Learning Coach to All

I am working on my, can you believe it....third year as my kids' Learning Coach. What is that? Well since we are not traditional homeschoolers, as the parent, I am given the title of Learning Coach. I am given the curriculum, teacher's guide and a schedule for my kids to follow for their daily school. I am told almost word for word what to say and how to teach them. I know, it sounds like a lot of hand holding, but since I have no teaching experience to draw from, I find it quite helpful. I also have a real teacher in the wings who I rely on to help me, guide me, do hard stuff, test, etc.


But I have been doing this now for almost three years. I have coached kindergarten, 2nd, 3rd. and 4th grade. I get it. It's not just what I am told anymore, instructing children has become much more intuitive to me and my confidence and "little voice in my head" is a lot more clear. I know how to sit down and get a kindergartner/1st grader to sound out words and make it fun. I know how to quiz a 3rd grader on math facts and get them in their head.


I am realizing more and more, as we watch our public schools kind of fall to pieces around us, we all need these skills. Let me give you two stories of what has happened to me in the last three days where I put those skills to work and got instant results.


First. Friday night I am at a candle party for a gal I have done several candle parties for over the last four or five years. We always connect because her son and my youngest son are within just a few weeks of each other in age and have the same name. After that, we don't have much in common. She is a single mom, living on section 8 housing, no car, food stamps, etc. I am amazed how her outlook is so positive and I wonder why she doesn't do anything with her outlook, but that is me.


Anyway, I walk into her itsy bitsy apartment Friday evening and she is talking to her sister about her son. They are pouring over sheets of paper and are perplexed at "what the teacher wants" and I hear that her son's teacher wants to hold him back a year. In my head I hear that voice say, "It's only February and the teacher is already looking to hold him back?" She asks me to look over the papers and see what they are for.


Well, what I can see, they are things to work on at home for her kindergartner, yet there is little instruction for the parents. A lot of pages with only graphics and nothing else. So is the kid supposed to color them, write letters, identify, circle certain ones.....have no idea. I find a calendar for February that shows some daily words that include "sight words". Sight words are those words like the, or, go, on, at, etc that we just look at and recognize. There are a ton of sight words.


I explain to my friend two things. First, she simply needs to go to the teacher and ask point blank, "What exactly do you want us to do with these pages that have graphics and nothing else?" My friend gets a little nervous and says, "Well, would she get mad at me for asking?" This is where my self sufficient hackles rear up. I ask her, "Who's kid is this? Yours or hers? You're not a parent of a kindergartner to make friends. You're a parent of a kindergartner to get your kid educated. If she is offended, then the teacher needs to grow some skin." I gave her a bit of a pep talk.


Second, I asked her little cute boy over to me and asked him, "What sound does 'g' make?" He didn't know, so I told him and made him copy the sound with me. Next I asked, "What sound does 'o' make?" He didn't know, so I told him and made him say it with me. Next I told him to run (officially, called "blending") the sounds together and we made the word "go". I ran my finger along the word so he would blend them as we came to the letter. Next I told him he needed to remember this word and showed him what it looked like written out. We also did the word "off". I told him I would ask him again in a few minutes. Over and over and over again that evening I asked showed him the words and asked him what they were. At first he didn't remember, I reminded him he needs to remember, and by the end of the evening he could look at both words and instantly say them. He thought it was pretty funny that I wrote them on the palm of my hand and would just open up my palm, show them, and ask. So I wrote them on his palm and told him he needed to remember them too. He got such a kick out of writing the words on his palm both his mom and I thought it could be a fun game to do that.

So I was able to show a kindergartner how to sound out a few words but more importantly, I showed his mom how simple it was to sound out and blend sounds for early reading. Just think, if we could all work with a young five year old at risk like this kid, we would change the course of education!


The next thing that happened this week was with a young sixth grader at our church. We'll call her J. She is a young girl at risk big time! She is in the custody of her mother, however, she has been in a foster home situation with a family in our church. It is has been a crazy and chaotic childhood this girl has had. She's been bounced around a lot and will quickly tell you "Oh, I missed fourth grade math." I scream in my head when I hear her say this, "Well, then why in the heck are you in the sixth??"

So things at her home get a little shaky and it's been awhile since we've seen J at church, and we wondered if we might never see her again. I have her cell number and have thought about calling her in recent weeks. Yet there she was at church today!

Today after church I always ask how school is going. She doesn't like it. She feels picked on by her teachers (what 12 year old girl doesn't feel picked on by teachers?) She feels like they make fun of her for her grades. I started asking questions. This is what I got. Her school is in a part of town where her rough childhood story just falls into a bucket of rough childhood stories. All the kids at her school are at risk, and the classroom sizes are huge. She turns in an assignment, gets it handed back to her with a bad grade on it and she doesn't know what to do after that. I also got out of her that she struggles the most with math and she doesn't know her math tables. Learning Coach Me jumped into action.

I gave J two assignments for this week, and I am going to ask her about it next Sunday. If she isn't in church I'll call her. First, the next time she gets a grade less than 70% on an assignment, I want her to respectfully go to her teacher and ask, "Can you help me to understand what I missed and didn't get on this so I can do better next time? Can I do anything to make this up?" I explained to her that by asking that, it will show her teacher she cares about her grades and teachers tend to gravitate toward those kinds of students.

Next, I asked her a couple of simple math fact questions. "J, what is 4 times 5?" "What is 3 times 6?" She couldnt' shoot the answer right back to me and she had to stop and do the successive adding to get it. I explained to her she needed to have those down pat in fourth grade. She immediately came by with her standard answer, "I missed fourth grade, remember?" J is great on putting that off as something done to her therefore she can't help herself. I then asked her, "Who can change that now?" Also I pointed out that no one is going to reteach it to her, ever. It is assumed by the end of fourth grade, a student knows their multiplication facts. I gave her another assignment. "J, I want you to go home and write out all of your multiplication six facts. Then I want you to memorize them. I am going to ask you what they are next week, and again I'll call you if I need to." I plan to have a little somethin' somethin' for her if she completes this task. Also, I will give her a bigger somethin' somethin' if she gets all of them memorized soon.

What is hilarious? She then said "Well maybe I'll screen your call" thinking she was so cute. I got serious and said, "That hurts no one but you. It's no skin off my nose, I know my math facts. I am doing this to help you." Interesting look on her face after that.

The better lesson learned here? My oldest son watching me engage with J. My oldest son who fights tooth and nail over doing math, yet does it well because I won't let him not do his work. I know he needs me to be on him like a bad rash and I know these are the consequences if he doesn't have these basic building blocks to his education.

