend by the end of the day. At school, she plays with the boys as much as the girls. She’s just never been so vastly outnumbered before.

I should have anticipated this, of course. The number of women in STEM fields — science, technology, engineering, and mathematics — is disappointingly low. Even more troubling is the realization that there are no signs of improvement.

Citing a 2011 report by the U.S. Department of Commerce, Forbes reported last month that only 1 in 7 engineers is female. Worse, women have seen no job growth in the STEM fields since the year 2000. Despite awareness of the gender gap, women have had over a decade of stagnant employment in these deeply critical areas.

Here’s another staggering figure: although 60% of all bachelor’s degrees are held by female graduates, less than 20% of computer science bachelor's degrees go to women.

The problem begins as early as grade school, where girls are seldom encouraged to participate in science and math (and robotics camps, apparently), and are instead steered toward the arts and humanities. The idea of brains belonging to boys and beauty to girls is everywhere.

Remember when JC Penney was (rightly) pressured to stop selling this shirt to young girls last year? In case you can't make it out, the shirt reads, "I'm too pretty to do homework, so my brother has to do it for me." The shirt was sold online with this nauseating blurb: "Who has time for homework when there’s a new Justin Bieber album out?"

The shirt "controversy" occurred in 2011, a full EIGHTY-SEVEN years after this 1924 Palmolive ad, which states: Most men ask “Is she pretty?” not “Is she clever?”

You’ve come a long way baby? I don’t think so. And neither does Jean Kilbourne, who offers the fantastic “Killing Us Softly” series, which examines how advertising “traffics in distorted and destructive ideals.” I dare you to watch the trailer (it’s under five minutes) and not be moved.

I like to think I’m doing my part to change the trend by sending my daughter to robotics camp, but perhaps I’d be better off destroying her Barbie lunchbox instead. Is that the solution? Refusing to buy her disproportionate dolls and rescue-the-damsel Disney princess movies? Is it even realistic to imagine I could shield her from the 3,000 ads she’s subjected to each day? And wouldn’t a no-Barbie policy be akin to abstinence-only sex ed, making her all the more interested in that which is taboo?

I just don’t know. This parenting thing is hard. Almost as hard as math (wink, wink).

I do know I was awfully damned happy to see a family with twin fourteen-year old girls enter the facility before I left. I mentioned my daughter’s fear of being the only girl in the camp, and the twins immediately headed to her table, choosing seats on either side of her. I’m not sure if they’ll stay together, as the class will be separated by age group. Still, it was nice to see a few more X chromosomes in da house.

Does anyone have suggestions for fostering a love of all things STEM with my little girl? Know any affordable, at-home science projects we could do? I'd love to hear your STEM success stories!