The Boys and Summer Homework

Wherever Schools "encourages" the different departments to assign summer homework.  I'm a teacher, and you'd think I'd applaud this.  I don't.  I hate it.

You try getting an autistic teenager and an ELL teenager with ADD and post-traumatic stress syndrome to work on summer homework with no support from the school.  You just try. 

Although I specifically put into Aran and Sasha's IEPs that they're to be excluded from summer homework, I looked over the assignments anyway and found a number of violations in them.  See, summer homework isn't allowed to teach new concepts because special education students almost always have in their IEPs that the school must provide a certain amount of assistance for schoolwork.  Summer homework isn't immune, and if the school requires new knowledge, it has to provide special education teachers to assist special education students.  Federal law.

Anyway, the math and science homework Aran was given was ALL new concepts.  Clear violation, and I'll be bringing this up with the department chairs and then the principal over at Aran's high school later.

Sucking Dust

The carpets in the house desperately needed cleaning, and today was sunny and not muggy (unusual for Michigan), so this was the day.  I
rented a cleaner from the local hardware store and got to work.

As a side-effect, the boys had to thoroughly clean their rooms.  They had to get everything off the floor, see, and when the carpets were
done, I said, "Now put everything back, but neater."

This elicited howls and screams from Maksim, who loathes cleaning his room.  My response: "If you hate cleaning it, don't let it turn into
such a mess."  He spent more time screaming than cleaning, and when he =did= clean, he didn't really do anything.  I finally had to empty all the shelves in his room onto his bed to force him to sort.  "Anything that isn't put away properly will be thrown away," I threatened, and he
finally got to work and did a good job.

Meanwhile, I was cleaning carpets.  They dried quickly in the warm, dry air, which was nice, and all the awful spots disappeared.  And then I
realized the other floors needed to be mopped, and =my= room needed to be cleaned.  I missed lunch, in fact.

After I returned the cleaner and took a shower, I made sesame noodles for supper and told the boys we now have a no-shoes rule in the house.  Anyone caught with shoes will have to vacuum the whole place from top to bottom!

The house smells fresher with clean carpets, and it looks so much better.

Aran and Harry

Aran used to enjoy reading, but he doesn't anymore.  Something shifted when he was about eight or nine; I don't know what.  I've been trying to get him to read more for years, but he resists.

He currently has a minor obsession over the Harry Potter movies, and I tried a number of ways to parlay that into getting him to read the books, but he always refused.  "I'm not much of a reader."

I finally hit on the idea of using the audio books.  I put the audio version of the first book on his MP3 player and showed him how he can follow along in print while the narrator reads.  Ah ha!  Now he's reading on his own.  Not voraciously, but every other day or so he reads a chapter.

Let's hope it continues.

Sasha and Church

Sasha has been saying he wants to go to church.  I had no idea what demonition he'd really be interested in, but knew he'd be most familiar with Eastern Orthodox.  A little searching turned up a Ukrainian cathedral in Southfield, which is about half an hour away.

I called them and, after a bit of phone tag, got hold of the priest.  He spoke in heavily-accented English.  I told him about Sasha's situation and said he was looking for a church.  The priest told me that the parish consisted of Ukrainians who were looking to hold onto a Ukrainian community, and that the services were mostly in Ukrainian.  This, I replied, sounded ideal for Sasha.

This Sunday it was time to attend services.

Okay, wee pause here.  I am not a practicing Christian of any stripe.  I have an extensive knowledge of the bible and of Christian ritual and beliefs from a number of sects, but I don't practice.  Monotheists, in my view, have a lot to answer for.  I've been a practicing Wiccan for decades now, and that's not going to change.

Yet here I was, not only arranging for my oldest son to attend Christian services, but going with him.

On Sunday morning, Sasha pulled on an old t-shirt and a pair of ratty slacks.  I made him put on an ironed shirt with a collar and nicer slacks. I also made him tuck his shirt in and put on a belt.  "I look like a nerd," he complained.