Yet, am I a certified teacher? No. Am I a fabulous educator who knows everything about curriculum and learning tools? No. I hate to say it, and I had a skirmish with someone over this very issue a few weeks ago, no one needs to have a special certificate on their wall, have a certain certification, or a whole lot of student loan debt to be a "teacher" of basic skills. I am a mom who knows the consequences for these two kids if they don't have these simple skills in their school repetoire. Please take a moment and do it with these kinds of kids if you ever get to meet them like I did this week.

Quick Thought......

A friend of mine who has her teenaged daughter in an online virtual school has this conversation she shared with me:

Friend asks her daughter: Do you want to go to the high school next year?
Daughter: You mean the one with security cameras and metal detectors?

End of discussion.

A Great Honor

Next week, on Wednesday the 3rd, our little virtual school is coming together with a few other virtual schools in our state and having "Capital Day". It is a fun day for the kids to come together, meet their classmates, see their teachers, have activities, take tours, etc.

Why is this a big deal for me? It was the event last year that opened my eyes. It opened my eyes to Senate Bill 767, that was about to shut our school down. It opened my eyes to the backroom deals the school board and the school unions were making.....using my kid's education as a bargaining chip. It opened my eyes to how awful it is to have a super majority in one's state legislature. It opened my eyes up to my own representative and my own senator, who by the way, has never ever returned my call or given me her ear. Capital Day, last year, put a verb in my step.

It is nostalgic to go back again. It won't be as intense this year, mainly because our school isn't standing at the precipice of the gas chamber about to be snuffed out. But, it is important because there is a special session of the legislature in session and we will need to continue to be in front of lawmakers. That is one of our tasks during these events. Build relationships with lawmakers so they can see us, hear us, and not think of us as a bargaining chip.

With that said, anyone of my Oregonian friends, you are officially invited to this event if you would like to come and bring your children. It's a great civics lesson for them with fun activities. It also shows our legislators that you can support us without having enrolled students.

And here is what brings tears to my eyes......and I mean it. I will be receiving an award from the Oregon Connections Academy Parents Association. They unanimously voted me as "Parent of the Year". Honestly, any parent who would take on the commitment of being a virtual school family is "Parent of the Year" in my mind. But I know the people on this association, and it makes me humble to know they thought of me.

It also gives me fuel. This battle isn't over. The moratorium of SB 767 is still in place. There is still an enrollment cap. The Oregon Education Assocation (OEA), better known as the fourth member of our state's government as a public employee union (yes that was sarcasm) is still in business. Once SB 767 goes away, they will come at us again. They keep going at the regular bricks and mortar charter schools. It is constant. This battle will continue until my kids graduate from high school. My thoughts? We, as non traditional schools, need to keep growing our influence, building relationships with lawmakers, showing the schmarminess of the OEA, etc. When we build our influence, we take theirs away. That has to happen in this state if we are going to have any type of quality of education. That union is insidious, and it's absolutely frightening the unchecked power they have right now.

And so we keep on fighting for a prize we cannot see......the future of our kids.

Found It!

Okay, I have been looking for this article for a long time. I was sitting in the public library right up the street from my home last summer. While the kids were finding books, I found crinkled up on a table the local extremely liberal rag. You have to read it with caution. The Willamette Week.

However, this is the same rag that interviewed me last summer and brought about the scandal that brought SB 767 to it's knees and turned around the course of that forsaken bill. As a result, our school is still open. I am ever so thankful for their willingness to publish when no one else would listen to us. So, I thumbed through it, after all, let's read the paper that had just interviewed me.

I have become a fan. I know, moderately conservative me actually appreciates this rag. Why? Because they tell the truth! They aren't paid off by a union representative that is asking/paying them to be quiet.

Now, as we went through and scrutinized ORCA to the nth degree in the legislative session, especially "where the money goes", funny how I came across this article at the library during that time. Seriously, I know more about the financial books of our virtual school than I think anyone should know, just by listening to public testimony. It is ridiculous! Why do I think it is ridiculous? I have contended the entire time, and said so, if we are going to scrutinize our virtual schools, then we need to be fair. Let's scrutinize and audit the regular schools. Where they have waste, there needs to be sanctions. When I would say that, what response did I get? Crickets......

Check out the awful waste my local public school system is engaged in. Click here.

I go back just now to try and find it for the millionth time, and actually found it. But I also found this more slightly older (last spring) listing of waste. Click here.

I guarantee you as good as I am sitting here typing, if any of Oregon's virtual schools showed up that kind of waste in any of the three audits they receive weekly, monthly and annually.....there wouldn't be a SB 767. Why? Because the school would have been shut down way before the legislative session. And you know what? I would have agreed wholeheartedly. My taxpayer dollars shouldn't be paying for expensive conference rooms and Blackberry's. My education tax dollars should be paying for reading, writing and arithmetic!

Nothing like knowing, again, 40% of my tax dollars go to public education in my state. So glad to know I can arm administrators with Blackberry's.

Good grief.

Some Stats for You

Okay, we have the verdict. The rankings of public schools in my state.

Here is the introductory article that gives the criteria for these rankings. Click here.

I encourage you to search for a couple of schools. Look up Oregon Connections Academy and Corbet School District. They are two of the top ranked schools in the state with "Outstanding" rankings. Corbett School District is an itsy bitsy school district that went charter. As a result, parents in neighboring districts are giving up on their public schools and sending their kids to Corbett. Of course, they are crying "foul" with the unions leading the way. Sigh....sounds like the battle ORCA has been through doesn't it?

One thing you can't dispute....numbers don't lie. Kids in charter schools both in classrooms and online in Oregon are doing phenomenally better than regular public schools. The numbers speak.

So let me give you some schools to look up. Scott Elementary School (all in the Portland Public School District), Roseway Heights School would be our middle school. Madison High School.

I'll give you the results. Scott scores 75 on a scale of 133. In my math, that is just a smidge over a fifty percent. Scott is ranked as "satisfactory". I find that label troubling.

Roseway ranks 74 out of 133. I have the same response. I don't think that is satisfactory. I think it's below average in the bell curve in my mind.

Are you sitting? Do a search of Madison High School. I will tell you but please go look it up. Look at the breakdown of this horrifying score. 41 out of 133. The bad ranking basically comes from students not reaching math and reading scores at grade level and their achievement falling off. So whatever "satisfactory" grade work your kid (or mine) might have at Scott and at Roseway, it is almost a guarantee by the time they attend the only public bricks and mortar high school for this neighborhood, they will no longer be at grade level by the time they graduate.

Want to hear something really appalling? The typical school in Portland that the media and everyone points their finger to as "the worst school"......look up Jefferson High School in the Portland Public School District. This is the school that is always pointed at as the poster child of bad schools in our state. Their score is 47.

