Postcards from London

The Boyds at the Tower of London

My family enjoys travel. We work together on mission trips every other summer, helping people in places like Thailand, Fiji, Malaysia, or Japan improve their English conversation skills.  We work with a group called Let's Start Talking, using the Bible as our text and sharing our faith in Christ with our new foreign friends.  

Kinley with three new friends in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in 2010

These 6-week-long missions have enabled us to rack up the frequent flyer miles.  Kinley alone has 80,000 miles at her disposal right now. That's enough to take her to Egypt.  Or Timbuktu.  Or Disney, 3 times.

Whether we're going on a mission, following Josh as he represents Purdue, or traveling just for fun, I always send all of my students a postcard from wherever I am during the summer.  It takes a lot of time to write that many cards since I can't seem to stop myself from giving each child details about the far-away lands that they may never visit.  Plus, I like for them to know I'm thinking about them during the summer, and all kids love to get real mail. 

Many of them come in on the first day of school proudly reporting that my card arrived "all the way from" wherever I've been that year.  I beam at them, happy that my investment in time and postage (which costs as much as $2 per postcard in some countries) has given them joy.

But this year, I intentionally left out one student.

We spent the summer of 2011 in London since this was our off-year for mission work.  On a visit to Trafalgar Square, I stopped in a touristy shop to buy cheap postcards to send.  I picked one that had lots of different scenes of famous places in London and bought 22 of them.  Back in our tiny flat, I plopped onto the bed to begin writing.  I started with the child whose name comes first on my alphabetical class list.  I always assign my students class numbers and memorize my class list this way.  Justin Asbill is number 1; Jacob Baber is number 2; Kinley Boyd is number 3; etc.

After I'd finished the first two postcards, I was having trouble remembering which child was number four.  Kinley said, "What about number 3?  Didn't you write that postcard?"

I stared at her.  "Um, no.  I only bought 22 postcards."

"You're not sending me a card?" she asked in disbelief.

"Well….no.  I mean, you're HERE…with me."

She gaped at me a moment, told me the name of student number four, and went back to what she had been doing.

I have to admit that I did feel a little bit guilty.  Here was yet another way that my child was getting the shaft because her mother is her teacher.  Of course, in this case, Kinley got to actually VISIT the places on the card, but I'm sure that most people assumed she might get PREFERENTIAL treatment from me as a teacher.  The truth is, usually the opposite is true.  She often gets the short end of the stick.

But I still didn't write her.  And I think she'll get over it.

Josh Takes Responsibility for His Daughter's Education

Every year since I've been teaching the High Ability class at Mayflower Mill, I've had to deal with students who take extended vacations during the school year.  I've had students who've jetted off to Costa Rica for two weeks, students who've gone on cruises that didn't even begin until school had already started after Christmas break, and students who simply couldn't take their annual week-long trip to Orlando any time except smack in the middle of October. 

Our school system has a policy that allows this as long as the parents are willing to write a letter stating that during the time that the students will be missing school, the parents will take responsibility for their child's education.  Of course, the child is expected to make up any missed work, but that's pretty much all it takes to get a week or two off of school, scot-free.

It's always a real pain for me when my students miss class since so much of what we do can't be replicated at home or made up with extra homework.  It's hard to have a class discussion about whether or not Sal in the novel Walk Two Moons is a reliable narrator while on the airplane with your family on the way to Disney World.  So I end up having either to decide that the student can skip the missed assignments altogether or having to write new assignments that can be done by the student without my instruction or their classmates' input to use as a sounding board.

And then, of course, I have to grade it all.  Yuck.

I've always thought of parents who exercise their right to take their kids on mid-school-year vacations as just a teensy bit irresponsible. Just what kind of message are these people sending to their kids about the importance of school attendance?

Well, this year, I became one of those parents.

Josh was given the opportunity to teach in Purdue's study abroad program in London, England, this summer, and our whole family decided to tag along.  Since the program in London started on May 18 and our school wasn't over until May 27 for students, we had initially planned for Josh to go over without us.  Kinley, Knox, and I would follow on June 1.

But then Josh and I (with some encouragement from my assistant principal) decided to give Kinley an early tenth birthday gift – a ticket to fly over with her daddy instead of waiting until the end of the school year.

We wrote the requisite I-take-responsibility-for-my-child's-education letter, which is kind of ironically redundant since she was already being taught every day in a public school by her mother.  Now that I think of it, maybe our letter should have been more of a I-hereby-relinquish-the-responsibility-for-my-daughter's-education-and-pass-the-baton-on-to-my-husband type letter.

At any rate, Kinley was heading to London.  She'd miss field day, the traditional 5^th grade walk, and our end-of-year pizza party and auction.  But she would trade those activities for learning to deal with a new currency, visiting two Welsh UNESCO World Heritage Sites, straddling the Prime Meridian in Greenwich, watching Wicked from the front row of the Victoria Palace Theater in London's famous West End, and getting a new stamp in her already impressively-decorated passport two weeks early. 

It was a good trade.  Even if it was a little bit irresponsible.

And besides, it wasn't a mid-school-year trip to Disney.