QuestionAbel Parenting

For the record, I have reapplied and been reaccepted to WGU and I forgot to mention it.  My main problem is that prior to to applying I was told I would still get financial aid.  Now I am being told something different.

As far as alternative certification, this is looking like my only option until I move to Michigan, but I am contacting a few schools there and researching their programs to see what else could be done.  GVSU is looking like a solid bet.

Also, I quit working at Wal-Mart – gave them my two weeks last night.  I honestly don’t know if I’m even going to bother with that, though.  There’s a big part of me that will be disappointed in me if I don’t go in, but another big part that just hates being away from the house at night.  And I think that’s going to win.

Well, school is driving me crazy.  A synopsis if you have missed it:

In 2005 I attended Western Governors University for about 5 weeks before I realized I was moving home to Michigan.  At the time I started, I was in Alaska in the middle of nowhere and little else to do besides surf the Internet.  In Michigan, I would be at camp which had sketchy dial-up at the time.  My only options were to drop out or stay in and not have time to do my classes.  So out I went!

Fast forward to now and I’m ready to get back into school.  I tried OSU.  They outlined a course of study that could have taken me – wait for it – four years.  Yeah.  I have a BS already, but what’s four more years.  That idea was out.  It was possible to do it in a shorter amount of time, but that was only if the planets were aligned correctly.  Also, the people I talked to kept sending me to other people in a grand circle of people until the last person in the chain recommended I talk to the first person I had talked to – what?  And all of them treated me like a crazy person.  Why would I want to go back to school?  Was I sure I wanted – gasp – elementary school?

Well, enough of that.  Time to pursue other options.  I started researching my online options.  There was WGU – I already had experience – and a handful of other contenders.  Pulling out in front seemed to be the University of Phoenix.  The problem:  You have to be employed to attend.  Since I’m not planning on working at WM much longer, that poses a problem.  Also, after looking online at previous students, I got sinking feelings about the coursework.

That left WGU.  Surely a school for whom I acrued Zero Credits wouldn’t be to hard to get back into.  Except it was.  Despite losing my transcripts of previous coursework, I still had to re-apply.  A move which for some reason has made me ineligible for Financial Aid first term.  I am expected to pay it all out of pocket.  I don’t know anyone who carries around a spare few grand for college, do you?

Well, I can get a loan through the credit union, but it’s of a nature that I will have to start paying it back right away – about ninety dollars a month.  That’s not too bad, but I still can’t afford that.  So, basically, I am against a rock and a hard place.

So, that’s the standing.  My next move is that I’m in contact with Michigan schools to look into enrolling upon arrival back in America (Michigan).

It’s very frustrating.  I wish I could just take a test and apply for demo teaching on my own.  I’ve met teachers with master’s degrees I’m pretty sure I could defeat in a one-on-one teaching competition.  Such things do not exist.

Education programs confuse me.  There’s talk of a shortage of teachers (although I also talk to teachers all the time who cannot find jobs) yet they make the getting of certification so very hard.  They really do.

I can’t imagine my classes will be anywhere near the difficulty of just getting into school again, though.  There is no possible way.

So, if anyone has any good ideas, I’m open.  Ready to punch things, too.

Oh man, it looks like my days stocking shelves will soon be over.  Tragedy strikes the OK Abels every time I am forced to leave the house and stay all night at Wal-Mart.  Sam cannot sleep, the dogs fight, the baby weeps every hour.  If I am home, all is right with the world.  So we will be looking into our options – but luck is on my side and I think the ol’ two weeks notice will be put in very soon.

My free time will be spent doing my favorite thing – stay at home dad.  And, hopefully, working on school.  All that is keeping me from my schooling is money right now, money that my mother will be helping me to secure.  So that’s good.  Other things on my plate:  gardening, cleaning, writing, and geocaching.

It has been a while since I have been able to geocache, but rest assured, that will be changing.  I am working on placing one here in town to drive the folks of Stillwater mad.