They scored better than Madison. They have more low income kids, fewer teachers with a master's education, fewer students with English as a second language, etc. They have all those things that public school advocates say make it hard to do education well. They have it worse than Madison, yet can brag they aren't as bad as Madison. I should call their public relations department and see if I can help them shift the "bad rap" scrutiny from Jefferson to Madison.

The only high school available to my family ranks worse than the notoriously known bad school! I have been vindicated.

This is what I have blowing steam about for so long, and it's nice to see it in black and white.


UPDATE: Here is another article released today. Click here. Basically Oregon has been rated by the US Chamber of Commerce Institute for a Better Workforce as having a "D" rating for their schools. This is a key rating since Obama's Race to the Top education stimulus monies will be granted partially based upon this rating. Obama doesn't plan to give failing or mediocre schools money, only succeeding states get stimulus money.

What's interesting is this, Oregon got a B rating in the category of technology--because of ORCA. I think that B mixed with the other categories is the only reason Oregon did not get an F, if I do some quick figuring in my head.

Check out the comments, of course, union backers and other naysayers keep saying that this is a farce. Well, numbers and ratings don't lie. Until a regular public school (referred to as alternative schools in this article!) can crank out some good numbers, naysayers and unionites are just blowing smoke and creating white noise.

Online Learning Trends

Okay, you remember my last post where I couldn't remember the name of the woman who started off the task force meetings with her powerful synopsis of online learning trends worldwide?

You want to be dazzled? Here is a recent interview with her regarding those trends, more domestically. She is an amazing resource when it comes to figuring all this out. Please take a moment and read this. It's a very easy read and will open your eyes to what online has for our (humankind's) future. Plus, the comments are quite enlightening as well.

Click here.

That School Thing That Never Goes Away.....

You remember that virtual school bill? That one that consumed my entire summer?

Here is an update. One of the things legislated in that was a task force that needed to meet this fall to decide how online virtual schools would be governed in this state to be recommended to the next legislative session this February.

Yesterday was the third of four (probably going to turn into five) meetings of this task force. I missed the second. I attended the first and yesterday's.

Let me give you a summary of the first, and what very cool things happened yesterday.

I don't know who arranged it, but the first session was a gal (and this is how bad the memory goes....sorry for the lack of detail....Mark S. if you're reading this feel free to comment adding details) from Washington DC who knows her stuff with virtual schooling worldwide. She has a resume a mile long that includes being an aid to top people in our government regarding education.

Loved her! She took control of the room like a seasoned teacher and took us on a "tour" of the trends happening internationally regarding online/virtual schooling. Let me give you a summary of that tour:

* Mexico. Right now, all K-12 educators in Mexico are trained in how to deliver K-12 education online. Mexico is working at implementing in the next few years the ability to deliver all of their education online, especially to rural communities.

*India. India realized recently that if they wanted to educate all people in their country, they would need to build 200,000 schools. Not possible. So they have trained all educators in K-12 education to teach online. They are waiting WiMAX technology to kick in to deliver that education in the next 5-10 years. All they need is the technology.

* Southeast Asian regions. Currently are using online learning to combat SARS outbreaks. When a community has an outbreak, the community goes into quarantine. Education still takes place online. There is seamless continuity in education, and online learning allows that to happen.

* China. China is just waiting for WiMAX technology as well. In an effort to educate their entire country in K-12 education, specifically rural communities, China has also trained K-12 educators in how to deliver online education. They recognize this as an efficient and cost effective way to educate their large population that normally would have not received an education.

I could go on and on. Turkey, the Middle East, South America, Africa, etc.

What did I love about sitting there as she did this? Watching the members of the task force (who were also hand picked by those who want to be rid of online education in our state) and their faces. Certainly makes some of the objections to this form of education seem awfully petty now doesn't it? It brought them down several notches at that point, and I think it started this whole task force off on a great foot.

I missed the second task force. They essentially broke into work groups and worked through several points that would be taken to the legislative session in February.

The meeting yesterday recapped those work groups and was great for bringing me right up to speed.

What did I see yesterday? All those players I ranted about in my blog last summer who I was targeting and angry with. Senator Richard Devlin, Representative Sara Gelser, my illustrious House Representative Michael Dembrow. Senator Devlin and Representative Gelser made 180's yesterday. Michael Dembrow still asked cloddish and petty questions....some things never change. Let me give you Devlin's turn about.

Senator Richard Devlin. Remember his town hall meeting I attended in August? Click here. You know, the one where we would have been completely shut out had not the other representative there called on us? You know, Devlin who was the main sponsor of SB 767? The bill that had secret language to shut down the schools that were revealed in a scandal in the end? You know, Devlin. The main sponsor of the bill who is also the Senate Majority Leader who said at his town hall, "Nothing hits the Senate floor unless I let it." Yep, him. You know, the guy who sponsored this bill, yet never agreed to meet with any of us, and continually sent us copy/pasted pat answers about this whole thing. Remember him, good!

Bottom line, he sponsored this bill, pushed it through, and shut parents out of the discussion including not allowing a spot on this task force for a parent. We parents made a stink about that too. Instead he and the unions assembled this task force. We didn't feel represented or "safe" at all as this began.

He took testimony from representatives from the teacher's unions yesterday, the same people who finance his campaign and all his democrat cronies. He shut them down on more than one occasion yesterday, and it was amazing to see.

Union rep: Well, these vendors of these virtual schools. It would so much easier doing the budget and finance of this is we could see their books and they would let us see their profit margin. Right now, their profit margins are a "black box" and frankly, we don't like it. We don't like that a business would be educating our kids.

Representative Huffman: I met two representatives from the virtual schools at a recent conference and asked what their profit margins were and they told me on the spot. 5.4% Have you asked them for these numbers?

Union rep: (Not joking either!) Ummm......no.

Devlin: Then why don't we just ask, okay? And it's not a bad thing to be a business these days. If you're in the business of providing education, then let them be in business. I would expect them to have a profit margin.

Keep in mind.....that has been a huge point of contention this entire legislative session. That "for profit" companies were the service providers for online education. Our contention all along has been that there are many "for profit" providers for education. Scholastic books, Dell computers, etc. Are we now going to expect that all vendors for schools be non profit? Devlin shut that down in one statement after making that a huge issue at his town hall and the entire legislative session.

Several times that happened during this meeting. Representative Gelser had a few turns at doing the same thing as well. I was absolutely dumbfounded.

Have you ever seen a miracle happen before your eyes? Here is what happened. Devlin knows exactly who I am.

Devlin shut me and others out of his town hall discussion.