"You aren't slouching through the hall at school," I said.  "You're going to church."

We drove across town to the cathedral and arrived about ten minutes before the formal service.  A cathedral, you have to understand, gets its name from its function, not its size, and this one was about the size of a medium church.  The inside was very similar to other Orthodox churches I'd seen in Ukraine--pews, an elaborately carved wooden altar with a book and an icon of Jesus on it near the front, transepts where you could light candles for prayers.  (In the entry foyer, a man was selling beeswax candles and votives to light, but Sasha didn't want any, so skipped that part.)  Up front was a huge, floor-to-ceiling partition painted with golden-haloed icons of saints, angels, and scenes from the life of Jesus, all done in the tall, spindly Orthodox style.  A big central iron gate occupied the center with a curtain drawn across the inside.  Two of the icons, one left and one right, were actually rounded doors that the priest and altar boys would later use to enter and exit through.

In the choir loft up and behind the pews, the choir master was chanting prayers in Ukrainian.  A small group of people occupied the pews.  Most went up to the altar, crossed themselves, and knelt to kiss the icon.  When Sasha saw how everyone was dressed, I think he was glad I made him put on nicer clothes.

At the stroke of 10:00, another voice floated out from behind the partition and did a back-and-forth chanting with the choir master.  After a moment, the curtain drew aside, the gate opened, and priest emerged in embroidered blue vestements.  He swung a censer all around the altar area while the choir joined in the chanting in a tight harmony.

The priest moved over to one of the transepts, where a lecturn held an elaborately-decorated book.  This was apparently a signal for people who wanted a special kind of blessing--two people approached and bowed over the book while the priest threw part of his vestments over the person's head and whispered in their ear for a moment.  The choir continued to chant.  Once each person was blessed, the service began.

It was very similar to a Catholic service.  There was a lot of standing up, sitting down, and kneeling.  Sasha did all three.  I stood or sat--as a non-practitioner, I didn't kneel.  The priest sang and chanted the entire ceremony, which surprised me a little.  It went on for an hour and a half.

Several times during the service, the parishoners crossed themselves.  Sasha tried crossing himself but couldn't remember how to do it, so I taught him how (and all the while I was finding it beyond mere irony).  Orthodox Christians cross from right to left, and the bottom of the cross is the navel, not the sternum, and Sasha had it backwards at first.

Sasha didn't take communion--he couldn't remember if he'd been confirmed or not, so we decided he shouldn't.

A chunk of the service happened out of sight, behind the partition.  There was a second altar back there, and the priest was doing something near it, but since I couldn't see him or understand what he was saying, the meaning was lost on me.  There was much parading of holy objects--a book, the grail, the cross (not a crucifix).  Several people were given host  (bread, not wafers) in little baggies to take home, I'm assuming for people who couldn't come.

Sasha asked to leave partway through, but I told him we needed to stay for the whole thing.

I have to admit to a certain amount of boredom.  My only stake in this was Sasha's, and while I was willing to be there to help him, it didn't make the event itself any more interesting once I had seen everything there was to see.

When the ritual part of the service ended, the priest spoke for about ten minutes.  I think he was making announcements, but I'm not sure.

He finished and everyone rose.  We were sitting at the back, and Sasha wanted to leave.  I said we should go and talk to the priest for a moment and hang about to meet people, but he wanted to leave.  So we left.  (Sasha doesn't often plunge into new situations and grab them quickly; he needs to circle them for a while first.)

In the car on the way home, he said he understood only a little of the service, and added, "It made me feel weird."

"Weird good or weird bad or just weird?" I said.

"Just weird."

"It's probably poking at old memories from when you were very little," I said.

"I did like it," he said.  "I want to go back."

So we'll see what happens.

Shhh! It's a Secret!

Shhh! Underground supper clubs have infiltrated Ann Arbor. Don't tell supper chef tammylc I let you in on it. http://www.concentratemedia.com/features/undergrounddining0162.aspx