"I love you! Don't Die!"

Someone in our family is sick and hospitalized. When I told my daughters, ages 4 and 7,  the first question my four-year-old, Naima, had was "Will he die?" which broke my heart, as she became intimately acquainted with death when her Daddy, my husband, died last year. So yesterday, we called our sick family member at the hospital so that the girls could speak to him. As they were signing off,  Naima said very cheerily, "Goodbye! I love you! Don't die!" which was sort of morbidly funny.

"I tried to help Daddy because he was sick"

Naima and her Daddy

A little over nine months ago my husband died. It was sudden. We didn't know he was seriously ill until the Monday I took him to the hospital. He was told he was diabetic, spent his birthday, Tuesday, in the hospital, and by Thursday was told he'd be released the next day. He died that Thursday night. It still doesn't seem real.

But this post isn't about my grief (I am thankful that my friends on Facebook have supported me through that), rather this is about my youngest. My toddler was 2 when her Daddy died and my "big girl" was 6. They've both had birthdays since then and while they will periodically cry for their Daddy, generally it has been less frequent than me so I presumed that the support of their schools and the church was all we needed. Until this morning.

This Sunday started out like any other day. I woke up with Naima next to me in my bed (miraculously, her big sister didn't make it into my bed for the night). She said a cheerful "Good morning Mommy!"and then curled up inside my arm. Then she fell silent like something was on her mind. "What are you thinking about Boo Boo?" I asked. "I miss Daddy," she said. "I know Boo Boo, it's around this time you'd barge into our room and start bouncing on your Daddy." She looked up and grinned. "Yeah! I like bouncing on Daddy. I was bouncing on your and Daddy's bed when he was sick." My heart skipped because I knew she meant that Monday. After a soft opening that had lasted for several months, it was to be the first full week of the official opening of his new business in New York City. He had worked late the night before which was Super Bowl Sunday and despite leaving around midnight, he didn't get home until 7 am on Monday. He told me that morning that he was so tired that driving home he periodically would pull over on the New Jersey Turnpike to rest. So I told him to stay home, but since I was in a rush, I asked him to take Naima to preschool while I took our 6 year old to school before going into Manhattan (I also worked at the business he co-owned). He agreed.

But it turns out he never did get to take Naima to preschool and when I got home that Monday I took one look at him and took him to the hospital.

This morning Naima told me that she played on the bed while Daddy was sick and I was at work. But when she tried to get him to get up, he couldn't because he was too sick. "So I gave Daddy medicine," she said. "What do you mean, Naima?" I couldn't believe what I was hearing. So she explained that she went to the bathroom and got "medicine" and she "gave it to him" pouring a liquid medicine in his mouth so that he could get better.

I was stunned silent. I thought about what could she have possibly given him. I decided, thinking it through, it couldn't have been anything truly medicinal. We keep things out of her reach and everything has a safety cap. But the idea that my then two-year-old thought she could, on her own, give her Daddy medicine to get better both touched and alarmed me.

"Naima," I began gently, "I know you wanted to help Daddy but in the future please don't give anyone anything while they are sleeping, ok?" Naima begins to weep: "I wanted to make Daddy better, I gave him medicine, I tried to help Daddy because he was sick." And so for several minutes she was inconsolable and I rocked her in my arms until she calmed. Afterwards I told her to go to the playroom with her sister. It was at that point I broke down and cried.

According to my husband's sister (an MD), it's unlikely this is a thought Naima has been carrying for several months or that she is blaming herself. Children don't think like that (only us adults do that). After crying I posted on Facebook that Naima had a memory of the day her Daddy went into the hospital and that I needed help. I am grateful for the referrals sent to me. A friend of Roland's also posted (again, without knowing the specifics of what my daughter told me), that whatever she said might not even be true. He had a point, but if she believes it, shouldn't I address it?

I'm going to seek counseling for her. I'm torn because I want her to remember her Daddy, but I don't want her to remember that day, the last day she saw him alive (I never took the girls to the hospital the three days he was there). Hopefully a grief counselor or psychologist can help me work all of this out.