As he was winding down the discussion of the unions representatives, he looked me dead in the eye in the audience and said "We want feedback this week from stakeholders in the audience. Can we hear from you this week?" I nodded to him, and he nodded an acknowledgment back to me. I hissed at my friend next to me, "Was he looking at me? Did I see that right?!!!" She said yes. He wants feedback from us parents this week. Whhhhhhhaaaatttt???

Seriously? He didn't meet with us during the legislative session. Didn't us include in membership on the task force and avoided us at a town hall. He used his copy/paste feature to return emails. The bottom line, he didn't want us.

He wants our feedback this week. Friday if possible.

*&@$*&(*!!!!

I dunno.......he is still a democrat with his campaign paid for by teacher's unions, but this isn't the Devlin I know. I am somewhat hopeful, but very cautious.

I anticipate that online schools are going to continue in this state. I anticipate that our voice has screamed loud enough that we will get almost everything we have wanted all along, eventually. I anticipate getting what we want will take a few years, and a whole lot of making sure I show up to these kinds of meetings, often.

Amazing, but not over. Don't turn your back on it for a second.

In Celebration of this Wednesday.....

This Wednesday is the second task force meeting resulting out of the legislation of State Bill 767. The bill I and many others were fighting this last spring and summer.

The first meeting was impressive and I have been amiss to not give you an update. Wednesday's meeting has all of our attention. A big wig from the National Education Association is going to speak. The more rose colored glass bespectacled folks in our group thinks he'll have good things to say. Please forgive me if I show my cards here.....he won't. He'll be trained, primed and coached in what to say from the local version of the NEA, our own Oregon Education Association. The organization that showed their true scandalous colors in this legislative session.

I can't make it, but coming up soon I'll post where you can link to listen to it live if you desire.

But in celebration of this great event, I want to invite you to click on the very reason why my children haven't stepped foot in a local public school in our area. I don't want to detract from the learning that takes place in this school, the huge efforts done by underpaid teachers in their 30-40 student classrooms, or the efforts by those who really do care. They go unnoticed a lot. I don't blame them at all. I blame the entire system that has been block by block, contract by contract, built by the OEA. The school system in our state is broken, and the OEA is a big part of that.

Click here. This is the local high school our kids are slated to go to but won't unless they are lowering me into the ground. This school is also a "red listed" high school, meaning it does not meet government standards for academic minimum requirements. We do have the option of transferring to another school, but trust me. I could find a similar article for those schools from last week. It's just jumping from one crisis school to another.

Funny how this story is only being shown on the local Fox network.

Cute Things Happen During School Too......

Whew, after playing with toys all morning, the books are a great place to crash.

Ooohhh....something moved....must attack.....

Moving pencils......must.....attack.....

If I pounce on the pencil first, it's mine!

These little plastic things that flick around really easily.....

It's so nice they put this book out for me to lay on.

Are you moving that pencil for me????

School days, school days.....sing it with me!

It starts....tomorrow 8/27! Are we excited. I am, the kids, not so much!

I am excited for several reasons:

1) Occupy my restless kids! Running around the house all day is getting tedious.

2) I love the learning process. Even if appears like my kid hates it, I still want to show him joy in learning. That may be a delayed reward since he is at the age where any sort of school is icky to him.

3) I am excited for the new curriculum ORCA is using this year. It is much more web based with online classes and videos. I am hoping it causes JM to turn that corner where he is more of an independent student without me watching over his shoulder.

4) BH and I are doing a loosey goosey kind of preschool together. He said constantly last year he wanted to do school at home. So I have some good workbooks for him (thanks to my homeschools moms out there). My goal, to have him reading full sentences by the time he turns five next May. I am about 90% certain that is going to happen easily. He already sounds out words.

5) I am ready for summer to end, and let the monotony of the school schedule take over instead of me coming up with constant entertainment every day. Although Tyrone, the kitten formerly known as Spawn of Satan, is doing well filling in that gap. Many times we just sit on the couch and watch him zoom around the room at break neck speed......for hours.

6) My goals for our house almost were done this summer. One of those was purging the boy's room of everything unnecessary. I have tried this numerous times before but with all the boys in the household standing nearby, not as much was purged and the bedroom was still full to the brim. Since they were all out of town last week......the purge happened according to my standards. Here is what is cool. Very little is actually gone at this point. Only broken things hit the garbage. A lot of it is put out of sight just to see if there is absolutely something that is missed. I am thinking a swing by Goodwill is in the works now that nothing is missed at all.

Looking forward to school. Blessings and success I wish to all of you, whatever school choice you have made for your family. I relish knowing that our kids will be our future and we have a huge honor and responsibility now to make sure they are ready. It gives me hope.

More School Numbers

Okay, I know I go on and on about this. But it is important. New numbers were just released to the media in the last few days giving Oregon's numbers for school standardized testing results. And it's not good. Click here.

One in three schools in Oregon do not meet federal guidelines for standardized testing. What is even more sad is that for a school to pass this test "at least 59 percent of its students must be at grade level in math, and 60 percent in reading". Now, honestly, 59% is only 2/3 of the school's population. Sixty percent, when I was in school, was failing.

An objection I hear constantly to these numbers, and I agree with it, is that there is a huge influx of immigrants into our public schools where English is the student's second language.

That gets me all fired up about another issue--closing our borders and giving our public services to citizens only. Our own population of students is suffering because the curriculum is being dumbed down to hit the median levels of a classroom for these populations. My opinion....students who are citizens or in the country legally can use our public school services only.

Rush Limbaugh (don't stop reading please) did a quick summation of Mexico's immigrant laws last April pretending to state how it would be in Limbaugh land if he made the immigration laws. He ends his tirade giving the audience "These laws are not my ideas actually, they are the actual immigration laws to Mexico." Now this is his summation, so it also has his verbiage that I find so testy, but he gets the point across:

“All right, immigration proposals under discussion. Let me add mine to the mix. I want to call this proposal the Limbaugh Laws. …First, if you immigrate to the United States of America, you must speak the native language. You have to be a professional or an investor. [America is] not going to take unskilled workers…There will be no special bilingual programs in the schools, no special ballots for elections, no government business will be conducted in your native language. Foreigners will not have the right to vote…nor will they ever be allowed to hold political office. According to the Limbaugh Laws, if you're in our country, you cannot be a burden to taxpayers. You are not entitled, ever, to welfare, to food stamps, or other government goodies. You can come if you invest here, but it must be an amount equal to 40,000 times the daily minimum wage. If you don't know have that amount of money, you can't come and invest. You have to stay home. If you do come and you want to buy land, okay, but we're going to restrict your options. You will not be allowed to buy waterfront property in the United States. That will be reserved for citizens naturally born in this country.”

