POSN

I've rediscovered Your Story Hour CDs with my kids. I listened to some of these very same stories on the radio or LP back in the day. So this nostalgic mother gets a chance to relive some fond memories and make new ones with my littles.

Anyway, we listened to humorous tale of Thomas Edison's childhood the other day. Three cheers for his mama and knowing her son well enough to support him and his education at home when the teachers labeled him a dunce. But that's another story.

What I wanted to share today was a funny from my oldest. Lil Tom, annoyed with his sister's nosy friend, marked his stuff POISON to keep her away from his experiments. No poison there, but the warning worked. Our family enjoyed a chuckle over the incident, as well as Tom burning down his father's barn and later being asked to tutor the teacher who thought him dumb. And that was that.

Until the next morning I opened my refridgerator to see POSN written on my husband's Dr. Pepper. Owen had a lot of fun with a Sharpie and marked several "offending" items, including last night's leftovers.

This is why I homeschool

Check out this article in Newsweek about struggling school-age boys. Interesting stuff about their emotional and behaviorial issues. Really, go click on the link. It's worth it.

First day of school

Well, we did it. We not only survived, but thrived, on our first official day of homeschool.

We've been talking about this a lot trying to build up some excitement for Owen. His attitude toward school has been somewhat lackluster. When people ask, as they always do, if he's excited about starting kindergarten, his response has been, "Um," hanging head, shrugging shoulders, "I dunno know." I am happy, nay thrilled, to report that now he's saying, "I looooove school!"

So what did we do? We read lots of stories, we worked on our memory verse, we sang and danced to "Six Little Ducks," we wrote letters (surprisingly a big hit!) we colored a picture, we counted how many ducks were in the pond and how many ducks were not in the pond and how many ducks were there altogether, we found China on the map, we saw the Yangtze River (where one our stories is placed) and figured out that it would take four times as long to drive the length of the river as it does to drive to Grandmom's house, we ate Chinese food with chopsticks, we talked about how hard it would be for someone used to eating with chopsticks to use a fork and spoon, and we worked on some phonics. We did all this while still doing our regular, everyday stuff of fixing meals and feeding children (including a nursing baby) and changing diapers and doing laundry and picking up around the house and even squeezing in a doctor's appointment somewhere in there.

A good day, a really good day.

It's a two-fer!

While driving the boys to their friends' house, Owen popped up with "3 plus 3 equals 6 and 4 plus 4 equals 8."

"Very good," I say, trying to remember if we had covered these particular equations before.

"Give me some other ones Mom."

I'm thinking this is too cool and I give him other addition questions up to 10 as we're driving along. I look at him through the rear-view mirror and notice him looking all around the mini-van without saying a word. If you know this child that's quite something because he's quite the talker. So with the next math problem, I say, "Wow, how did you know the answer?"

"I count the windows."

Then he added, "And I didn't talk so I could think."

Butterfly pets

We have been having so much fun raising butterflies vicariously with my friend Elizabeth Joy and her children. The boys and I enjoy looking at the beautiful and detailed photos of the various stages of life these butterflies are going through.

When Owen saw a picture of Emily Rose holding one of these beauties he wanted to try to do that too. So today, Owen had his chance. He happily presented me with a butterfly he caught with his bare hands. (I can't be sure because I am so horrible at identification, but it looked suspicously similar to the Painted Ladies Elizabeth Joy's family is raising). Unfortunately he caught it by it's wings, pinching them together, and damaged it. The poor thing couldn't fly away.

So I guess Owen's reflexes must be quick. This same child smashed a fly with his hand the other day. I couldn't do that to save my life. I hope it doesn't sound as if he's going around cold-heartedly killing insects. The butterfly was an accident but the fly. . . well he's seen me attack them with my flyswatter if they dare to come into my house.

Yes, delight in knowledge

"The getting of knowledge and the getting of delight in knowledge are the ends of a child's education."
--Charlotte Mason

My "gentle start to school" plan

When I began this blog I wrote in the sidebar about myself that I’m beginning to homeschool kindergarten this fall. And it’s still there. So you may wonder have we been homeschooling since September or are we beginning this fall? Or have we been beginning all this time? Or can I just not make up my mind?

Truthfully, it’s all of those.

Since Owen (and Jonas when his turn comes) has a fall birthday and since the cutoff date to enroll in school in our state is December 2 and since he must be registered the year he turns 6—whew—I have to decide if I should place him in kindergarten or first grade.

