Goodbye Mr. Chips...

The school year has ended.

Anna, our sweet girl, is saying goodbye to Mrs. Harmon.

She is the only teacher Anna has had at Clinton Elementary. We were fortunate that she decided to loop from kindergarten to first grade. Sadly, others won't get the chance to be lovingly taught by her for she is retiring this year. Now that doesn't mean she won't be teaching others. I suspect that will continue. Just not as an elementary teacher, sadly enough.

 A few weeks ago, Miss Crafty, otherwise known as Anna, was writing a card to Mrs. Harmon. When she showed us the completed note she had written our hearts melted reading it. So right then and there we decided this would be Mrs. Harmon's Teacher/Retirement gift. We set about finding some nice scrapbook paper and a suitable frame to commemorate what, I'm sure, many first graders have felt about Mrs. Harmon over the years. Anna just happened to capture it beautifully. 

 
Translation: Dear Miss Harmon, I wish we could stay and learn more with you. It was fun being your student. You're my favorite teacher to me. You are a best teacher a girl could have.



 sniff...sniff...

And to make matters more heart wrenching, our first born is no longer an elementary student.  We couldn't be more proud of Gavin this past school year.  He stepped up his academic game and discovered that studying really pays off.  He had some great teachers this year to help him as well. But he was especially fond of Mrs. Underwood, his science and math teacher.  She too is retiring this year.  When Gavin saw what Anna had done for Mrs. Harmon, he asked us if he could do something like that for Mrs. Underwood.  Gavin is our perfectionist.  I knew that this would be a challenge for him because he struggles his humanness.  Simple mistakes can upset his entire world (and thus ours too) and the aftermath can be exhausting both for him and us.  After three attempts at a thank you note, he was finally satisfied with what he had written. Blood, sweat and tears went into this, dear readers.


So our not so little boy is moving onto middle school.



When we moved to Clinton almost four years ago now, we were trepidatious about the education our kids would recieve in a small rural county in South Carolina.  And although we still struggle with living a world away from family and dear friends, we have come to learn that education comes in many forms and not just from one source.  Both our children have had elementary teachers that gave their all and were genuinely committed to our kids' welfare.  Along with our committment to our children's education, you couldn't ask for a better team.



 

Where Did Spring Go?

We have been busy here on Maple Street.
Shall I catch you up?
How about a snap shot of the last few months?

First off on this snap shot journey is Gavin's first science fair. He received a 2nd Place Ribbon for his project: "Whose Mouth is cleaner: A Dog's or a Human's? Rest easy humans...we win.


Then on March 15th Anna had a fight with the storm door and the storm door won. Twelve stitches and a very embarrassed little girl resulted. We've taken to saying she was riding her unicorn through a glitter storm and that's how she got those wicked cool scars.



The local Army Reserve Unit does a Fall and Spring Fun Run. Gavin has run them every year since being here. Anna started last Fall and questioned, "Why do they call this a fun run if it isn't any fun?" Well, she decided to run this Spring too and came in first in her class...being the only one in her class.

Gavin came in second this time. But the real story is that he gave his second place medal to a classmate of his who ran but came in last. He thought he deserved something too. This classmate gets teased by some of the kids at school for being overweight but he was out there running; giving it his best. At school on Monday morning, Gavin brought in his medal and gave it to his friend at recess.



Gavin played on a Spring soccer league in Greenville this past spring. It was a step up from YMCA soccer. It is a joy seeing him do something he loves. I wish I could have gotten better pictures but then Mama would need a better camera. Hmmm...I see a valid argument for an upgrade here.



I had the delight of being the PTO president for Clinton Elementary this year. During teacher appreciation week, in early May, we did many things for our teachers. One event that was a lot of fun was our "Chalk It Up to Our Teachers". We chalked up the sidewalks around the school with messages of thanks for all they do.



Anna had her Spring recital. Her violin lessons continued and so did her improvement. We hoped to get her in a Suzuki Camp this Summer but it didn't turn out to be possible. We continue to love Miss Nancy.



And, of course, every Spring another group of seniors graduate. It's always fun to attend the end of the graduation ceremony at Presbyterian College. It's not every day you get to hear the bagpipes play.





And finally, on Mother's Day I flew to Birmingham, Alabama to be a part of a team of co-workers who were deployed to support USPS employees impacted by the tornadoes that tore through that state the at end of April. While we were there for one week we worked with over 1,000 postal workers all over the state. One picture ( this one taken in Tuscaloosa) does not even begin to describe the destruction and devastation these people experienced AND are still experiencing to this day. Assistance and help are still needed.



