your placement is not the reward for good work

By Joyce Szuflita
It is hard to really embrace this thought, and even harder to convince your child about it, but there is no other path.
Hard work should ‘pay off’, but there are plenty of times when it doesn’t. There are lots of people who don’t deserve things that get them. Life isn’t fair. If you are expecting a pat on the head and a key to the city for going the extra mile, you will often be disappointed.

The only true thing is that hard work- the satisfaction, knowledge and character that comes from it, is its own reward. The prize is the knowledge that you accomplished something meaningful, that is actively making you a more informed, more skilled, better person. It is almost impossible not to wish for the glittering prize (the admiration, the acknowledgement, the envy), but in the end, it often disappoints.

If you hold out the carrot of a plum placement as reward for a job well done, there is plenty of reason for kids to stop trying at the first disappointment.

Good luck.

By Joyce Szuflita
Well, high school placement is likely to be a couple weeks late. Without confirmation, it seems like notices are probably going out on or around March 18. If you applied through MY SCHOOLS, you will likely be notified through MY SCHOOLS.

Here is the thing. Life is uncertain. You can prepare and calculate and hope. It is hard not to fall in love with one place or another, but you can’t engineer your placement. Your mission is to prepare your child (and yourself, cause you have worked hard for this!) There is no doubt that you will be disappointed for any number of reasons, possibly just because there has been so much effort and angst.

This is what I hope students will consider when they get their placement:

This school is all potential.
It will be what I make of it.
I don’t know those kids, but my new best friend for life is somewhere in that crowd.
My first love is probably in there too.
There will be a teacher that I will never forget in that building.
There will be some uncontrollable laughter.
There will be something that seemed nearly impossible that I will conquer.
I will likely be sorry to leave at the end of it all.

You can focus on what you desire, but you don’t always get it, and you might even be sorry if you did, because you would have missed the wonderful thing that appeared when you least expected it. Go out and find it.

a couple things that are still relevant

By Joyce Szuflita
I just scrolled down to the bottom of this page and found my own blog archive!!
I started blogging around this time, 8 years ago and boy did (do) I need an editor! The nice thing about blogging is that you can write whatever the hell you damn well please. I was tickled by a couple of pieces (cause I think that I am kinda funny, much to my family's chagrin) and I was interested in my own perspective as a parent of 14 year olds, all those many years ago. Here are three of my favorites, that are still relevant and mildly amusing (even my husband said so!). Don't read the other first blogs. They are awful.
A wistful ode to 'rubber pellet season'
a sweet reminiscence (and creepy reference to cancerous recycled tires)

New Urban Team Sport (NUTS)
how I did the parent teacher conference

Sing is sung
a New York high school institution and my review of the 2008 season. If you want to understand the difference between Murrow and Stuy as institutions - it is all here.

st. crispin's day

By Joyce Szuflita
Even though St. Crispin's Day isn't until Oct., when I think about the parents and students preparing to enter new kindergartens, middle schools or high schools in the fall...

I can't help but hear Shakespeare's rousing words from Henry V.

if you start to get cold feet over the summer, thinking about the possible challenges ahead, replace "going to battle against a huge French army" with "entering a kindergarten class in a brand new school" and imagine your Principal giving this, the granddaddy of all motivational speeches.

we happy few,

we band of brothers...

teachers salaries: public vs private

By Joyce Szuflita
There was an interesting quiry on Park Slope Parents this month about teacher's salaries. It is a bit of an apples and oranges conversation. I have some links if you want to do more reading. It appears that public school teachers win out pretty clearly on salaries and benefits, but private school teachers may have some quality of life benefits (smaller class size and no state testing requirements). Both jobs are very challenging (no one has it easy!).

Here are some links, but you need to filter out the politics (right wing, anti union; left wing, pro union, etc.)

National Center for Education Statistics

ehow:money

edudemic

NY Times: Opinion

NYC DoE

salary.com

wordsworth for graduation

This goes out to all parents of prekindergarteners, 5th graders, 8th graders and high school seniors:

--That time is past,
And all its aching joys are now no more,
And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this
Faint I, nor mourn no murmur; other gifts
Have followed, for such loss, I would believe,
Abundant recompence.

"Lines Written a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey" by William Wordsworth