It's Been A Long Time...

To paraphrase legendary rapper Rakim "It's been a long time, I shouldn't have left you..."

Lots and lots have been going on in the past months and I truly do intend to blog about all the blessings and frustrations of the past several months, but first I simply want to post a photo. In November 2008 - more than two years ago - I began discussions with Princeton University about a public art and social justice project that would center on community murals. The woman who first reached out to me was Noliwe Rooks, deputy director of the Center for African American Studies at Princeton University.

Two years and many months later we debuted our first mural as part of the Trenton Mural Arts Project, a collaboration between Artworks, the Trenton Downtown Association/Destination Trenton, the City of Trenton, and the Capital City Redevelopment Corporation with assistance from Princeton University's Center for African American Studies, the Pace Center, and the Princeton Atelier which brought in Jane Golden of the Philadelphia Mural Arts Program.

Photos of the actual mural will be posted later -- when I get some good ones that do it justice.

Meanwhile, the photo at the left was taken after our mural dedication ceremony this past Saturday. Left to right that's my staffer Candice Frederick, Tourism Marketing Manager for Destination Trenton; me; Noliwe; and my former staffer (insert sad face) Eva Loayza who just left us to be a press secretary for the NJ Assembly Democrats. More on all later.

Trenton Sinks Lower

As you've no doubt noticed from my first few blog posts I'm absolutely obsessed over the academic and educational outlook for Imani and Naima - and they are four-years-old and six-months-old respectively. I blame it on the studies I've read that conclude that where they are by fourth grade will pretty much predict their "life outcome".

It's in this spirit that last Tuesday I picked up the latest issue of NJ Monthly magazine which is emblazoned with the headline NJ's Best High Schools. The cover promised to list the top 100 schools inside and I knew the school system we moved from - West Windsor-Plainsboro - would be on that list. That was one of the reasons we moved to 08540 in 1998. Our mailing address was "Princeton, NJ" address but the section of 08540 we moved to is really West Windsor Township. West Windsor-Plainsboro South High School (which was the only high school for the district when we moved there) is on the 2010 list at #16 out of 322 public high schools. The newer school West Windsor-Plainsboro North, which was built in response to all of the new residential development in West Windsor and Plainsboro, is still solidly in the Top 50 at #29.

The magazine then directs you to its website to see all the schools ranked 1 through 322 and so after setting down our weekly take from Fernbrook Farm in our kitchen I eagerly go to Roland's home office to pull up the magazine's site. And I scroll and scroll (and scroll) to find Trenton. Out of 322 public high schools Trenton is ranked 317.

I cannot describe the feeling I had seeing this ranking because it was on the occassion of the 2008 NJ Monthly rankings (they're done semi-annually) the Trenton Chapter of the NAACP mounted a campaign they called "310 Never Again" because, you guessed it, Trenton was ranked 310 out of 322.

For the 2010 rankings we moved 7 spots in the wrong direction; we moved even further to the bottom.

What will it take to turn around our schools?

Arts for Imani

This fall Imani will once again take a Preschool Ballet & Tap class at a local studio as well as take a to-be-determined visual arts class. Last year it was Crafty Creators at the Hamilton YMCA and the Art Start class offered by the ladies of Smudges & Strokes - whom I convinced to let Imani take the class despite being only 3 years old. Imani loves the visual arts in particular. My job owned an art gallery so she has been surrounded by fine art since she was 2 months old and she began to look forward to the art openings as a toddler, though it always seemed like she ran around the gallery more than she actually looked at the art.

We've encouraged her creativity at home. For years now Imani has been creating drawings and "mixed media" pieces on our living room coffee table that she would then tape to our living room wall as her "exhibit" (see exhibit A from earlier this year posted above!). Despite hiding the tape from her to prevent future random installations, I am encouraging Imani's love for the arts because my mother did the same for me.