We seemed to move toward Summer vacation at full speed after a very busy Spring. Summer unofficially begins in South Carolina in May. Flip flops and sunscreen are required. And we welcomed it with a surprise trip to the "happiest place on earth". But that is another story.

Gamewright Games Night Giveaway!

Remember last year when we discovered the book, The Scrambled States of America by Laurie Keller? We had just moved here to the little town in the South and living in our little house. Gavin and I were stoked when South Carolina and Indiana were hanging out next to one another! We loved Scrambled States of America so when Gamewright Games offered me the opportunity to review the game I was all over it.

There are reasons why I like games so much. And the Scrambled States of America card game pretty much met my game expectations. I'm sure by now you are all curious what those game expectations are. So allow me to share:

• Games should make everyone laugh and generally have a good time. This game has lots of laughs. The illustrations alone crack us up.
• Games shouldn't take 3 weeks to finish. We like our games over in at least 30 minutes or less. Gives more chances for multiple wins! No, there's absolutely no competition in our household. One round of Scrambled States takes 15 to 20 minutes tops.
• We like our games to either a) stand the test of time (ie "Sorry") or b) be the winner of lots of awards. Check out the awards The Scrambled States of America Card game has won:
  

Oppenheim Toy Portfolio Gold Award

Creative Classroom Magazine Teacher Tested Tools & Toys

Parenting for High Potential Magazine Recommended

National Parenting Center Seal of Approval

National Parenting Publications (NAPPA) Honors

Parents' Choice Approved

Dr. Toy's 10 Best Socially Responsible Products

Dr. Toy's Top 100 Children's Products

• Finally, as a parent, I like my learning covert. Meaning, if my son, the reluctant reader, gripes and complains about reading time but jumps at the chance to play a game with me, who am I to deny him his fun? Why? Because most games require some sort of reading, math, logic etc. This game is as covert as they come! Woo hoo! It's got language arts, social studies, geography, and math...a parent's dream and a kid's nightmare (that is, if they only knew!).

The only complaint I have about the card game is that it doesn't have as much playfulness as the book. I'm not sure how that would, excuse the phrase, play out in the card game, but I did miss the campy banter of the book. However, that is not a deal breaker in my book. Plus the game's cards and maps of the United States (made of some sort of plastic material) that each player gets speaks to the quality of Gamewright's game pieces. All in all a great buy for $14.99.

And now you, dear readers, can have a Gamewright Games Night too! The folks at Gamewright have generously offered to giveaway one of their newest games, Say Cheese, to one lucky reader. Say Cheese is a super fast dice game. Quickly roll your dice to match the characters on the photo booth cards. The game is for ages six and up and there is no reading required so you might even be able to get under the "six year old requirement".



Here's what you need to do to get a chance to win the game:

• Go to Gamewright Games and choose which game sounds like the most fun to you. Come back here and leave a comment telling me the name of the game AND an e-mail to contact you if you win.

For additional chances to win you could do the following and leave a comment for each that you do:

• become a follower (one entry for each) of Betty and/or Later Betty's Bargains
  
• become a fan of Gamewright Games at Facebook
• Follow me, LaterBetty, on twitter and tweet about the giveaway (with a re-tweet, of course, to me)
• Read my review of another Gamewright game at Later Betty's Bargains and enter that giveaway too.

Leave a comment for each entry. Giveaway is open to anyone in North America and closes at midnight est on Tuesday, November 3, 2009. Winner will be chosen from Random.org, will be emailed and has 48 hours to respond or a new winner will be drawn. Thanks for entering! On your mark, get set....go!

Hear ye, hear ye!

Perhaps, 40 years ago this cute little guy, heard words of encouragement and inspiration from someone he looked up to. Today, many of our children are being denied this option. Fear mongers keeping opportunities for inspiration from our children is inexcusable. Shame on you. Today, fourty years later, that cute boy who is now President Obama will be addressing our children at our kitchen table after dinner tonight.

Prepared text of Obama's speech to school students

By The Associated Press (AP) – 19 hours ago

The prepared text of President Barack Obama's back-to-school address scheduled for Tuesdays, as released in advance by the White House:

OBAMA: Hello, everyone — how's everybody doing today? I'm here with students at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia. And we've got students tuning in from all across America, kindergarten through 12th grade. I'm glad you all could join us today.

I know that for many of you, today is the first day of school. And for those of you in kindergarten, or starting middle or high school, it's your first day in a new school, so it's understandable if you're a little nervous. I imagine there are some seniors out there who are feeling pretty good right now, with just one more year to go. And no matter what grade you're in, some of you are probably wishing it were still summer, and you could've stayed in bed just a little longer this morning.