“In fact, as a foreigner, you must relinquish individual rights to property… Another thing. You don't have the right to protest when you come here. You're allowed no demonstrations, you cannot wave a foreign flag, no political organizing, no bad-mouthing our president or his policies, or you get sent home. You're a foreigner. You shut your mouth or you get out, and if you come here illegally, you go straight to jail and we're going to hunt you down 'til we find you.”

By the way, he is right. I did a whole bunch of looking up on this issue, and without giving you a link that was just verbose with legal language on what it takes to move the Mexico this seemed to sum it up best. By the way, it is a felony to be in Mexico illegally. You get caught, you go to Mexican jail.

Seems a little unfair if you ask me. Also seems to me that we are taking it in the backside from Mexico who is raking our public services dry, and our students are suffering because we do have bilingual programs in our schools.

I listened to an interview Lars Larsen did a few years ago interviewing an LA police official. The American rules for illegals in our country is this; we don't arrest illegal aliens/immigrants unless they break the law. So as long as they don't break the laws, then they can stay and rake over our public services. I get so incensed by our lack of prudence with this aspect of our tax dollars. Imagine the billions of tax dollars that could be saved if we could only use other country's immigration laws as a model for our own. Forget stimulus dollars, forget cash for clunkers, forget health care reform.....if our country limited public services for legal citizens we wouldn't be where we are now financially as a country. Period.

Now this isn't just Mexico. Here in Oregon we have an influx of other languages too. Lots of Eastern European, slavic people groups are here. They are also part of the problem as well. Most of those I meet, though, are here on work visas and get here legally. I am so willing to be corrected on that with solid numbers if anyone has them.

Our classroom teachers are given thirty kids from all over the world, and are expected for every single one of them to meet basic academic standards. Almost impossible. I don't think those students should be in our classrooms. I think if they are here legally, they get another classroom setting that boosts them up, and doesn't drag down English speaking kids. No, it's not racism. I am not dividing a classroom based upon race, I am dividing a classroom based upon skill level. That is the American way. I am not a brain surgeon because I don't have that skill set. Same for our classrooms. We shouldn't put non English speaking kids in a room where they will fail, or expect our English speaking kids to be patient in their education while others are failing.

Grab a Cup of Coffee, Sit Back, Get Ready to Be Afraid

I saw this 20/20 program when it was on a few years ago. I forgot that I had seen it, and now I wonder if it inadvertently shaped me and our school decisions now. It is required viewing if you have a child of school age. It is 40 minutes, so be prepared, but it so worth it.

Tuesday Debacle

Okay, I don't know how to describe the events of today.

My best advice, grab a cup of coffee and click here. Be sure to click on 6/23/2009 at 12:59 pm. Get ready to commit to 30-45 minutes of the smackdown on the House floor over this bill. It got tense, especially when the one representative specifically mentioned the teacher's union, only to be objected to for "impuning testimony". Listen to him take issue with that, "they are listed at the top of the bill!"

Highlights as I listened:

Sara Gelser carried this bill, and has done nothing but canoodled and politicked for this bill. Yes, the bill she presented on the floor today is drastically watered down and we can be happy for that. BUT! And all of us say this, but! Will she make good on her promise that the bill will go back to the Senate committee with the changes? She promised up and down. Turns out not.

Check out this blog. This is Rob Kremer's blog, who is one of our lobbyists. Turns out the bill which she vehemently promised on record in the House of Representatives of our fine state, is NOT the bill handed over to the Senate.

Are you barfing yet?

So the concessions while it didn't kill the bill, certainly put into place things that we could live with. Things like my youngest son could attend ORCA while this two year "time out" takes place. Not so, as promised

Now, after listening to this, do you feel as I have felt all along?

You can hear well articulated, thought out, proven facts about online virtual schooling. Every argument (about 6-8 of them) presented well.

The three or so in the pro position (one of them my idiotic representative, Michael Dembrow) can easily have holes poked in them. His whole argument that he represents and teaches at our local community college, which is a cutting edge college in online education. I do agree, it is. Yet he is having problems getting materials to his online students. We are comparing apples to chicken wings! ORCA's, as well as the other virtual schools already have a tested infrastructure. We have a tech support number to call to help us. If he would pick up his phone at his desk and call his community college's tech support, he might be in business. More than anything, his ineptness showed how he is in that generation that isn't electronic. So why should we all have to pay for his inability to post his syllabus?

Same for the two other folks who posted "pro" arguments. So it was 6-8 well positioned and argued statements against three. They were compelling. It would make anyone listening think, "Well of course, this is a silly bill. Vote no."

And yet, it passed.

My husband watched it at work, and barged through the door with shards flying out of his eyes. There is no other tactful way to say it.....he is now officially pissed off.

I have been saying it all along, how can you listen to that much reason and pass this bill?

Hmmm....must be something fishy going on.

I have huge hope in that Rob Kremer's promise to force Sara (the anti-christ) Gelser to keep her promise on the enrollment conditions. That distinction makes a huge difference for families for the next two years.

A long drawn out two years, wondering if this legislation stacked task force will have a majority of votes that have had their campaigns bankrolled by unions. It's a concern.

And this legislation session ends Friday. We can hope for a long shot that it just lingers in these dumb committees and we all go home. Ha! I know a lot of Dems are looking for a way for this bill to die without having the union cut their campaign funding.

Yucky!



Here is one of our best advocates, Representative Matt Wingard, who is a Republican for the House. These are his closing arguments, and he sums up the whole charade very well.


As things arrive on youtube, I can add more. This is Kim Thatcher's testimony several minutes before Matt's conclusion show above, from the House floor smackdown this last Tuesday. You are also seeing Sara Gelser, she is the one with the dark hair and incredibly busy dress, that Kim addresses at the beginning. Sara is in the pockets of the unions and cahoots with the Dems.

Mrs. G. Goes to the Capital....Again

BH poaching political analyst,Rob Kremer's, IPhone.

JM charming Representative Sprenger, before starting our afternoon session.

Our trip home.

Well how did it go? It was a hearing so it wasn't on the floor of the House. It started with my illustrious representative, Michael Dembrow, testifying first about the wonderful accolades of this bill. *barf*

Surprisingly, there was several hours of testimony from us, the people. I mean several hours. I expected this hearing to last a max of two hours. Nope. Started at 8 am. Broke for a break at 10:30 am. Resumed at 1:30 pm and ended at 3 pm. As much as I realized my kids were dying, I appreciate the representatives listening. Committees haven't always listened to testimony in the past, and have shut out testimony.

