NaNoWriMo Day 13

---

I am a little behind but think I can catch up tomorrow.

If you happen to live in San Diego and are participating in the NaNoWriMo Madness, here are some places to meet up with fellow writers and get some support and have fun. None of these work for me this week - but maybe next week I will go. If I do, I post pictures here :)

I am also tagging the post as #sandiego - just because I live here. But there is another reason. @ackza started the Sand token that is San Diego specific and I think it would be fun to somehow use it as an incentive for local writing get-togethers. Rewards are always nice!

[Wrimo-run] Living Room Write-In
Saturday, Nov 16, 2019, at 8:00 am

[Wrimo-run] Darkstar (UCSD) Write-In
Saturday, Nov 16, 2019, at 1:00 pm

[ML-run, San Diego x North County] Meet in the Middle
Saturday, Nov 16, 2019, at 3:00 pm

[ML-run, Virtual] Discord Write-In
Monday, Nov 18, 2019, at 7:00 pm on the regional Discord Virtual Write-Ins channel.

I didn't get any more updates - but am pretty sure those are weekly events.

NaNoWriters on Steem
Check out what we are up to at the Freewrite House. This post will be of particular interest to you.

Disclaimer

I am planning to write 50,000 + words this month in the spirit of NaNoWriMo - National Novel Writing Month. But I am going to ignore the Novel part and write whatever I want to. I am doing a complete stream of consciousness style of writing. It might become a Novel, it might look more like morning pages - basically, word vomit onto the page to empty the brain. Maybe, I get a bunch of good blog posts out of it. I don't know. Feel free to read it - or not. Quality is not ensured! 😂

