Month: September 2007

Last night all my kids had a spontaneous Art Time. Gleek and Patches were coloring. Link started drawing a comic full of Nintendo characters. When bedtime came, they left their art stuff out. Art Time continued this morning. But it was a little more conflict filled this time. Link finished his comic and wanted to show it to me. Patches wanted to see too, but Link declared that Patches couldn’t see until the comic was in a book. Patches wailed. He wanted to see his brother’s cool work. Link scowled, he wanted to maintain his right to decide who gets to look at his work. I attempted to negotiate a veiwing for Patches while honoring Link’s copyright. In the end, Patches was allowed to view when I was.

This is not the first copyright issue I’ve had to negotiate. Yesterday it was Gleek and Kiki.

Kiki has been drawing a lot lately. She’s been experimenting with Anime style art. Kiki is so pleased with her new style that she decided to get rid of some of her old work. She “got rid of it” by leaving the old drawings strewn across the front room floor. They sat there for several days. Then yesterday I got tired of the drawings being on the floor and asked Kiki if they were important or garbage. Kiki declared them to be garbage and began to clean them up. This would have been fine except Gleek heard the exchange. In Gleek’s eyes the drawings were beautiful and it was a tragedy that they were all going into the trash. Gleek tried to grab them, Kiki grabbed them faster. Kiki insisted that the drawings go into the trash. She didn’t want to see them laying around. Then there was crying.

I waded in and tried to argue with Kiki. It seemed spiteful to me that Kiki would rather throw the pictures away an let her little sister cry than to just let her sister have the pictures. It was definitely a power play on Kiki’s part. She was asserting her right to decide what happens to her art. In this house we are big fans of intellectual property rights. It felt wrong for me to just declare that Kiki had to give the pictures to Gleek. I leaned hard on Kiki to see if she would cave in. She would not. Gleek cried some more. Then I remembered that Kiki is attempting to save money to buy copic markers. I negotiated a deal where Gleek bought the pictures from Kiki. After that everyone was happy.

I’ve since made clear to Kiki that if she leaves pictures laying on the floor, that constitues a forfeiture of rights to those pictures. They enter the public domain and are available to anyone who wishes to pick them up. Print outs made from scanned pictures that Kiki has drawn will also have to be discussed. Kiki thinks that the other kids should pay her a nickel every time they print out a picture that she has drawn. So we’re going to have to discuss “fair use” and “duplication rights.”

It is amazing to see my kids starting to develop ethics about these things at such a young age. I suppose it is inevitable considering how we pay our bills. I guess I just didn’t expect to have to be judge and jury over intellectual property rights as well as physical ones .

Tomorrow is the day. Tomorrow morning at 8 am we’ll re-open the Schlock store and begin selling the next Schlock Mercenary book. So much depends upon the book selling well enough. 600 books sold is critical. If we don’t sell that many, then we’ll have to borrow money to pay the printer. That would be a disaster. 1800 books sold is the happy dance number. That is the point at which we’ll have paid for the print run and gotten enough money to pay all our bills for the next six months.

It would be so wonderful if we sell enough books tomorrow that I can stop worrying about money.

I spent all day today doing preparatory tasks. I did accounting. I emailed all the people who contributed to the book to tell them that they’ll be getting free copies. I didn’t email people who contributed and are local because I plan to hand out those books in person. If your name appears in the book, you’re due a free copy and I need your mailing address. (Or a reminder the next time we see each other.)

Most important, I closed the online store and set it up with the new merchandise. At 8 am tomorrow it will re-open. Then Howard and I will start playing “click.” It is the game where we keep hitting refresh to see how many orders have come in during the last few minutes. I hope we click all the way up to our goal tomorrow. I hope. I hope. I hope.

The other day Link and Gleek were talking and comparing teachers. Gleek was saying that she likes her first grade teacher, but misses her kindergarten teacher. Link countered with the information that he hadn’t liked his first grade teacher at all. I found this information interesting because at the time Link was in first grade he told me repeatedly that he liked is teacher and Gleek spent a majority of Kindergarten butting heads with her teacher. I think that young children are hardwired to love those who have power over them. It is only later that they are able to look more objectively at the situation and decide whether the emotion was warranted. I suspect that this is a survival trait and explains why even severely abused children love their parents.

I don’t blame Link for disliking his first grade teacher. She repeatedly called him stubborn to his face and had a complete lack of understanding of his personality. We fixed her understanding and she stopped calling him stubborn, but he still remembers how she made him feel. And yet at the time he loved her and was convinced she could do no wrong. In the years since, the positive things the teacher did have faded away, leaving only the sharp memories.

For me it was my second grade teacher. I remember believing that she was beautiful and wonderful. But I also remember sitting in abject tears in front of the whole class, while she stood over me. She insisted that I tell her what I had used to scratch up the surface of my desk, and refused to listen when I tried to explain that I’d recently traded desks with a friend because I was short and the friend was tall. I also remember this teacher accusing me of sending love notes to boys, which showed a complete misunderstanding of who I was at that time. Now I think of her and she isn’t even pretty, let alone beautiful.