And guess what? I signed in as an audience member and inadvertently got called to testify. I gave the typical why my kid is in ORCA, the lousy public school choices I have available to me, etc. Then I started. I referenced that my representative is Michael Dembrow, who we heard from earlier, and he and I agree to disagree. And I said it. I question his ethics and a potential conflict of interest since when he is not a representative, he is employed the the very union who is listed with him on the bill. And guess what? Another idiot liberal representative (Jules Bailey) chastised me saying "We representatives do have lives outside of our offices, and we are capable of separating the two."

And then the gavel fell and we broke for lunch. Durn, because my response would have been something like this:

"Several members today have brought up potential conflict of interests because they have a family member who is employed by someone testifying or they are on a city council together. I don't think it is unreasonable for me to mention that it is public record that Michael Dembrow has a potential conflict of interest. As his constituent I have that right to point it out. As a representative, Michael Dembrow has an obligation to mention it, and he didn't this morning. I do question his integrity, as we all should."

The bill passed this hearing with an amendment. It is bittersweet. The amendment is a pile of hooey, but it did buy us time to have it go before the Senate floor again. Hopefully, we can get three Dems to switch their vote. Hopefully.

However, here are two anciliary things that happened. During the lunch break, Rob Kremer, who is a great advocate for us, goes off and does a bunch of calls on his cell phone and comes back to me and says, "I have an assignment for you." At the time he said this, I was asking everyone, "Was that wrong of me to bring up Dembrow's ethics." The answer was a staunch, "No, you got it in the public record. Shame on Bailey for being a dork". Rob Kremer in in huge agreement with all of us, this is all about how the unions have bought the House and Senate in this state. Without boring you to tears, there have been several other bills passed hugely sponsored by unions during this legislative session, and it sickening.

So I say to Rob, "Uh oh....what?" Well, remember all my jokings about the mayor of Portland this spring? How this openly gay mayor is in a huge soap opera sex scandal? And I have been joking like crazy about it? For those of you who are Oregonians, go back in your history and think about the Neil Goldschmidt scandal, where this huge politician was sexually abusing an underage girl during his hey day. Remember that? The reporter that broke those stories is Nigel Jaquiss. He is a Pulitzer prize winning reporter. He doesn't go to stories, they come to him and he picks and chooses what he covers. He loves to uncover scandal, in appropriate ways, not in National Enquirer ways. Okay, I didn't know any of this when Rob was giving me my next assignment. I was still at "was what I said over the line?"

Rob says, "Nigel Jaquiss wants to interview you right now on union corruption on this issue and you need to call him right now."

*&%$!!

"Rob can you watch my kids for a sec?"

I called him and I was very honest with him about my feelings on Dembrow, my belief that this issue has nothing to do with education, has everything to do with union corruption, etc. He was very kind and nice. He asked me tons of questions and I did not hold back like I did in the hearing. I also let him know I am very serious about filing a complaint against Dembrow for misconduct on this issue.

Okay, the Willamette Weekly coming out Wednesday, look for it.

But wait there is more!

I get home with two kids who endured way too many hours of a hearing and deserved the moon for being so good. I tell my husband about our day. He has always said and said it again, "Call Victoria Taft (local conservative talk show host) . I was just listening to her on the radio." Well, okay, so I sent a quick email and told her about the day's events. Guess what? Five minutes later I get a one sentence email from her, "You available to talk at 7:05?" Ummmmm.....yes!

So at 7:05 pm last night I gave a five minute phone interview summarizing the day's events, explaining virtual schooling, and hearing more about our union controlled state capital.

And then I had a libation, two in fact, and went to bed.

Here is What ORCA's Board Just Published

Dear Parent, For the past several months, the virtual schooling community has been working tirelessly to defeat Senate Bill 767, which is clearly an attempt to shut down virtual schools and ORCA. The bill is sponsored by Senator DEVLIN, Representative BUCKLEY; Senators BONAMICI, DINGFELDER, Representatives DEMBROW, KAHL, WITT (at the request of Confederation of Oregon School Administrators, American Federation of Teachers-Oregon, Oregon School Employees Association, and the Oregon Education Association). Unfortunately, the Senate recently passed SB767 on a 16-14 vote. Important: Legislators have repeatedly indicated that ORCA will remain open during the 2009-2010 school year. We believe that the only impact next year may be to cap our enrollment at the May 1, 2009 level of approximately 2,600 students. In this case, priority will go to currently enrolled students, siblings of students who are presently registered to return and were enrolled in the previous year at ORCA; and students from Scio, where the school is authorized. It is essential that if you are returning, you have all of your returning student tasks complete in order to preserve your place. You will receive more information about deadlines and lottery procedures before the end of June. We anticipate that due to our graduating seniors and students not returning, that there will be approximately 600 new openings for next year. Please advise anyone you have referred to ORCA to complete their enrollment process as soon as possible as a lottery is very likely based on current indications of interest for next year. As a reminder, SB767 stops all virtual charter schools that operate statewide from operating after June 30, 2010 and prevents any new ones from being approved. Its sponsors claim that they are just trying to create good virtual school rules and regulations, but already they have talked about limiting virtual schools to only grades 6 and above and they have not included any representatives in the work group they created from parents, existing virtual schools or any entity that actually has any virtual school experience! They have also created a number of onerous rules such as requiring that all school materials be provided in every single language of any student where English is a second language. There are not any traditional public schools that do this! The Oregon House of Representatives is now considering SB767. So now what? Call your State Representative today! Ask him/her to oppose SB 767 and its attempt to shut down virtual public schools! Explain that you have student(s) attending ORCA, a brief personal story about why you have chosen ORCA and then ask to keep virtual schools alive. To find your legislator, go to http://www.leg.state.or.us/findlegsltr/. The ORCA Board, ORCA staff and Connections Academy are committed to ORCA. We have fought hard to this point and will not stop now. SB767 is likely to pass this session but we will then focus on the expected 2010 special legislative session next February. We will also be actively working to educate the virtual school work group on why ORCA has been so successful. Please take a look at ORCA’s recent press release to see how well ORCA is doing on the state’s standardized tests. We all must believe. If we stop believing we can do this, we seal our own fate. We must stay optimistic and continue to fight for ORCA. This is too important of an issue for the children of this state to give up now. They deserve much better. Meet with your legislators in your district. Ask them to meet you for coffee, go to Town Hall Meetings and have them meet your family. Share with them why you need ORCA. Tell them what would happen to your child(ren) if ORCA went away. Keep those relationships going even after SB767. Thank those legislators who opposed SB767 and make your voices heard to those that supported it. Join the ORCA Parent Association (ORCAPA). ORCAPA has been instrumental in keeping a human face on ORCA. Every parent is encouraged to join that organization (go to http://groups.yahoo.com/group/orcaparents/). ORCAPA keeps parents up to date on State Board of Education activities, legislative issues and provides a forum for discussion within the ORCA community. Be assured the ORCA Board continues to work on this very important issue every day and appreciates that so many of you have raised your voices. You have and will continue to make a difference! We appreciate all of the support. We are not finished. We are making progress and we continue to need YOU! Thanks for your support, Representative Jeff Kropf (Ret) Board President Oregon Connections Academy

Oregonian Friends

It is coming down to some key decisions to be made on State Bill 767. It goes on the Senate floor this Thursday.

