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education

The Live-in Boyfriend, The Monkey, and The Books

For much of my life, we had no TV. When we finally got one, it was a tiny black and white set with a wire hanger antenna and broken knobs. Therefore, my main form of entertainment was reading. I loved going to the comic book store with my cousin. We’d spend hours perusing the boxes [...]

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Parent Teacher Conferences

I recently attended parent/teacher conferences at my kids’ school. I went solo while my wife, KayEm, stayed home with the kids (they were off for a school holiday). Of course, she gave me a written list of questions to ask because she doesn’t trust my ability to gather appropriate information and convey it back to [...]

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Fear and Loathing and the First Day of School

“I’m scared!” My daughter Nee shrieked. “I’m scared!” Tears poured down her face as her body trembled. My wife K tried to console her, but nothing worked. It was as if Nee were in a fear-induced trance. “What’s wrong, Nee?” K asked again and again. “Tell, Mommy so I can help you.” After several more [...]

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The Graduate

Where does the time go? It seems that only yesterday my son, N, was a mere infant in my arms. Now he is a preschool graduate. His school even had a graduation ceremony for all the students who were entering kindergarten next year. I find the notion of a preschool graduation to be a bit [...]

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Fatherhood Friday: Second Grade Spelling Challenge

Fatherhood Friday is both a day and a growing community of dads and moms sharing stories, ideas, photos and movies with one topic in mind – fatherhood. In a world that seems happy to deliver a message that dads are incapable buffoons, Dad Blogs is committed to changing that perception. The reality is, as we [...]

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An Artistic Journey

One Sunday afternoon, my daughter, Nee, drew this portrait of me. It’s a striking resemblance isn’t it? We often sit at the kitchen table and draw pictures together. Sometimes we draw each other. Here is my drawing of her. Other times, we draw fantastical scenes with fairies, dinosaurs, puppies and superheroes. If we can think [...]

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Reading is Fundamental

My 1-year old son, X, has a board book that he loves and I’m beginning to hate. It’s called 123s by Sia Aryai. Here is the entire text: 1 – One Slide 2 – Two Wagons 3 – Three Buckets 4 – Four Carriages 5 – Five Dolls 6 – Six Blocks 7 – Seven [...]

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The Music Lesson

A couple of weeks ago, as my daughter was getting ready for school, she mentioned that her class was working on an Asian song and they instructed to use her fingers to slant their eyes at certain times. My wife, K, and I were shocked. When my daughter saw our reaction, she thought that we [...]

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Martin Luther the King

The other day, my daughter, Nee, who is in second grade, was complaining to my wife, K, that her school has shown the same documentary on Martin Luther King, Jr. since she was in kindergarten. Nee attends a private Christian school that has an African-American population of about 2%. We worry about the diversity of [...]

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The Joy of Cooking

One day at work, while I was enjoying my lunch of leftover crawfish etouffee, my co-worker walked by and said, “That smells good. Your wife must be a good cook.” “Actually,” I said, “I cooked this.” Looking at me dumbfounded, he stood silent for about a minute, and then said, “If you’re going to cook, [...]

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Education is the Key to Ending the Cycle of Poverty

I grew up poor. That fact became quite obvious to me when I started attending gifted schools in the wealthier areas of town. While all of the other kids had the latest fashions and the newest Atari video game systems, I had to settle for the clothes and toys that my mother could afford. My [...]

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Parent Teacher Conference

Today my wife, K, and I went to our daughter’s Parent/Teacher conference. I’m embarrassed to say that this was the first conference that I have been to since she was in kindergarten (she’s in second grade now). Nee was ecstatic when she found out that I would be attending the conference. Actually, so was I. [...]

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Easy Reader

After watching the Dark Knight (best Batman movie ever), I felt compelled to Google Morgan Freeman. When the results came up, I was pleasantly surprised to see some videos of his character, “Easy Reader” from “The Electric Company.” For those of you too young to remember “The Electric Company,” it was an educational television show [...]

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The Evidence of Things Not Seen

Yesterday my wife and I took our daughter to her first day of second grade. She had been looking forward to this day for a long time and was very excited. After negotiating the first day of the car pool line, we managed to get into the school’s parking lot. As we searched for a [...]

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Million Father March

Today, I read an article about an organization called The Black Star Project that is sponsoring the Million Father March 2008 on the first day of school in nearly 300 cities. Their goal is to encourage fathers to take an active role in their children’s education. At first I was skeptical about this idea because [...]

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