Bridgewater Soccer Mom's view of the world

It's both transitive and intransitive: judging. Today a discussion of the verb "judge". It's always the same expression in some concerned mother's eyes, "You let her walk to school?" Usually behind them is the thought that she is a superior mother because she would drive her kid. But is she really? Isn't 20 minutes of independent walking in our own neighborhood a minimum expectation of a 10 year old? But then I caught myself doing the same thing. Judging others! I do it several times a day - and when having coffee, I do can do it 50 times per latte. (You can find examples in this blog - did you see my judgment of Michelle Obama's choice of outfit?). I also judge a lot of mother's in my son's grade for being overprotective and self-righteous. Stay and home and outside working moms judge each other all the time! I judge them both, since I have been both, and have been judged too. My house should be much cleaner since I am a stay-at-home Mom...

Over lunch I read about Everyday Math being reviewed in the Courier News . It's about time! This started a discussion between four Moms at N's friend's party. While we talked some math, language arts became the hot topic. Parent A has a kid who is dyslexic but she needed a lawyer to get reading help for her child. Parent B (hostess) has been asking for answers about our apparent lack of a coherent spelling/word study program at board meetings for years. She asked the board where has the program Bridgewater uses been tested before and was met with blank stares. She went back a month later, repeating the question still with no answers. I think it is a valid question. Perhaps I will ask it sometime too! I think she called BW a guinea pig. Is it? Parent C wants to know why the school district has no problem to call her for permission to test her older A-student daughter for the e-program, while she can't get her younger son tested for dyslexia for love nor money. I belie...

Earlier this week some neighbors and friends hung out, drank wine and ate a bit too much on my back veranda. About 10 moms, parents of kids in every level of Bridgewater schools, sat in the candlelight discussing for many hours. While we did talk about many other things, school-talk dominated the conversation at my end of the table. Some of the comments were critical, some positive. Of the six of us talking school, at least four were current or former teachers (none in district). One woman said "I work in a more affluent district, with higher test scores, but I still think that my kids are getting a better all-around education here." I trust her judgment - her kids are smart cookies! Several parents, however, felt the education is sub-par. "They call the language arts program a "balanced-literacy" program, but really it is whole-language. And the national reading coalition (forgive me A. if I am misquoting)said that the best is a 50/50 balance. If you can't...