school

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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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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Mean Girls

My daughter, Nee, is such a sweet little girl: pretty, smart, and well-mannered. She is also painfully shy and finds it difficult to make friends. That’s why it breaks my heart that most of her “friends” have turned out to be mean girls. One day Nee and her friends are all happily playing Ring-Around-The-Rosey. The [...]

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How to Deal With a Bully

My daughter, Nee, was having trouble with a bully at school. Of course, my first reaction was to storm the classroom and teach the little girl some manners. However, that would have been inappropriate for several reasons. I even restrained myself from giving the girl a bump as I passed her during the school’s charity [...]

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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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Happy Birthday to Me

Today is my birthday and since birthdays are a good time to reflect on your life, I thought that I would respond to challenge from my friend, Teendoc, who blogs at Welcome to the Dollhouse. Her challenge was to describe my entire life in a single paragraph of 100 words. No more than 100 and [...]

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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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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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