Back to basics in 5th grade and pink elephants in the Middle School Auditorium

My son has to experience 5 hours without electricity. Luckily I don't have to follow the same rules for here I sit, laptop open and typing away while he reads by candlelight. I forgot how tired I feel after just a few hours without electric lights. I'm not sure he learned much from this journey into the past, except how much he LOVES all things electric. What did he miss the most? Light! What did he learn? "That I like electricity and it's no fun without it." No fun??? He and his friend played games all evening, we ate by candlelight and I thought it was kind of an adventure. I thought he would have learned the opposite - that you can still have fun in the dark. Backfired!

My daughter had an assembly (again, missing 2 periods of classes) on Columbine. While she is a fairly intelligent girl, she seemed to have missed the main point. What did she take from it? That one of the girls who died had written in her diary that same week that she thought she would die that year. What else? That some person far away contacted the family because of a vision he'd had - he described the vision, and it described something she drew that same morning.

I am hoping the point of the assembly was non-violence - which I assume was the goal. My husband walked into the conversation after we'd been talking for a while. From C's description, he didn't even know it had anything to do with Columbine - he thought the school was having something spiritual! When I asked if anyone mentioned that incident at Bridgewater High School from last year, C said no. Really?! It must have been very strange that they never even mentioned that someone planned what was dubbed as a "Columbine" here and when the Middle School has an assembly no one mentions it?  An elephant in the auditorium, indeed! (I am so surprised by this that I wonder if C spent the entire time passing notes with friends and maybe missed the most important thing - that this could happen anywhere, and nearly did here in Bridgewater).

Time for me to go to bed. It's only 9:37 and my "work" isn't close to done. I missed two very important deadlines, but that is the way it goes. Sometimes even when the school is doing its best to teach a positive message, I guess your kids don't get what you expect out of it. And sometimes I don't get what I expect out of my day either. Time to regroup for another day with new messages and new challenges.

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