I am hoping to get the garden going, although I have to figure out a cheap fencing solution to keep the puppy out.  Did I mention that?  We got a puppy.

Things are looking up.  I will hopefully post more on my blog here when I am done working, too.  Since it kind of messes up my brain.  Working at WM actually makes me less coherent.  Can you believe such a thing is possible?

Step into the room and sit

and listen to me tell you

about the far off places

you will never get to go.

They bear such fruit you’ll never see

I hold one in my hands.

Red striped with red stripes

white pith inside

and juicy pops of juice.

Eat one and stay here

forever in my room.

That’s all I got for right now.

I was watching clips from The Today Show today as they had an interview with Neil Gaiman, author extraordinaire.  Several of the clips caught my attention so I watched them.  There was an interesting bit on the Blue Man Group starting a school and a rather depressing segment on young folks texting naked pictures of themselves to each other.

And there was a piece on the new “Mr. Moms.”

I feel i should have mentioned above that this is a rant.  If you don’t want to read my vitriole, I suggest you click this link instead.

The Gist:  This piece is about several displaced workers who are choosing to stay home with the kids instead of going back to work.  Mainly due to their spouse finding work instead of themself.  The hook?  These stay-at-homes are dudes.

Point One:  “Mr. Mom” is an idiotic term.  I fail to see what is wrong with “Dad,” “Pop,” “Father,” or the multitude of other terms one could use.  There is an implication that only Mom does childcare.  Excuse me?  I work my ass off around the house – something my wife would freely admit.  We both put in a fair share of work here, which is what you are supposed to do if you are a family.  If the man comes home, puts on his smoking jacket, and retires to the den for newspaper reading and brandy, what you have is a dictatorship.

Point Two:  There was no mention whatsoever about the general lack of dad-interaction most kids get.  It would have been a far less sexist and more inspiring way to do the piece.  Children need their dads as much as their moms, and to make the idea of a stay at home dad seem bizarre will no doubt cause the more stupid men in the world to give pause at the idea of being loving to their children.  Just Google “child time with father.” (It’s equally important time is spent with mother, its just that this is rarely an issue.)

Point Three:  Raising a kids is a job.  It is the most important job in the world.  That is a fact.  If you dispute it, you are stupid.  “But, Matthew, what about doctors?”  Who drives the kid to the doctor?  Who makes sure the kid stays well at home?  Who looks after that child’s psycological health?  “But Matthew, what about teachers?”  Who works with those teachers?  Who gives those teachers the power they need to be successful?  Parents.

Parenting is a job, and it is important.  If you aren’t going to participate fully in the raising of your kids, you shouldn’t have them, period.  End of story.  Either start putting the time in with them, or get fixed.  You may work 12 hour days, but you better be putting in face time with our future investments.  Otherwise, you should have gotten a hamster.  Children aren’t pets or social status symbols.  They are the people who will be in charge of the planet in a very short amount of time.

Point Four:  The piece was overtly sexist and shocking to me.  I cannot believe this many people still have such concrete senses of gender roles in a family relationship.  To think that the mom is solely responsible for the care and raising of the kids is ignorant.  Mom and Dad are a team.  They should function as a team.  Sam and I are a pretty good team, I think.  We have time issues from our school and work, but we generally do a good job of sharing responsibility.  I have spent many a wee hour with a crying babe so she can get the sleep she needs for school and she has given me relief many an early morn.

In the interest of fairness, Dale Atkins does touch on the need for family teamwork, and the piece does discuss how it is difficult to not be able to choose this path.

I take issue with that as that they seem to defend men defining themselves by their jobs.  Men should define themselves by who they are.  If they are a father, they need to be a father first.  They should be looking at the job loss as an opportunity to spend more time with their child.

I understand the struggle of not choosing your path, but you made a poor choice in the first place if you put your job before your kids.  To hear Atkins talk about how moms will have to change their parenting style because they don’t have full say anymore really pisses me off.  Is this really the world I live in?  1950?