Of all the curriculum and educational philosophies I’ve researched, I’m most interested in following a literature-based approach. I’m very interested in Ambleside Online’s curriculum. It’s a free, literature-based curriculum based on Charlotte Mason’s educational philosophy. The good people at Ambleside volunteered their considerable time and experience to create this curriculum that anyone can use for free. You simply need to acquire the books somehow, either purchase them, borrow from the library or find the text online. We’ve been loosely following their recommendations for preschool/kindergarten and I’m debating whether Owen is ready to move on to Year 1 this fall or to continue what we’ve been doing but be more intentional with the 3Rs. Kind of like making this next school year a kindergarten/first grade. Which wouldn’t be a problem except that when I register the child as a homeschooler this fall, I have to declare a grade level to the state.

I think the decision I’ve come to is to do a gentle start to school (keeping in mind that we’ve been “schooling” since the day Owen was born). I’ve gotten rather lax on his phonics. We were going great guns for awhile and then my energy failed while my belly got bigger (due to pregnancy, not chocolate—well, maybe a little chocolate). So, I’m going to get back into phonics and reading. Of course, I've been doing lots of read-alouds all along that I'll continue. We play lots of games that involve math concepts and I'll add a kindergarten level math curriculum. I also want to add history, nature study, art, music, health and life skills (these aren't completely new, but I want to be more concrete with my plans, a regular time rather than just whenever I think of it). My plan is to follow Miss Mason's recommendation for short lessons and I'll implement only one subject at a time until it becomes a habit in our daily routine. I’m going to read a selection from each of the books in AOYR1 and gauge Owen’s readiness by asking him to narrate short passages to see if he’s comprehending the material well and his attention span is where it needs to be for that level.

I guess what I’m saying is that we’ll do kinder now, as we have been, but be more deliberate with weekly goals. We'll go through the summer as we plan to school year-round so we won't waste time relearning stuff come September. I’ll reassess where we’re at again in the fall when I need to register him and state a grade level.

That’s the beauty of home education—you make it work for your child. If I enrolled him in a traditional school he’d either be the oldest or the youngest kid in his class. He could be required to do work that was either too easy or too challenging. This way, we’ll do what works for his ability and readiness.

California judge declares homschoolers must be credentialed teachers

I just learned that a California court declared last week that homeschooling is illegal if the parent is not a credentialed teacher. The judge made the ruling that now affects not just the family that happened to be in court, but the thousands of other families homeschooling in California. This decision affects the estimated 166,000 children being homeschooled in the state.

The ruling is being appealed. You can sign a petition to support the appeal at the Home School Legal Defense Website www.hslda.org. Also, you can read more about the case and the ramifications on their site.

A proud mother moment

This morning at church a mother came up to me and said, "You must read the Bible every day to your kids."

"Oh no, I do read Bible stories to the kids, but I can't say we do it that frequently."

"Well, Owen was able to answer all the questions about the story of the woman at the well." I had been in Jonas' class so I wasn't there to witness this.

"Really?" I replied, searching my memory if we had read this story recently, or even at all.

"He just pipped right up and answered every question."

"Did he get them right?" Owen is such an extravert it's no surprise to hear he spoke out, but to answer the questions correctly, I wasn't sure.

"He did."

"Wow."

Later, as I marvelled about this with Jack, who had been in class with Owen, I said, "I'm not sure I've read that story to him yet. How did he know the answers?"

"They read the story and he just listened well."

Good enough for me!

Charlotte Mason carnival

Check out this carnival full of interesting articles related to all things Charlotte Mason.

Why I like Charlotte Mason

In my research on education, I have discovered a kindred spirit in Charlotte Mason. She was an innovative educator in England in the 1800s. Of all the philosophies of education I've read, her's fits the best with my ideas of how I want to raise my children.