If you are from Oregon, here is the latest email we have:

The Senate vote on SB767 has been held over until Thursday. We have an extra day to contact the following senators!

Happy Valley families, please email Sen Monroe and ask him to vote no on SB767:

Senator Rod Monroe
Party: D District: 24
Capitol Phone: 503-986-1724
Capitol Address: 900 Court St. NE, S-409, Salem, OR, 97301
Email: sen.rodmonroe@ state.or. us
Website: http://www.leg. state.or. us/monroe

Other key senators:

Senator Betsy Johnson
Party: D
Capitol Phone: 503-986-1716
Capitol Address: 900 Court St. NE., S-215, Salem, OR, 97301
Email: sen.betsyjohnson@ state.or. us
Website: http://www.leg. state.or. us/johnson
District 16 map: http://www.leg. state.or. us/johnson/ s16.jpg

Senator Rick Metsger
Party: D
Capitol Phone: 503-986-1726
Capitol Address: 900 Court St. NE., S-315, Salem, OR, 97301
Email: sen.rickmetsger@ state.or. us
Website: http://www.leg. state.or. us/metsger
District 26 map: http://www.leg. state.or. us/metsger/ s26.jpg

Senator Bill Morrisette
Party: D
Capitol Phone: 503-986-1706
Capitol Address: 900 Court St. NE., S-207, Salem, OR, 97301
Email: sen.billmorrisette@ state.or. us
Website: http://www.leg. state.or. us/morrisette
District 6 map: http://www.leg. state.or. us/morrisette/ s06.jpg

Senator Joanne Verger
Party: D
Capitol Phone: 503-986-1705
Interim Phone: 541-756-4140
Capitol Address: 900 Court St. NE., S-401, Salem, OR, 97301
Interim Address: 3696 Broadway PMB 344, North Bend, OR, 97459
Email: sen.joanneverger@ state.or. us
Website: http://www.leg. state.or. us/verger
District 5 map: http://www.leg. state.or. us/verger/ s05.jpg

Senator Vicki L Walker
Party: D
Capitol Phone: 503-986-1707
Capitol Address: 900 Court St. NE., S-309, Salem, OR, 97301
Email: sen.vickiwalker@ state.or. us
Website: http://www.leg. state.or. us/walker
District 7 map: http://www.leg. state.or. us/walker/ s07.jpg

An interesting twist has occurred in all of this in recent weeks. Stimulus money from the feds. The Department of Education on the federal level has made it crystal clear it will not give stimulus money to state's who 1) Limit charter schools, specifically in enrollment 2) States that put moratoriums on charter schools. Guess what Oregon has done specifically with State Bill 767 and the "50/50" enrollment rule (at least 50% of students must be from a charter's district)? Oregon has done exactly what the feds has said would not give them meeeelllions of stimulus tax dollars. And that bodes well for us in terms of having a trump card. Why would Oregon want to say no to that kind of funding? So union fat cats can get their union money from regular schools who have union contracts.

I am asking any of you who would like to help in speaking out to any of these people to simply email them today. I put together a letter, and sent it to each senator. I didn't recreate it each time, and I know that seems silly, but I have reconstituted my position on this issue so many times, I am not going to do it for them.

Here is my letter if you want to cut/paste/edit:

Dear Senator:

I am an Oregon Connections Academy (ORCA) parent, and I understand you will be presiding over this bill on the Senator floor very soon. I also understand that you would cross party lines if you were to vote against SB 767, and for that I would be most appreciative. I would like to give you my plea about ORCA as well as the other virtual schools in Oregon who will be effected if SB 767 is passed.

1. I live in a district in Portland where I do have school choices around me, unlike other ORCA families who will tell you about their hardship living in rural areas. However, in terms of school choice, the results are almost the same. The elementary school we would have is, from what I can discern, a reconstituted middle school that is now a K-8 school. Before that happened this last year, it was a middle school that was failing in basic test scoring for basic academics. The high school we have for our kids is “red listed” (does not meet basic academic criteria and are at risk of closure, although no red listed school in Oregon has ever been closed down although it is mandated). So while we do have the choice of filing for a waiver and would probably get one, the other choices around us are not much better. They are on the verge of being “red listed”. Those are my public school choices in my area. I don't like them at all. My husband and I both want good education for our kids, and we recognize we only have one chance to do that. We want our kids to be able to graduate from high school and be able to get a job and engage in that job or to go to college and be able to join that level of academia and engage academically. Not struggle. The choices that Portland Public Schools offers me for that kind of learning is not there at all

2. When we found ORCA, we thought we had found the mother lode. We just completed our first year of second grade with our oldest child and he finished on the honor roll with a final over all grade of 94%. A year ago, he had finished first grade at a private school with no math skills. He hit a wall in math and we were concerned for all kinds of reasons. He began second grade behind in math. We realized his teacher was using a very “outside the norm” new curriculum that he didn't understand, and we couldn't see because no math work came home. As we have worked through ORCA's math this year, as his parent, it was great to take that extra time to work on math, help him gain those basics he had missed, work with his teacher to help him get the basics, gain his confidence that he can do math, and finish with a 90% at the end of this school year. I have yet to find this kind of help with public schools. Unless he is a special needs child or completely failing miserably, his kind of struggling would have been lost in the crowd. As his parent, I have that extra interest in helping him that gets lost in a class size of 30+ students. I am so glad he and I got to work together this year to help him. I can say with much confidence if he had gone to a regular public school, I would have seen him continue to struggle in math, and would not have known how bad the consequences were until getting his grades at the end of the semester.

3. ORCA and ORVA have the “now” factor in place. They are in place right now doing a great job educating kids. They have shown, under much scrutiny, that this kind of education has a level of excellence unmatched by any regular public school classroom for a fraction of the tax dollar price. I know that legislator's and Oregon Department of Education (ODE) members want to rethink this whole thing, and redo online learning to be a statewide system, etc. In talking to a sponsor of this bill, Michael Dembrow, he acknowledged that sort of reworking of the system would take eight to ten years. Senator, in eight to ten years, I will have a high school graduate who needs to be able to walk into the job market or college environment and be able to engage in those environments.That is not an acceptable answer to me, and I let Mr. Dembrow know that. Why has this state approved charter schools and has done nothing since except made it hard for them to exist historically? Why?
   