I’m pretty disgusted.

It has been snowy down here the past two days and I feel a little stir crazy.  I attempted to walk the Grendel yesterday but was thwarted by icy roads.  I struggled back up the (short) driveway and returned home after no time had passed.  Today, there is snow on the ice which aids traction so I will attempt another venture out.  Being inside is kryptonic to me.

The babe has settled down a bit.  We had begun, on suggestion from others, to give him a bit of rice cereal prior to bedtime.  We did for two days and he got very fussy.  Now that most of it seems to be out of his system, he has calmed down considerably.  So we have that going for us.

Double posts today.  I thought about post-dating this one, but it isn’t really very “filling” so I felt I’d just post it today.  I have also updated Attack of the Space Pirates.

Lately (as I have mentioned) Sam and I have been watching Doctor Who.  The new ones, starting in 2005.  It has been in the back of my mind since the reboot began that it would be a show I would enjoy.  Living in areas that are cable-less prevented me from doing such and it has been a long while since I have thought on it.  A couple friend mentioned that we would enjoy it a few weeks back and so we DVRed it a few weeks back and we really do enjoy it.

The sad business is that it is close to the end of the season on both Sci-Fi and BBC America.  Luckily, our friends own the DVDs so we can get up to speed.  It also helps that Sci-Fi seems to run marathons on the weekends often.  I wish we could count on the three channels that run it (BBCAM, SciFi, and PBS) to be showing different seasons, but that luck is not there.  DVDs will do us.

We finished the first season the other night which stars Christopher Eccleston as The Doctor.  I enjoyed his turn at the part quite a bit, but I like David Tennant a bit more.  Part of the reason is that the newer episodes I have seen are better written – my opinion, yes, but they are.  This is probably due to knowledge of longevity.  When the first season started, I don’t believe they knew they would go past it.  Popularity is a fickle thing.  However, they did set themselves up quite well to do more seasons and I don’t know if my theory really holds true.

Still, Doctor Who!  It is not hard to believe that I haven’t gotten involved as there was nowhere for me to view the old programs while I was growing up.  I will be watching some of the old shows with friends, just to see what they are like, so that will be very interesting.  I greatly enjoy the reboot.  I like that they’ve basically made it continuous with the old show, at least in theory, so they can reference what they wish.

The writing is quite good and it is a serious show while not taking itself too seriously.  The writers are fine with waving away continuity errors with a little “It’s a show about time travel” or giving the Doctor’s sonic screwdriver an ability we didn’t previously know about.  I understand in past series it was a bit of a deus ex machina, but whatever.  It’s playful.

They’ve certainly woven an excellent story throughout this show’s seasons.  With David Tennant ending his time and the eleventh doctor coming up, I wonder how things will go.  I understand they are changing writers or producers or something as well, so it really is a crapshoot.

Something else that also interests me is that The Doctor will soon be on his eleventh generation.  It has been explained in previous episodes that he only gets 12, so in a few years perhaps we will see the end of this Doctor.  How will that happen, I wonder?  It would be interesting if they ended the series and did a full reboot, probably with a lady doctor this time to shake things up a bit.  Who knows?

What I find interesting as well is how many people haven’t seen the show, but how ingrained it really is in everything.  If you do a Google search for “first doctor” through “tenth Doctor” you get Doctor Who wikipedia entries.  I suppose that’s the only time you would use those phrases, but it’s still quite interesting.

Did you know that?  I did.  It is a pretty fair Monday since I didn’t have to work last night.  Which was great, only I do have to work on Wednesday.  And Thursday.  On through Saturday, which isn’t too bad but I still will take the time to complain.  Today has brought sorrow, though.  My baking stone, barely six months old, has cracked in twain.  I don’t know how such an event transpired, but I blame gnomes.  That’s what I do in these situations.