I was raised in White Plains, a New York City suburb in well-to-do Westchester County, by a single mother who never made a salary above poverty level but who always encouraged my interest in the visual and performing arts. I started playing the recorder in primary school and by 4th grade I moved on to the flute. After renting a flute for a couple of years my mother somehow scraped up funds for me to buy a flute. During those years she also sent me to an after school program where Afrocentric instructors taught us about African art and to speak Swahili. One summer I went to a visual arts day camp - I'm assuming I was a scholarship kid - on the the campus of Purchase College, the arts school in the State University of New York system.

I took tap in an afterschool program at Battle Hill Elementary School and I took the modern dance classes offered at the children's center where my mother was a teacher's aid. When I was about 10 or 11 Mom and I tagged along with a friend of hers whose child was going to be evaluated for training at the Dance Theatre of Harlem. Suited up in my leotard, I remember a stern Russian woman had me do a plie and a low arabesque and then while I stood in first position pronounced me suitable for the school to a man I now think was probably THE Arthur Mitchell. The girl we went with, who was a lean and lithe form to my muscular one and who had been in ballet since since she was like 5, wasn't accepted for training but she and I were both disappointed that day. My mother didn't expect me to be admitted and couldn't see bringing me to Harlem from White Plains weekly for ballet classes (of course, this all didn't prevent her from boasting about my admission for years!). Ultimately I continued to study modern and African with a local instructor with whom I would tag along to Manhattan to take classes at various studios which was an amazing experience. By sophomore year in high school I was admitted into a competitive dance program at Purchase College where I took classes multiple times a week. (I dropped the classes by senior year in favor of the school drill team, a job, and the mall!)

By high school I knew it was the performing arts that I loved: orchestra, band, jazz vocal ensemble, Cultural Horizons gospel choir, musicals (during the school year and the summer), these all among my cherished childhood experiences.

According to the National Arts Education Association, there are 10 lessons that the arts teach children.

1. The arts teach children to make good judgments about qualitative relationships. Unlike much of the curriculum in which correct answers and rules prevail, in the arts, it is judgment rather than rules that prevail.



2. The arts teach children that problems can have more than one solution and that questions can have more than one answer.



3. The arts celebrate multiple perspectives. One of their large lessons is that there re many ways to see and interpret the world.



4. The arts teach children that in complex forms of problem solving purposes are seldom fixed, but change with circumstance and opportunity. Learning in the arts requires the ability and a willingness to surrender to the unanticipated possibilities of the work as it unfolds.



5. The arts make vivid the fact that neither words in their literal form nor numbers exhaust what we can know. The limits of our language do not define the limits of our cognition.



6. The arts teach students that small differences can have large effects. The arts traffic in subtleties.



7. The arts teach students to think through and within a material. All art forms employ some means through which images become real.



8. The arts help children learn to say what cannot be said. When children are invited to disclose what a work of art helps them feel, they must reach into their poetic capacities to find the words that will do the job.



9. The arts enable us to have experience we can have from no other source and through such experience to discover the range and variety of what we are capable of feeling.



10. The arts' position in the school curriculum symbolizes to the young what adults believe is important.

Source: Eisner, E. (2002). The Arts and the Creation of Mind, In Chapter 4, What the Arts Teach and How It Shows. (pp. 70-92). Yale University Press. Available from NAEA Publications.

I was blessed in that I lived in a community with schools that were rich with arts opportunities and that my late mother, despite her modest means, understood how important the arts could be in my development. The reason I am determined to provide the arts for Imani is so she can have a childhood as full as mine was.

What, Me Overschedule?

Today is Imani's first day in Abbott Pre-School class. I like the head teacher and assistant teacher who both said they were pleased that we decided to place her in their class. "We treat the children well, no matter what class they're in," said the assistant, meaning just because this classroom is funded by the public school and therefore free (not including after care) doesn't mean they treat the children any less.