Day 13

And there. I did it. I didn’t write a whole day!! Not a good idea if you need have a goal of 50,000 words in a month.
For many writers, that is nothing. Every day, their output is many thousands of words and every one is profound and full of insight or though they think. What is undoubtable true is that they can type way faster than me.
I am happy that I can type with 10 fingers at all. I only learned as an adult less then 30 years ago. I know, for some of you that is a lifetime, for me, not even half of one. Perceptions, perceptions, perceptions.
I still remember my journey to becoming a 10 finger typist.
And I remember the frustration from earlier attempts to try to learn this oh so valuable skill.
Just to paint the picture for you. When I started school, we learned how to write on tablets.
Where did your mind just go? To a sleek tablet made by apple? Or any of the other kinds kids seem to be exposed to as early as kindergarten.
Did I guess right?
If that is where your mind went, you guessed wrong.
The tablet I am talking about was a slate tablet in a wood frame, complete with a little sponge attached with a string. We had chalk in a few colors and that is how we learned to write. Practice a letter - erase. Practice again. Erase. Mistakes were of no permanence. Erase, erase, erase.
The sign that you were a good student was that at the end of the day, you cleaned your tablet very well - no signs of chalk smear on them at all.
Into the leather ranzen the tablet went to take it home. School in first grade was from 9 to 11, maybe 12. That just seems like a much more reasonable time for little kids to be in school. But of course, school now is a babysitting institution - and that is a rant for another day. Let me add this to the list. Actually, I might get to that today since school is one of the reasons that I didn’t write at all yesterday.
In high school, I took a typing class - right after I gave up on shorthand. The later is to this day a mystery to me and hat off to all that have mastered that particular skill.
I thought typing class might be easy for me since I had already taken piano lessons for several years at this point. You know, the whole thing about making your fingers move independently of each other. Typing should be a breeze.
It was not.
Of course, the typewriters we had were of the old kind. Round keys made the letters jump onto the page. You had to hit hard, but not too hard that they paper did not get destroyed in the effort. The idea was to have the same kind of impact with each finger to produce a nice evenly typed letter. I not only sucked at that but also remembering the placement of the keys.
Typing was not that important since we submitted all of our papers written by hand. Good penmanship was part of the grade and I had a nice and legible way of writing. Not anymore. We shall leave it at that.
Many, many years later, the computer had arrived in many homes, including ours. We had an old, hand me down model and no internet yet. We were homeschooling and tried to have as much educational material around as possible. My friend had gotten a typing program a designed for young children and all of her four kids had learned to type with it. The days of the floppy disk. Another one of the things of the past that have disappeared. That one was a vanishing for the better - the slate tablet not so much. Think of the many trees that would have been saved if the kids learned writing without so much paper…
I was sick with a bad cold or something and had very little energy but for some reason, I decided to tackle the typing program, probably to be the good example to my kids.
The daily exercises were simple and a little ghost popped up when you made a mistake but also to give encouragement. There was something about that little ghost that was too cute and made it fun to keep on going and when I was feeling better, I also had become a proficient 10 finger keyboard person - we don’t call that typist anymore, or do we?
School keeps coming up in my thoughts. The waste, the tragedy of exposing little kids to tablets of the electronic kind at school, the tragedy of school itself.
When I was little, I loved school. But somewhen along the live, that shifted and I started hating school. I still haven’t figured out exactly when and where it happened. Probably, it was a slow and creeping process. For me, it was a huge incentive to homeschool my children.
All I know is that somewhen during my school years, I was starting to feel very bad about myself and my abilities. I went from a kid excited to get up and do go to school, to a kid that hated going there so much that in later years, I developed physical symptoms of being unwell as soon as I entered the building.
Now, it is happening to one of my little dudes. The last years, two of my dudes went to a charter school that was focused on diversity, on helping each child to shive where they were at in their development, practicing kindness, and fostering creativity.
In recent years, Charter schools have became a target for many reasons. Regular schools don’t like them because every kid they lose to a charter school means less funding for their school. Some people believe that not every kid can go to a charter school and that it is not fair.
I guess in their thinking it is better that everyone gets a mediocre to bad education, than some have the chance to get a better one.
In California, the hate towards Charter schools has come to a point that strict performance laws have been put in place. The idea of crazy ass testing came about already with the no child left behind movement that turned out to be a whole lot of BS. Funding was tied to test scores, tests had to be done frequently, and to get the money, teachers had to teach towards the test and drill test taking instead of teaching to support learning.
As with so many things - follow the money. And always keep in mind that people that have money are sending their kids to private schools that are free of all the test and perform requirements public schools are subjected to.
The charter school my dudes were going to was very concerned about learning and to give equal opportunities to all. They allowed a bunch of kids to enroll in the school who were performing way below their grade level - one year before their review.
All kids that had attended the school from the beginning of their school career tested way above grade level. All the kids that had joined and were performing way below grade level had made great improvements during their time at the school, but the overall results still but them below the testing requirements.
Beside the fact that all kids had improved greatly, the school authorities in our Capitol decided to close the school.
It didn’t matter that many parents wrote letters to their elected officials.
It didn’t matter that many of the parents wrote testimonials to the department of education.
It didn’t matter that many parents traveled to Sacramento to defend their school.
It didn’t matter that parents and children alike pleaded for their school to be allowed to go on.
It didn’t matter that the teachers in the school pleaded with the board that made the decision.
It didn’t matter that the children cried along with their parents when they heard that their school was being closed.
It mattered that the public schools in the surrounding areas didn’t like that the parents and children wanted to go to that particular school. Instead of trying to improve their own school to prevent the exodus of students, they instead lobbied hard to get that rival school closed.
Hardly any of the children who had to leave the charter school went back to their local school, their parents searched high and low for a good environment for their kids.
My dudes were accepted into another charter school with a very good reputation. It is a sacrifice for the parents because the drive is even longer, but they gladly agreed because the new school has a very good reputation.
Things have been working out great for dude one. He loves it and is very happy to go to school every day.
Dude two, his experience is completely different.
His classroom is filled with children who have severe behavior problems. Some are outright violent and others are verbal bullies. The teacher is often absent due to health problems. In the best of classrooms, a substitute teacher can signal for the kids to act a bit wilder than normal, but this classroom is chaos.
Things have gotten to a place where dude two is afraid to go to school. He does not feel save. What is a parent to do? Pull him out of school? But where to go and there are the logistics of having two children involved that need to be able to get to school on time.
For now, the mom is sitting in the classroom to ensure that he feels save. On his turn, he is promising not to check out and be absent in his mind, but to participate. Not a long term solution.
That little boy has changed from the dude everyone in the school knew and liked, to the kid the principal thinks has a problem making friends. While we are far from having found a solution to the problem, at least, there are a lot of adults that care.
One of the tormenters of the dude hates girls, it seems. Unsolicited, the dude told his mom that the kid hates girls because he has an older cousin who tells him that he is stupid all the time and grabs him by the balls and squeezes and pulls really hard. Of course, we don’t know if that is true or not - the thing about that kids certainly can make up stories. It just seems a weird story to make up and certainly would explain the tormenters behavior a bit.
While I am sure that bullies have always been around, it seems that it is a big problem today. Maybe, we recognize it now and speak about it, while before, we silenced it out of existence like we have done with so many problems, personal and as a society.

Join us for the daily 5 - Minute Freewrite. Check my profile for a new prompt every day.

I am adding the CC tag to all prompt posts and to most of my other posts as well. You can earn Comment Coins simply by leaving a good comment. No spam please!!!

All images are my own unless otherwise cited.
Graphics made on Canva.

_{Animation By @zord189}

#SoCalSteemit is building and supporting the Steemit community of Southern California. If you are from SoCal and are into creating quality content here on Steemit, we'd love for you to follow us @SoCalSteemit and join our group on Discord!

Join @Actifit, become healthier by being active and earn as you walk. My referral link

Listen to the Sustainable Living Podcast here!

Join us at the Freewrite House for fun and games!!! Weekly drawing for SBI memberships and so much more!!

And get your Freewrite House Swag here