RevCyn

From my wonderful colleagues I got the idea of doing a "blessing of the backpacks" as the children of the congregation go off to school.  It's not a new idea -- Christian churches have been doing it for years, and apparently some UUs, too -- but I had never heard of it before.  Churches often apparently put some sort of zipper pull tag on the backpacks.  Here's an example found on Pinterest: A couple of colleagues shared their ideas, and some images, in a closed Facebook group, which started me thinking.  I'm fairly crafty with things like this, so I knew I could come up with something.  I was inspired by Karen G. Johnston 's example created by her DRE and a member, but couldn't figure out their fancy knots: http://awakeandwitness.net/2015/08/27/blessing-of-the-backpacks-a-mini-primer/ But, on the other hand, I do have some tricks up my own sleeve. Here's my prototype: My prototypes cost me over a dollar each to make, but to make in bulk...

As my letter in Part 1 of this series illustrated, it's fairly easy to have a truant child.  Missing two weeks due to illness is quite easy to have happen, and the requirement that many districts have that a doctor's note is the only way to excuse the absence means a classist system of who can and will have absences excused and who will end up with a truant child.  All other things being equal, two children out for two weeks with the same two colds can end up with very different fates, not because of the nature of the child, or the diligence of the parent, but simply for economic reasons. That income levels and truancy are related is no surprise.  A recent MLive article reported: "Some districts, including many affluent suburban ones, reported little or no truancy. The Forest Hills schools outside Grand Rapids reported five truant students among 10,147 enrolled, and Bloomfield Hills in suburban Detroit just 32 out of 12,306. But Kentwood, another metropolitan Gra...

Two years ago, I wrote our school district about the truancy policy.  At that time, I was told that I had presented a good case, and they were going to change their policy.  I don't know if it actually did change and then changed back, but looking at the policy on my school district's webpage, the policy is the same as the one I complained about.  In this post, I'll share that letter.  In my next post, I'll talk about why it matters, and what the Michigan government has just done that makes this even worse. Dear JPS School Board, I’m writing to you because I’ve been disturbed about the JPS elementary school attendance policy for some time.   Specifically, I find it disturbing that the only way an absence can be “excused” is with a doctor’s note.   My chief issue with this policy is that I think it is, in a word, classist.   In addition, I think that it represents a misuse of the medical system and it fails to respect a parent’s reasonable judgm...

When I was a child, I went to a UU church that was a larger-sized church for a church in our movement.  The church religious education program was large enough to have paid staff, and a different classroom for every two grade levels through 7th grade, an eight-grade class of its own for coming of age, and an active high school group.  But a church that size often comes in a larger metro area, as was the case with Birmingham Unitarian Church in Bloomfield Hills, MI.  And so, in my school, I was one of only a small hand-full of families with Unitarian Universalist children in our school district of Ferndale, and in my grade there was only one other UU.  I was lucky--I think my two sisters had no other UUs in their grade in our school.  When I got to High School as a freshman, there were still the two of us UUs in a graduating class of over 300, and three UUs that I knew of in the school, although I later found that there were two sisters who went to another one of...

The column " Annie's Mailbox " appears in our daily paper, and the column yesterday got me irritated enough to write a response. Dear Annie, I usually enjoy your column, but you missed the mark in your 11/18 column in two very significant ways. First, your advice to "Frustrated" urged a parent to talk first to the teacher. I agree. The problem comes with your next piece of advice, which was that this was an opportunity for the son to learn how to deal with difficult people. Annie, the letter said the teacher "is mean and degrading and belittles the children on a daily basis." She also said, the children "are tormented each day." While this may be hyperbole, it's possible it's true. And if it is true, it is absolutely unacceptable, and she needs to remove her child from that atmosphere immediately. Too often we let things that are outrageous pass because they are done by authority figures. Being...

Every year I seem to write something about fall being the start of the church year and the start of the school year. For me, this year it's true again in a more concrete way. Today I start teaching again. I'm teaching adjunct at Jackson Community College, and I'm teaching two sections of English 131, which is freshman composition. I taught freshman composition before at Mount Wachusett Community College in Gardner, MA, but it's been four years since I've been in a formal classroom. I'm looking forward to meeting my students later today. At a community college, you often get a very nice mix of traditional and nontraditional students which enriches, I think, the classroom setting. I remember my own college experience at the University of Michigan, and one thing that could be said is it isolated me from the rest of the community. I remember walking across campus one day and seeing a child and thinking it had been months since I'd seen a small child! Th...