I called my in-laws after leaving the farm last night (we belong to a CSA, Community Supported Agriculture, which I'll post about later) and Imani totally outed the new Abbott class. "Tell Mumsy I'm going to a new class, Mommy, and the we don't have to drive there we just walk down the hall and down the steps!" And so now my mother-in-law, who wasn't in favor of the move, knows the scoop. Her concern is that Imani is ahead of her age group and she isn't sure she'll get the attention she needs to continue to grow in the Abbott class. Nevertheless she said that she hopes it all works out.

Interestingly I found out that Imani has been to that classroom before when her "Community" (Montessori) class visited the Abbott classroom for joint activities. "Imani seems so much older than she is," the Abbott assistant teacher told me yesterday when I went to meet her, "she speaks so well for a child her age." I thought that was a good thing when she said it but in light of my mother-in-law's concern, I plan to watch Imani for changes, like lax speech.

Anyway, in addition to the Pre-School it's also time to register her for all her fall activities. A few weeks ago I posted the following on my Facebook page:

Planning Imani's fall activities: ballet/tap (Thurs), swimming (Sat), drawing (Mon), the farm (our CSA, Sat) plus Pre-K Scholars tutoring (Tues, Wed) from me. Am I overscheduling?

Overwhelmingly folks said, "Yes!" The funny thing is that I forgot one activity: Music Together, which I started doing with Imani a little before she was one-year-old and now I'd like to do with Imani and Naima as a family. The deal is, if you add on gymnastics which Imani also wants to do these are all activities that she requested -- ok, maybe not the Pre-K Scholars Kindergarten readiness tutoring from me, but everything else. And if you replace Pre-K Scholars in the list with "What Your Preschooler Needs to Know" book and workbook these are things she did last year!

So is it overscheduling if she asks for all these activities?

Going "Abbott": Our Preschool Decision

In April of this year I had a panic attack which would lead me to go online, pull down a private school's application for Pre-Kindergarten, fill it out in the middle of the night (which required completing essay questions about our toddler), and hand deliver it to a private school in the suburbs a friend had raved about.

Two months earlier I had given birth to our second daughter Naima and my obsession over Imani and her future academic achievement went into overdrive. I'd always been interested in education and as we live in the inner city where our overwhelmed public school system leaves much to be desired, I had spent a great deal of time in debates with friends in and out of the city about what it would take to bring our schools up to par. One thing that was clear to me is that middle class folks in Trenton had totally opted out of the public schools. The school board isn't elected, rather it's appointed by the mayor and even the school board members sent their kids to private schools. I had debated friends on this point who, missing my point, argued that the schools were bad and of that's why even school board members didn't send their kids there. My point was to make the schools better we needed to have school board members with "skin in the game" which to me means school board members who had kids in the system.

In the process of thinking about the Trenton schools I developed another theory: an infusion of middle class kids would make the schools better and decided that I had a mission; I would send my kids to the public schools and I would recruit others in our socioeconomic class to do the same and our group of invested stakeholders would work to turn the schools around. Imani was probably a year old at the time. My role model mom and friend Deesha Philyaw, a professor, blogger and freelance writer who has written for Essence magazine and the Washington Post among others, and who is seriously one of the brightest, most well-adjusted people I know, heard me out, told me my goals were laudable and then suggested that I read Natalie Hopkinson's column in the Washington Post entitled "The Hip-Hop Generation, Raising Up Its Sons". Though I have a few years on the author (I was born in 1969 to her mid-70s), our stories about how we came to live where we do (Washington, DC for Hopkinson and her husband, Trenton, NJ for me and mine) were similar as were/are our goals for our communities.

"Unlike our parents, who chose mostly white, suburban districts with top notch school systems, Rudy and I wanted to live in a black community in the Chocolate City...we admittedly had a lot of romantic notions about being role models and helping a city rebound."

Ultimately, she writes, "three years later, our lofty goals became a casualty of busy work schedules. We didn't have the time to overhaul a school!" and she and her husband opt for their son a public school in a better area when her former high school principal later advises

"You never get a chance to do this but one time. This is your chance," he said. "You have the means to give him the best, whether that's in a school that is public or private. You've got to send him to a place that's ready for him. You've gotta find places that believe that he can be a Master of the Universe. If you are lucky enough to live in a community where you don't have to pay for that, good for you. If not, make that investment, it will pay you right back. You cannot feel guilty. You are not selling out. That's the American way."