But, here is an interesting bit of news!  Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book has won the Newberry Medal.  I read it before all the hype that will soon descend upon it.  I also read Coraline before they decided to make it into a movie.

Zachary is still in that “I will cry until you hold me” stage, which is very annoying if you want to do anything.  Anything at all.  The only way to really get him quiet is to wrap him up tightly in blankets, which only works part of the time.  I have figured out a few positions that work well to hold him as I type, but they are mostly uncomfortable eventually.  Still, it is only a matter of time before he is too old for holding, so I enjoy it as I can.

And if you haven’t seen it, I leave you with this.

I was listening to NPR the other day and they were talking about schools.  I beleive it was the new Secretary of Education talking about education and No Child Left Behind.  He was saying the good thing about NCLB was that it brought to the fore-front the disparity in education these days.  One point he made was how silly it is to compare a 4th grade class with the last year’s 4th grade class.  Instead, we should keep with the same class and measure how the 5th graders are doing compared with how well they did as 4th graders.

Well, it got me thinking.  Why do we do things the way we do?  I’m sure there are schools that do this, but perhaps teachers should stick with the same class for more than one year.  Perhaps have the same teacher for K-1, 2-3, and 4-5 or even k-2, 3-5.  Wouldn’t that allow teachers to better guage student success and teach better to them?  All you would need to do is rotate teachers through grades – you wouldn’t need to switch classrooms or anything.  To offset the lack of scenery change, you would have to get the kids outside more often.

I would think this would work well.  Of course, in my dream outdoor school, there wouldn’t be traditional grades.  I don’t think so anyway.

I, by the way, am finally enrolled in school to start working toward my teaching certification.  Hooray!

Well, I just re-found my old blog.  It is only five posts long and contains part of my Space Pirates epic as well as a poem.  At the time my nom de plume was Edward Grimm.  There is already an Edward Grimm in the writing world, so I will just use my own name.  Even though some of my writing isn’t conducive to educational aspirations or camp work.  I guess I’ll just lie.

Anyway, I thought I would post the poem.  I wrote it on a whim, and it is “okay.”  I think it could be pretty good, actually, if I bothered with some love and care for it.

Power Outage

What can we do when the power is gone?
The lights are all out and the TV’s not on.
I guess we’ll have to venture outside!
The last guy who did that? I hear that he died!

What shall we do outside the back door?
There’s a strange smell I smell I’ve not smelled before.
Is it carpet? Or curtains? Coffee or Cooking?
I have no idea, so we’ll have to keep looking.

There’s a rope on a branch over in those trees;
We’ll run and we’ll swing if we grab hard with our knees!
I can touch the sky if I just reach hard enough
I’ll grab a piece of that cloud and hold onto the fluff.

We’ll run around out here, we’ll jump over creeks.
That’s practice; we’ll tackle lakes in two weeks.
I’ll pick up a turtle; you can grab the crayfish.
Yuck; I found an old wishbone. Let’s make a wish!

I wish for the day to go on without end.
I’ll outrun the darkness as it comes round the bend.
But wait! It settles slowly I can still see my hand.
I can still see some trees in a faraway land.

Mom’s face is near here and her cheeks are bright red.
She wants us indoors to get ready for bed.
Wash the grass from our hands and the dirt from our faces
And put on our pajamas and get into our places.

We’ll turn off the light – the power’s back on?
That’s weird, just how long were we gone?
There were shows to be watched! How could we miss them?
We’ll catch them tomorrow, we have to! We got to!

We’ll see a dozen cartoons and game shows!
I can’t believe we wasted time to go out and play!

But…

We’ll have to take time off to practice our jumping.
We don’t want to lose all our skill for these things.
There’s a lake to be jumped! And a frog to be caught!
And we need to make use of the kites that we bought!

I guess time should be taken to swing on the rope.
And we can’t forget there’s a tree to climb up!
So much work to be done, well we’ll not whine a peep.
We’ll postpone TV until right before…we…