I know that feeling. When I was young, my family lived in Indonesia for a few years, and my mother didn't have the money to send me where all the American kids went to school. So she decided to teach me extra lessons herself, Monday through Friday — at 4:30 in the morning.

Now I wasn't too happy about getting up that early. A lot of times, I'd fall asleep right there at the kitchen table. But whenever I'd complain, my mother would just give me one of those looks and say, "This is no picnic for me either, buster."

So I know some of you are still adjusting to being back at school. But I'm here today because I have something important to discuss with you. I'm here because I want to talk with you about your education and what's expected of all of you in this new school year.

Now I've given a lot of speeches about education. And I've talked a lot about responsibility.

I've talked about your teachers' responsibility for inspiring you, and pushing you to learn.

I've talked about your parents' responsibility for making sure you stay on track, and get your homework done, and don't spend every waking hour in front of the TV or with that Xbox.

I've talked a lot about your government's responsibility for setting high standards, supporting teachers and principals, and turning around schools that aren't working where students aren't getting the opportunities they deserve.

But at the end of the day, we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents, and the best schools in the world and none of it will matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities. Unless you show up to those schools; pay attention to those teachers; listen to your parents, grandparents and other adults; and put in the hard work it takes to succeed.

And that's what I want to focus on today: the responsibility each of you has for your education. I want to start with the responsibility you have to yourself.

Every single one of you has something you're good at. Every single one of you has something to offer. And you have a responsibility to yourself to discover what that is. That's the opportunity an education can provide.

Maybe you could be a good writer — maybe even good enough to write a book or articles in a newspaper — but you might not know it until you write a paper for your English class. Maybe you could be an innovator or an inventor — maybe even good enough to come up with the next iPhone or a new medicine or vaccine — but you might not know it until you do a project for your science class. Maybe you could be a mayor or a senator or a Supreme Court justice, but you might not know that until you join student government or the debate team.

And no matter what you want to do with your life — I guarantee that you'll need an education to do it. You want to be a doctor, or a teacher, or a police officer? You want to be a nurse or an architect, a lawyer or a member of our military? You're going to need a good education for every single one of those careers. You can't drop out of school and just drop into a good job. You've got to work for it and train for it and learn for it.

And this isn't just important for your own life and your own future. What you make of your education will decide nothing less than the future of this country. What you're learning in school today will determine whether we as a nation can meet our greatest challenges in the future.

You'll need the knowledge and problem-solving skills you learn in science and math to cure diseases like cancer and AIDS, and to develop new energy technologies and protect our environment. You'll need the insights and critical thinking skills you gain in history and social studies to fight poverty and homelessness, crime and discrimination, and make our nation more fair and more free. You'll need the creativity and ingenuity you develop in all your classes to build new companies that will create new jobs and boost our economy.

We need every single one of you to develop your talents, skills and intellect so you can help solve our most difficult problems. If you don't do that — if you quit on school — you're not just quitting on yourself, you're quitting on your country.

Now I know it's not always easy to do well in school. I know a lot of you have challenges in your lives right now that can make it hard to focus on your schoolwork.

I get it. I know what that's like. My father left my family when I was two years old, and I was raised by a single mother who struggled at times to pay the bills and wasn't always able to give us things the other kids had. There were times when I missed having a father in my life. There were times when I was lonely and felt like I didn't fit in.

So I wasn't always as focused as I should have been. I did some things I'm not proud of, and got in more trouble than I should have. And my life could have easily taken a turn for the worse.

But I was fortunate. I got a lot of second chances and had the opportunity to go to college, and law school, and follow my dreams. My wife, our first lady Michelle Obama, has a similar story. Neither of her parents had gone to college, and they didn't have much. But they worked hard, and she worked hard, so that she could go to the best schools in this country.

Some of you might not have those advantages. Maybe you don't have adults in your life who give you the support that you need. Maybe someone in your family has lost their job, and there's not enough money to go around. Maybe you live in a neighborhood where you don't feel safe, or have friends who are pressuring you to do things you know aren't right.

But at the end of the day, the circumstances of your life — what you look like, where you come from, how much money you have, what you've got going on at home — that's no excuse for neglecting your homework or having a bad attitude. That's no excuse for talking back to your teacher, or cutting class, or dropping out of school. That's no excuse for not trying.

Where you are right now doesn't have to determine where you'll end up. No one's written your destiny for you. Here in America, you write your own destiny. You make your own future.