But this article isn't what lead to the panic attack I alluded to earlier. No, despite the appeals from two of my girlfriends, who are also Imani's co-Godmothers, I was still pretty determined to send her to public school. But then there were scandals in our local school system: a number of children were unnecessarily held back a grade and then when they complained were told "don't worry we'll put them in their proper grade next year" as if the grade they missed didn't matter and more importantly I found out that our school system wasn't in compliance with the state mandate on Gifted and Talented Education (GTE) programs. And then there were those studies on the achievement gap. Before delving into reading in this area I had assumed this was a phenomenon exclusive to lower income African Americans. In reality the achievement gap also persists in the suburbs among students from middle class and upper middle class families as well. And so current events and this data along with the birth of a second child put me in panic mode.

Imani was admitted to that suburban private school's Junior Kindergarten but she won't be going there. Nor will she continue in the Montessori-style mixed-age program we moved her to here in Trenton last year (from a suburban Y program with tuition that rivals private Montessori schools which we had put her in for "socialization"). Next next month Imani will be attending a publicly-funded Abbott Pre-School program in Trenton located in the same place as the Montessori-style program she has been in since November. Some of my friends (and some family who were also not in favor of the class move) will learn this for the very first time by reading my blog but please friends and fam know that I do believe it will be ok. The fact is that we cannot (and shouldn't) rely on schools, whether they are public or private, to be solely responsible for our daughter's development. Last year we began using the What Your Preschooler Needs to Know read-aloud book and accompanying activity workbooks. We've been diligently adding classic children's books to her library and I'm constantly gathering reading lists (enough to merit its own blog post) for more to check out from the public library (and we even pay for access to a suburban public library system's for greater options). A few months ago I purchased the Pre-K Scholars education kit and will be doing that with Imani starting next month. Additionally, our regular trips to our Fernbrook Farms CSA give Imani an opportunity to learn (in a fun way) about agriculture and that produce is grown, not just picked up at the grocery store.

So, who knows what will happen. She will most certainly be in a class with more "disadvantaged"children and that's ok. As Carey Berwick (a writer who is Jersey City resident and mother of an Abbott preschooler) pointed out in her article "E for Equity: Inside New Jersey’s Education Debate" for urban affairs magazine The Next American City, Abbott preschool classes are better when the children come from a mix of socioeconomic classes, confirming my long-held theory about public schools in general. Also, Imani is ahead of her peers (something confirmed by her private school screening) and being in a class of mixed-levels is also something that could benefit both Imani and her classmates. This is an important part of the Montessori-style of teaching which believes that in mixed-age classes the older (and in this case, more advanced) children get to be mentors for their peers while encouraging the older child's mastery of the school work. This theory was unintentionally put to the test on the high school level by medieval literature teacher Line Marshall. In "Racial Achievement Gap Still Plagues Schools", National Public Radio reported that a scheduling mistake put students tracked on different levels in the same class. The mistake elevated the work of the lower level students, says Marshall:

"I saw in the kids who wanted the opportunity a light open up. The kids who had been used to, I guess, doing very basic work, whose English classes for whatever reason hadn't been challenging, would come up to me and say, we've just never thought this way before. No one's ever asked us these questions before."

Again, who knows what will happen. I may move her from the free Abbott classes back to the "community room" but I know that she's already doing Kindergarten level work and she just turned four years old yesterday. We just need to continue to respond to her need for stimulation; she loves the pre-K and Kindergarten activity books we get from the dollar stores. Earlier this year I asked her if they do such activities at school. "No," she said, "We don't have activities, we just have games".

Imani continues to fascinate me with what she picks up outside of the formal school environment and because of that I think she will be ok in the free Abbott pre-school...I think.