We have a wreath because adults have wreaths. |
The days of working 12 hours and feeling like nothing I do matters, even though I'm pouring my heart into every minute of planning, teaching, listening to, working with, assisting...lessons with children? That's on pause. And man, it feels GREAT. Teaching is rewarding, but it's become a field synonymous with levels of exhaustion akin to having triplet newborns. You love what you're doing, but as soon as one mess of poo gets cleaned up, there's another one waiting. So a gap year of sorts was in order for me.
I've been nannying and babysitting for families in the suburbs of Denver. I love it. [Any names I use for children have been changed for their privacy. Any pics have their identity obscured because I think kids should be protected from the evils of the interwebz before they're in high school!]
Crockpot stew like Grandma Jane's |
I found it! (And I dearly wish it for every kid everywhere.)
The cul-de-sac where I've been finding myself every afternoon, Monday-Friday, has kids with swings, apple trees, scooters, bikes, gardens, friendly Fidos, and sassy cats. There are a group of little boys (ages 5-9) who play outside every day. One was using a magnifying glass (from his chemistry set!) to try to start fires. I shared, "Oh, I used to do that when I was a kid!" and he responded, "My mom said the same. It must be a rite of kid passage." Gulp. Wut? Kids talk like that here.
No Holy Grail outfits, but they looked like this. |
Box. Best. Toy. Ever. |
One of the boys noticed my State Park sticker in the windshield of my car (oh skills of observation, very coveted!). I felt that I'd been transported to a beach in SoCal-- as he put his little hands up (in a stop gesture) and said, "Whoa! Whoa! Do you go to Eldo, like my Dad? He has a sticker like that on his car from Eldo." -- yeah, bro, the hiking and climbing at Eldo are totally choice.-- Not really, I said, "Oh yeah, this is a State Park pass for Colorado. You can go to any of the parks. You've probably been to Golden Gate Canyon and Cherry Creek? But I like Eldorado Canyon too." Totally rad sticker, dude-bro.
Just painting this picture of the nature of these kids. They play outdoors. They eat actual food (one of the kiddos had a playdate, in which she searched the fridge for cherry tomatoes she'd picked from the garden (because "they'll go perfectly with our snack!") to go with the berries, cheese, and pretzels. They make their beds. They have TV time limits. They are adorable.
So why did I call this post Feminism Friday? Well, one of the kiddos (who's a girl) was having a playdate with two other friends. They carefully sat down at the table and completed their math homework and quizzed each other over their analogies. I interrupted only to remind them at you have to say all the words that the colons stand for in analogies, or they don't really make sense. "Ship is to sailor, not ship dot dot sailor, as the colon suggests." These kids are that driven and sweet. There was no inkling that "math was hard because we're girls" and that's refreshing.
There's tons of statistics (like college enrollment rates) and research that support that women are still underrepresented in the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) fields. Women of color (more specifically Black and Latino) are terribly underrepresented, with this fear of science stemming (sorry) from elementary school years. Motivation, gender, and color are huge when it comes to which people will finish school with which degrees. Particularly, Latino girls see themselves as caretakers of others, and will, if they choose to seek a career, mention ones that relate to taking care of children and babies (teacher, day care worker, nurse), more than any other field. It's incredibly limiting and sad as a society to see this play out. The truth is, we need a society with women AND men scientists and doctors. Women and men bring different roles to the proverbial table, which makes better workplaces for us all.
(Quick side note: I just read The Green Glass Sea, which is a children's book that received the Scott O'Dell award for Historical fiction. It was GREAT. It dealt with a girl protagonist living on the base of Los Alamos when they were building the atomic bombs. The kids meet all the scientists you think about learning the early stages of radiation studies. It's a different side of WWII book than I'd read. If you have kids-- 8-12ish, make them read it.)
Imagine my surprise when the girls trotted upstairs to gather (it seemed like) every stuffed animal and
baby doll known to man to bring to the basement to "play daycare." I was a little disheartened-- these are girls who have scientist and engineer parents-- why are they stuck in this gender-role play?
I gave it some time, and laughed as I came downstairs to check on them. The babies were all in the side room-- in quarantine. They were using makeshift cell phones -- calculators, old phones-- to call all the parents at the day care. They'd come, not as day care workers, but as CDC doctors to quarantine the Norovirus. Yes. The Norovirus. One kiddo warned me, "Don't go in there. It's the
With the Ebola virus crippling Africa currently and scaremongering laypeople about hospital care of those aid workers returning home, (even in my native Atlanta and alma mater Emory) it seemed prescient that these kids were playing doctor/scientist/aid worker in the basement in Colorado. They are neatly living this beautiful idyllic childhood, but the real world exists.