Posts by Peggy
Lights in London
I promise not to subject you to a bunch of home movies — especially as aged as these images have obviously gotten — but I couldn’t help myself with this one.
When the Dallas Symphony went on its first European tour in 1997, Mark was hired as second tuba. I went along for the first half of the trip as an orchestra groupie. We had a blast.
We left the kids — Sam was 9, Michael was 6, and Paige was 4 — in the capable care of my parents. But we took the camcorder to capture things we thought would interest them on our return.
The videos sat in a box for years after our VHS player died. I borrowed one from my parents this summer and, with the help of a Pinnacle Dazzle, have begun digitizing the handful of family videos we have.
We made this little ditty in London when we realized how much fun Sam would have had, if he had been there to play with the light switches.
This was the first time I’ve heard Mark’s voice since the week he died. I’m not sure who was grinning bigger tonight when we captured this first “movie,” Sam — re-living a favorite childhood memory — or me, remembering the sound of the love of my life.
Lights in London
I promise not to subject you to a bunch of home movies — especially as aged as these images have obviously gotten — but I couldn’t help myself with this one.
When the Dallas Symphony went on its first European tour in 1997, Mark was hired as second tuba. I went along for the first half of the trip as an orchestra groupie. We had a blast.
We left the kids — Sam was 9, Michael was 6, and Paige was 4 — in the capable care of my parents. But we took the camcorder to capture things we thought would interest them on our return.
The videos sat in a box for years after our VHS player died. I borrowed one from my parents this summer and, with the help of a Pinnacle Dazzle, have begun digitizing the handful of family videos we have.
We made this little ditty in London when we realized how much fun Sam would have had, if he had been there to play with the light switches.
This was the first time I’ve heard Mark’s voice since the week he died. I’m not sure who was grinning bigger tonight when we captured this first “movie,” Sam — re-living a favorite childhood memory — or me, remembering the sound of the love of my life.
Overheard in the Wolfe House #130
Peggy (after Sam ends a phone conversation with North Central Texas College’s vice president for instruction): Some people are afraid to talk to deans and vice presidents. You certainly aren’t.
Sam: Well, why would anybody be afraid to talk to them?
Peggy: Oh, it might start in elementary school, when children learn to be afraid of the school principal, even though the main part of their job is to solve problems.
Sam: I wasn’t afraid of Gaye Pittman Wise. She was a really nice lady.
Overheard in the Wolfe House #129
Peggy: Here’s this month’s royalty check.
Sam: Man, they’re really pushing the money on us now.
Higher Ed Could Do More
There are thousands of kids with autism coming of age, and Sharon’s comment tells me Sam’s experience — while a first for him — is not unique in higher education and many in higher education need to do more to get ready.
Read on:
Thursday when I picked Adam up from class, he didn’t want to talk, at all. He seemed sad. Finally, late in the night he told me that his philosophy professor asked the class who had read the assignment. Adam answered that he had but, fearing he might get questions he couldn’t answer, he added that he was not sure he completely understood what he read. His instructor ridiculed him and got the rest of the class to laugh at him. Naturally, he felt horrible.
But, that’s not all. Tuesday he went to the music department to get advice about the possibility of majoring in music. He wants to do soundtracks for movies and he is pretty darn good at it too. He was told that he should stick with engineering because he should have started his music career a long time ago.
He is 16 for crine out loud! Sixteen, with 18 college credits and a 3.8 GPA. What’s wrong with the jackasses who are supposed to be teaching our young people.
Higher education has come a long way to accommodate students with disabilities, but there are still problems. This is what happens when you build an educational system that has built-in assumptions.
Oh, and because my past life was in music, I can say this with complete authority: Any music professor who thinks music training needs to begin in childhood, like you do with gymnasts, isn’t a true musician and artist, he is a gymnast.
True Grit
“Thought for the day: there’s a lot to live for, and everything happens for a reason. Pain is normal, tears are how we heal, and being happy all the time is unreasonable. We hurt, but that hurt makes our happiness that much more meaningful. The key is to keep moving on, embrace life, and always be thankful for what we have (which is often much more than we give ourselves credit for).” — Michael Wolfe, Facebook
Tenacity
“Straighten up, Willie. It’s time to row.” — Isabel Allende, The Sum of Our Days.
Temptations
“How tempting to live in limbo and wait for my real life to return. But this was my real life now. Life is a thing that mutates without warning, not always in enviable ways.”
— Diane Ackerman, “One Hundred Names for Love”
When a test is a barrier
Sam is taking two online classes this fall, one in word processing, another in spreadsheets. I’ve written before about the requirements he needs to “upgrade” from a certificate to an associate’s degree in computer technology. He’s just four classes away. It’s very exciting.
Both of this fall’s classes are in another department at the community college, and both required him to thoroughly read the syllabus and take a quiz over its contents. The students have to get a 100 on the quiz (they have unlimited attempts) before they can start the class. In a way, its a brilliant way to underscore the importance of reading and understanding the course requirements. In some of the larger lecture classes I’ve seen, professors spend the first day of class reading the syllabus to the students. And I’ve seen students drop once they realize the expectations.
Sam sailed through the syllabus quiz for one class but not the other. We’re not quite sure what has happened — we suspect, actually, there is a scoring problem — but it is yet to be resolved. I sat with him yesterday as he tried, again and again and again and again, to secure that perfect score. Before I helped him devise some evaluation strategies, he had no idea how to figure out what he was doing wrong.
It was like being thrown into the ocean with no clue where to swim to safety. You can imagine how wild and panicked a person’s thinking might get. And then, when you consider the true stakes how angry you could get.
He can’t get the keys to the rest of the online kingdom of the class until he does. An email to the professor about the problem has brought only the suggestion that he drop the class.
And that brings me to the point of this post — there is testing and then there are barriers.
When I was in junior high school, a gymnastics unit was added to our curriculum, probably in part because of the wildly popular Olga Korbut and the amazing things she did at the 1972 Olympics.
I saved those Seventeen magazine pages with a story and photo about her for ages.
Our instruction was pathetic. Our teacher couldn’t do any of the moves, and was continually recruiting a student to demonstrate a move to the others (with that student likely demonstrating that move to the teacher for the first time about 90 seconds earlier.)
Once “demonstrated,” we could practice on the equipment, serving as spotters for each other. At the end of the unit, we had to perform the different moves for our grade. We were scored on our ability to do the moves — nothing about the rhythm and composition of a routine, our body poise, or other criteria used to evaluate a gymnast.
The test was sequential and, theoretically, based on difficulty. Our teacher had no idea what was a hard move and what was easy, in my opinion. But, you couldn’t test for a B if you couldn’t do all the moves needed for a C.
Because I couldn’t go from a crouch on the beam to a standing position using only one leg — a “C” level move — I was not allowed to test for any other grade levels, even though I’d been working on all of them, as were my classmates, for six weeks.
Lots of girls didn’t get the grade they deserved for having taught themselves gymnastics.
That’s not instruction, and that’s not testing, so don’t make like its the bar exam.
Overheard in the Wolfe House #128
Peggy: I made a green smoothie this morning.
Sam: I’ve had that before. It’s got kiwi and green apple.
Peggy: This one has apple, but it also has kale.
Sam: Oh, man …