I wonder what Gleek will say of her Kindergarten teacher if I ask her again in a few years.

The good news is that this year’s teachers are amazing. I like them both. I think that the kids will walk away from this year loving their teachers and they will continue to think fondly on them even when the years go by. That will be like my first grade teacher, who I loved unquestioningly. I’m still glad every time I think of her even though I don’t remember her very well anymore.

Today was my first day teaching creative writing to a group of 4-6 graders. The classes were smaller than anticipated. I was willing to take as many as 15 per class, but only ended up with 5 in one class and 6 in the other. The smaller class size is better I think because I can give the kids more attention.

The basic lesson plan for the day was simple. I showed them a book full of stories that my kids had written that I’d gotten printed and bound through Lulu.com. I explained that the goal was for each of them to write a story to be put into a book like the one I was showing them. Then I read Aunt Isabel Tells A Good One by Kate Duke which tells about the elements of story while simultaneously telling a story. After a short discussion about the elements of story, we then created a class story. At the end if there was time I’d have the kids brainstorm a little bit for their own stories.

The plan worked exceptionally well for the later class. The six girls were all attentive and participated enthusiastically in the creation of a story. In fact they had so much fun creating a group story, that it will have to be finished next week. I’ll have to adjust next week’s lesson plan to accomodate for that.

The early class was a much wilder ride. That class had one boy who was there because his mother told him that he had to be. It took me about 2 minutes to realize that this kid is extremely smart. He absorbed things like lightning which meant he was simultaneously interested and bored. He kept himself entertained by doing acrobatics with his chair, teasing the girls, and trying to derail my discussions. He was not malicious at all, just bored. It was actually entertaining for me to take his attempted derailments and bring them back onto topic.

I assert that all stories have to have problems in them or there is nothing to read about.
He declared that he’d write a story where nothing happens. Absolutely nothing happens except a guy picking a booger out of his nose.
I point out that picking a booger isn’t nothing.
He says it is nothing. Just a guy sitting in a class picking boogers to impress someone.
I point out that the minute he said “classroom” suddenly we all had a picture in our heads and this is why we need settings. I then start asking who the guy wanted to impress and why. In short order I had the whole the class spinning a setting and character motivations around this booger picking. As we did, it I had ready made examples for why these story elements are important.

After we had fleshed out the booger story, I leaned over conspiratorially to the kids and said that I wasn’t sure their moms would like to read a story about boogers in the book, so we were going to make a different class story. Then away we went.

This group was far more disparate than the later one. We had Derailment Boy, a pair of Giggle Girls, and then two Quiet Girls. It was quite a challenge to make sure that the needs of all those kids were met. Also they were way into pop culture and shooting things. I allowed them to turn Mickey and Minnie Mouse into bubblegum-gun toting villains, but I carefully steered them away from the idea that it would be fun to make Donald into a pimp. Goofy did get to try to pick up Cinderella though.

Teaching the two classes was both exhausting and invigorating. I love stories. I love helping create stories. All of these kids had huge reservoirs of creative energy. Teaching them these elements was like unleashing a flood. It washed over me and I got to direct it some. Not one of these kids had anything akin to writers block. This tells me I’m approaching things right. Because if I just stuck papers in front of them and said “write a story” half of them wouldn’t be able to start. Interestingly, Derailment Boy was the one who arrived with a complete story in hand and who finished a second story before the hour was over.

I’m looking forward to teaching these kids again. And now that I know who they are, I can craft my lessons a little better.

Today’s Sunday School lesson was on Charity. Not the “giving money” kind, but the “pure love of Christ” kind. The message I carried away is that to truly be charitable we need to care about the welfare of others more than our own wants and sometimes even above our own needs. (Not always above our needs because we need to take care of ourselves too.) I sat listening to the lesson and remembering how just prior to the lesson I was accosted in the hall by a fellow mother who had been asked to sit with Gleek’s primary class. Two adults are necessary to make sure that class doesn’t erupt into chaos. But this other mother also had a 2 year old who wouldn’t let her go. She was faced with the prospect of sitting with wiggly six year olds while managing a clingy two year old. I could tell she was hoping I’d volunteer. I didn’t because sitting with Gleek’s class is not high on my list of fun things to do. Besides, I reasoned, I needed the spiritual refreshment of listening to the lessons.

I listened to further discussions on Charity and realized that no matter how annoying it would be for me to sit with the class, it would be harder on this other mother. I was putting my desire to be away from my kids above hers. This other mother is also pregnant and I doubt she gets breaks from her kids during the week the way that I do. Someone needs to be there for the kids. Someone needs to teach them how to behave and help them learn. I realized that all these things were greater than my desire for a peaceful hour or two. I quietly went to relieve that mother.

I sat with Gleek’s class. Predictably, Patches left his class and came to sit with me. Gleek and Patches were both so glad to have me there. And because I was there by choice rather than coercion, I did not mind being there at all. I’m sad to miss my own lessons, but honestly I think I got the lesson I needed for today.