6/6 column: School

In third grade, Miss Hinschberger taught me to spell her name (a formidable task for any eight-year-old), by hanging a wall-sized banner behind her desk. It read, “Some burgers are hamburgers, some burgers are cheeseburgers, but the best burger is a Hinschberger.” She said we couldn’t graduate to fourth grade until we memorized it. Obviously, it stuck.

In fourth grade, Mrs. Bergland went beyond the three R’s to teach me how to use a Braille typewriter, spin raw wool, and filter honey. In fifth grade, Mrs. McKeever let us listen to the “Grease” soundtrack during art.

When I hit junior high, Mr. Dunning scared the bejezus out of me — and in the process, managed to get this 13-year-old to memorize the name of every country and major river on earth. And in high school, Mr. Dyrud’s enthusiasm for Wuthering Heights was so infectious that it played a defining role in my decision to major in English.

It’s been three decades since Miss Cerny sent me to the thinking corner for hitting Wendy Grand on the head with a rolled-up painting, yet those early school years remain some of the best remembered and most cherished of my life.

Tomorrow, Christian, my seven-year-old, officially completes first grade. I often wonder what memories he’ll take with him. Will it be the field trip to St. Marys helicopter pad? The St. Patrick’s Day leprechaun who snuck into his classroom to leave footprints on the ceiling? The mini-eraser rewards Mrs. Hansen doled out for good behavior?

The truth is, Christian probably won’t appreciate the real power of what he’s learned this year until he’s an adult.

Mrs. Hansen — a remarkable teacher Christian has been blessed to have two years running — has helped create a student who comes home from school excited about filling out his reading calendar. Who thinks math problems are fun. Who wants to learn all his spelling words by the pre-test on Wednesday. She has laid the foundation for students who not only want to make their teachers and parents proud — but who want to make themselves proud, too.

What an incredible gift.

I am often blown away by the quality of education our children receive in Rochester — and the team that pulls together to make it happen. At a school program at Churchill Elementary last week, I watched a principal warmly embracing her charges. A music teacher enthusiastically leading a gymnasium full of bright-eyed children in a school cheer. A kindergarten teacher pulling a nervous child onto her lap for comfort.

Our educators are incredible. And while Christian knows this, he doesn’t yet understand all the reasons why. He doesn’t know that they come to school early and leave late. That they manage overbearing parents and after-hours phone calls. That they nurture kids who need nurturing and nurse broken hearts over kids who are heartbreaking. That in addition to math and reading and science, they teach empathy and responsibility and perseverance. That they are paid far too little, yet spend their own money on school supplies.

But I know. And I couldn’t be more grateful for the education my son is getting in the Rochester Public Schools… even if the highlight of Christian’s first-grade year is, as he claims, playing a game called “Sparkle.”

5/30 column: Fan Night!

There is a war waging at my house. It’s the fan war.

My husband cannot sleep without the constant air stream — and incessant buzz — of a fan blowing in his face.
Me? Not so much. In fact, I loathe it.

We’ve been married for 11 years, so you’d think we could’ve come to a compromise on this issue. But no. The fan has been our great divider since Day 1.

A tall, black oscillating fan on a singular leg was one of the only luxury items we bought for our first apartment in the Twin Cities — during the potato-and-rice years. Too broke to run the air conditioner that came standard in our living room window, we ran the fan to extinguish the heat from our third-floor apartment.

Come bedtime, we had a deal. He’d get one night with the fan. I’d get the next night without it. Sounds reasonable, right?
But before long — under the pretext of the summer’s sweltering heat wave — the fan was running every night.
It was, I was sure, a metaphor for our new marriage.

“Do you not love me?” I’d holler into the gust, spitting renegade strands of windblown hair from my mouth. “Do you not care that I hate this? Do I mean so little to you?”

After a brief truce, the fan snuck its way back into our bedroom — this time in the form of a personal fan clamped to Jay’s nightstand.

But even this compromise was not good enough for me. To this day, it sparks conversations that leave me feeling like a crazed, albeit validated, whiner.

Me: “How can you sleep with that constant whirring in your ear?”

Him: “I like the background noise.”

Me: “It’ll keep the kids awake.”

Him: “They’ve been sleeping for hours.”

Me: “It blows my in my face all night.”

Him: “Turn the other way.”

Me: “You don’t love me.”

If I have to be honest, I’ll admit to you — but never, ever to my husband — that I’m getting used to the fan. I don’t even notice it every night anymore. I don’t fall asleep silently cursing the man sleeping next to me, certain our relationship is doomed — wondering how I could possibly have married someone so wrong for me. So totally incompatible.

It’s really become a matter of pride now. A matter of standing up for what I believe in. For, I’ll admit it, getting my own way. At our rustic, air conditioning-less cabin — where the box fans left by the previous owners have holes in the framework large enough to stick a fist in — Jay pulls out the mother of all defenses. “Keeps the mosquitoes away,” he says, nodding with authority.

And while I have more leverage with these fans (they’re the kind you warn your kids about — telling them that if they come within four feet, they’ll spend the rest of their childhoods putting Legos together with their toes), I have to admit he’s got a point.

And so, at the cabin, we have found some middle ground. On “fan night,” Jay sleeps on the couch with the gusting air stream pointed directly at his face — waking blissfully in the morning with a Don King ‘do. I sleep in the bed with all the stagnant air I want.

Happy as can be.