That's what young people like you are doing every day, all across America.

Young people like Jazmin Perez, from Roma, Texas. Jazmin didn't speak English when she first started school. Hardly anyone in her hometown went to college, and neither of her parents had gone either. But she worked hard, earned good grades, got a scholarship to Brown University, and is now in graduate school, studying public health, on her way to being Dr. Jazmin Perez.

I'm thinking about Andoni Schultz, from Los Altos, California, who's fought brain cancer since he was three. He's endured all sorts of treatments and surgeries, one of which affected his memory, so it took him much longer — hundreds of extra hours — to do his schoolwork. But he never fell behind, and he's headed to college this fall.

And then there's Shantell Steve, from my hometown of Chicago, Illinois. Even when bouncing from foster home to foster home in the toughest neighborhoods, she managed to get a job at a local health center; start a program to keep young people out of gangs; and she's on track to graduate high school with honors and go on to college.

Jazmin, Andoni and Shantell aren't any different from any of you. They faced challenges in their lives just like you do. But they refused to give up. They chose to take responsibility for their education and set goals for themselves. And I expect all of you to do the same. That's why today, I'm calling on each of you to set your own goals for your education — and to do everything you can to meet them. Your goal can be something as simple as doing all your homework, paying attention in class, or spending time each day reading a book. Maybe you'll decide to get involved in an extracurricular activity, or volunteer in your community. Maybe you'll decide to stand up for kids who are being teased or bullied because of who they are or how they look, because you believe, like I do, that all kids deserve a safe environment to study and learn. Maybe you'll decide to take better care of yourself so you can be more ready to learn. And along those lines, I hope you'll all wash your hands a lot, and stay home from school when you don't feel well, so we can keep people from getting the flu this fall and winter.

Whatever you resolve to do, I want you to commit to it. I want you to really work at it.

I know that sometimes, you get the sense from TV that you can be rich and successful without any hard work — that your ticket to success is through rapping or basketball or being a reality TV star, when chances are, you're not going to be any of those things.

But the truth is, being successful is hard. You won't love every subject you study. You won't click with every teacher. Not every homework assignment will seem completely relevant to your life right this minute. And you won't necessarily succeed at everything the first time you try.

That's OK. Some of the most successful people in the world are the ones who've had the most failures. JK Rowling's first Harry Potter book was rejected twelve times before it was finally published. Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team, and he lost hundreds of games and missed thousands of shots during his career. But he once said, "I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."

These people succeeded because they understand that you can't let your failures define you — you have to let them teach you. You have to let them show you what to do differently next time. If you get in trouble, that doesn't mean you're a troublemaker, it means you need to try harder to behave. If you get a bad grade, that doesn't mean you're stupid, it just means you need to spend more time studying.

No one's born being good at things, you become good at things through hard work. You're not a varsity athlete the first time you play a new sport. You don't hit every note the first time you sing a song. You've got to practice. It's the same with your schoolwork. You might have to do a math problem a few times before you get it right, or read something a few times before you understand it, or do a few drafts of a paper before it's good enough to hand in.

Don't be afraid to ask questions. Don't be afraid to ask for help when you need it. I do that every day. Asking for help isn't a sign of weakness, it's a sign of strength. It shows you have the courage to admit when you don't know something, and to learn something new. So find an adult you trust — a parent, grandparent or teacher; a coach or counselor — and ask them to help you stay on track to meet your goals.

And even when you're struggling, even when you're discouraged, and you feel like other people have given up on you — don't ever give up on yourself. Because when you give up on yourself, you give up on your country.

The story of America isn't about people who quit when things got tough. It's about people who kept going, who tried harder, who loved their country too much to do anything less than their best. It's the story of students who sat where you sit 250 years ago, and went on to wage a revolution and found this nation. Students who sat where you sit 75 years ago who overcame a Depression and won a world war; who fought for civil rights and put a man on the moon. Students who sat where you sit 20 years ago who founded Google, Twitter and Facebook and changed the way we communicate with each other.

So today, I want to ask you, what's your contribution going to be? What problems are you going to solve? What discoveries will you make? What will a president who comes here in twenty or fifty or one hundred years say about what all of you did for this country?

Your families, your teachers, and I are doing everything we can to make sure you have the education you need to answer these questions. I'm working hard to fix up your classrooms and get you the books, equipment and computers you need to learn. But you've got to do your part too. So I expect you to get serious this year. I expect you to put your best effort into everything you do. I expect great things from each of you. So don't let us down — don't let your family or your country or yourself down. Make us all proud. I know you can do it.

Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America.

Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.