4. That begs the question of common sense. Why in the world would the state of Oregon want to get rid of a public school education choice that is excelling academically and for a fraction of the cost.

5. And the cost could be higher. News from the federal government is very clear. States that push moratoriums on charter schools, states that do not embrace charter schools, and states that accept the status quo in educational mediocrity will not be given stimulus funding for schools that could mean millions for Oregon's schools. That is precisely what SB 767 does. It puts a moratorium on ORCA and ORVA. The 50/50 law that severely limits student enrollment in these schools, and SB 767 enforces, will limit online charter schools so much it will limit them right out of existence. Oregon will be passed over for much needed public school funding because this state and the sponsors of SB 767 seem to think charter schools and online charter schools need to be overregulated.

6. In speaking to one of the sponsors of this bill, Michael Dembrow who is my representative, he made it clear that he believes that online learning is not a viable form of education. How come he gets to sponsor a bill that imposes that view on an entire state of students? He may have that view, but why does he get to make that choice for me and my family? I also pointed out to him that the ODE hires teacher's who have an online accredited degree, so why does the ODE recognize an online teacher's degree but he won't accept that my child can learn online. He didn't have an answer for me. He did acknowledge that is an inconsistent view.
   

7. Please take a moment to seek the truth of what this bill is. It's simple to find. The legislator's of this bill, in the first few lines of this bill, followed by the organizations who have sponsored this bill. You have a list of legislator's who have alliances, deep financial alliances, with teacher's unions or lobbyist groups. Then you have the list of those groups. Those unions recognize that if education tax dollars go to charter schools, and those charter schools succeed which they are, then those unions get a smaller piece of the financial pie. That is the truth of this bill.

8. To quote union representative, Chuck Bennett, in a recent Portland Tribune article (http://www.oregonlive.com/news/index.ssf/2009/05/oregon_senate_would_take_virtu.html) he says, “"We're not going to wait until it (online charter schools) is out of control." Mr. Bennett's words can be translated to say, “We are not going to let anymore education tax dollars get out of our reach into non unionized schools.” My challenge to Mr. Bennett would be, give me a unionized school that has passes the academic and finance rigors ORCA and ORVA have.

9. My opinion, the unions should get a smaller piece of the pie. The state education budget has to increase annually by 6% to keep up with the contracts procured by unions. Even in a growing economy, Oregon struggled to keep up with that pace. Now, it's buckling. The unions have Oregon's schools by the budgetary throat, and charter schools are a fabulous way to disarm them and get economic federal funds into our buckling system.

I would ask you keep these things I have mentioned in mind as you listen to this bill on the Senator floor. The state of Oregon is sitting at a crossroads for it's future in education. Are we going to embrace change and have a forward thinking strategy? Or are we going to accept the status quo and hope that improves by wasting more money on it while kids continue to fall behind.

Sincerely,

AMG

Piano and Sunday School

Oh my gosh, I didn't think yesterday would kill me, but it just about did. However, I did fall to sleep an extremely proud mom.

First, to wrap up formal Sunday School at church, the kids conduct the church service and receive their awards for hard work they have done over this past school year in Sunday School. Do you remember my post I did last Christmas about our Christmas pageant and the Burmese kids who just make me cry? That's the next post. I need to stay focused....just know, more heartwarming stories about them are to come.

Here are some of the fun pics from church yesterday:

The whole bunch of them singing. BH in the front got a case of nerves right after this picture and came to sit with me. He also had a good case of ants in the pants, and gave me bruises on my legs. Do you see the black haired tall girls in the back? Those are members of our Burmese family and they are singing! They are participating! They have ever since Christmas. I am dropping hints here. I will post about them later.


However, I can't wait. I just have to toot their horn. If you don't remember the story, before pushing "play" please go back and read my blog post here. Since our Christmas pageant, it has been nothing but growing together with this family. Yes, language is still a barrier, but as the kids have become more fluent it has been easier to talk to them, plus they desire to participate which is great. Keep in mind they lived in a very depressed, oppressed, scary refugee camp for most of their lives. As we have come to realize, they don't easily trust anyone. Okay, now in this video, which is hard to hear but try. You have our boys on the right who will say the books of the Bible in English, although you only hear the boy with the mic. Then the Burmese girls on the left were supposed to say the books of the Bible in their native language. Both renditions were supposed to be sung. Well, boys....they were concentrating on the words. However, this one young Burmese girl grabbed the mic and made it her "American Idol" moment and sung with a beautiful voice the books of the Bible in her native Burmese language. It was awesome!

BH and our pastor's daughter. I approve.

It was a children's conducted service, including handing out the programs,
which BH did with style and poise.

After church JM had his piano recital at a different location. We took a breather in between by flying through a fast food drive through for lunch, hoping JM didn't spill ketchup on his shirt.

Do you see JM? He is about in the middle row to the left. The teacher is the cute red head in the middle more toward the right. She totally reminds me of Molly Ringwald. Very talented teacher and all of these kids are her current students. We heard from beginner songs all the way to professional sounding renditions. Two students in particular stood out. One played a flawless version of "Linus and Lucy" by Vince Guaraldi we all recognize. Then a perfect performance of the classic ragtime song "The Entertainer". It was a good day.

And here is JM. Considering he began this year with no knowledge of music, notes, time, beat, etc. I am pretty proud of him for learning a simple rag time song and memorizing it for this recital and not letting his nerves completely take him apart. You'll hear a few times they do, but he recovers well. This is his first public performance.

The Two Extremes of Our Little Piece of Life.

Pablo got to come home late this afternoon. We have not gotten the test results back but we were told we could bring him home. He has been given good fluids and has had a lot of R and R. Here is BH showing Pablo a toy and Tasha checking out the other end. So much for rest!

You can barely see Pablo's orange bandage from the IV. BH doesn't care, he must show Pablo the toy! Pablo and BH are serious buddies. If all four of us are sleeping in a room (won't happen but let's pretend) and Pablo has to choose who to crash with, it will always be BH. They are buddies and it will be especially hard on BH if we have to say goodbye to Pablo. So while we are happy to be able to have him home we are very very concerned and sad at what might be approaching.

And on a happier note, school is done today! After talking about what serious decisions we may have to make regarding Pablo we celebrated a good school year. For a cake mix leftover from Easter that required three eggs and bundt pan, not too bad! We banged out a lot of Spanish today plus the final Spanish exam. It was a lot to do but JM was motivated to have it done before next week.