Key points that I like:

• Love and nurture your children as individuals. This doesn't seem radical to us, but at the time of her writing children were to be seen and not heard.
• Have your kids play outside as much as possible where they'll learn about nature, science, observation, creativity, independence, joy and God. All that good stuff.
• Read, read, read good books, which are those that are well-written with excellent language and imagery, great stories and themes. She advised to avoid what she called "twaddle," books that are dumbed down and insult children's intelligence. You know, those silly, poorly written children's books you find at the grocery store that are a bore to read and completely unimaginative. They're like feeding your kids a diet full of sugar with no protein or vegetables.
• Read "living" books as opposed to textbooks to learn about practically all subjects--history, philosophy, science, social studies, art, music, etc. Living books are history books, biographies, novels, nonfiction books about the subject written by the primary source or learned researchers. Textbooks are shortened synopsis compiled by committees and aren't able to provide the whole picture. When I think about this, the best book I ever read that taught me about the Civil War was "Across Five Aprils," a historical novel for kids. That book made the horrors and complications and issues of the Civil War real and vivid for me, much more than any textbook I had to read for school.
• Avoid busy work, such as worksheets, and rely on real-life applications instead.
• Short lessons, like 15-20 minutes per subject, for the early years. Whets the kids appetites for the subject without boring them or overdoing it. It should provide them with enough interest that they'll want to study more the next day.
• Alternate hard and easy subjects. For instance, do math then nature study outside then reading then art, etc.
• Do habit-training with very young children as a way of discipline. When you start when they are very young and make things into a habit, it will be easier for them to behave as they get older. She advocated gentle redirection and redirection until they got it; give them attention when they do it well and ignore them when they don't. Actually, it's a lot like Parenting with Love and Logic, a modern discipline approach that I like.

To learn more about Charlotte Mason and her ideas on education, read the following books:

• For the Children's Sake by Susan Shaeffer Macaulay, a modern classic and good overview of Mason's ideas.
• A Charlotte Mason Companion: Personal Reflections on the Gentle Art of Learning by Karen Andreola, a modern homeschooling mom who taught her children using Mason's philosophy.
• A Charlotte Mason Education, More Charlotte Mason Education, and A Literary Education, by Catherine Levinson, another homeschooling mom who researched Mason's ideas and provides practical tips on how to implement them in your family.

Of course, read the original Philosophy of Education, by Charlotte Mason to get the info straight from the horse's mouth, so to speak. Since she wrote in the 1800s, her writing style is dictated by the times and is a bit difficult to read by our modern standards. Ambleside, www.amblesideonline.org, is a wonderful resource for information about Charlotte Mason, how to implement her ideas, and a free, online curriculum. They have a modern paraphrase of Mason's writing for free online, which is what I've been reading. I can't say I agree with everything she taught (some of the practicalities are difficult in this day and age), but her overriding philosophy of education and parenting is excellent.

Homeschooler says no to Harvard

Great story about a kid who was homeschooled and the options he chose.

Another, much more encouraging, homeschool conference

Well, this past weekend I attended another homeschool seminar that left me feeling quite different than my first. I listened to Carole Joy Seid's wisdom for a day and felt excited about home education and thought, "Yes, I can do this!" Carole holds a master's degree in education and homeschooled her only son through high school. He currently has a master's degree and is working on a Ph.D., I believe, as well.

I so appreciated her well-researched thoughts along with practical application and her deeply held spiritual perspective. Even though this particular seminar mostly focused on the high school years and so wasn't personally applicable, I still gained much from the overall philosophy of education she shared. I'm very much looking forward to her seminar in January that will focus on the elementary years.

Listen in on her radio interview on her Website where you can learn more about her ideas.

The "Good Mother" debate

The other day while chatting with the girls (my sanity-saving group of mothers that meet once a week), the topic turned to homeschooling and one mom said "You guys are just better mothers," as if those who choose to homeschool were somehow "better mothers." No, no, no, 100 times NO!

I so don't want any of my choices to make another mother feel inferior. We get enough of that in our society, whether real or imagined. The so-called "mommy wars" perpetuate the image of catty, back-stabbing women while dividing a huge group that needs each others support. Truthfully, most of the women I know are respectful of other mothers even when they disagree. The women in my Tuesday morning group don't always see eye-to-eye, but we sure do support each other. I love their encouragement, their commiseration, their wise insights and their listening hearts.

I know I run the risk of sounding relativistic and trite, but I do believe it's pretty simple. You make the choice that works for you, your child and your family. When it doesn't work anymore, you do something different. And if you don't have people in your life who support and respect you when you're doing the best you can for your family, go find a Tuesday morning group for yourself.

Stewing and brewing thoughts in the wake of a homeschooling conference

I attended my first homeschooling conference this past weekend and, not surprisingly, I have a few impressions that are swirling around my brain. So much so that it's keeping me up. I'm just going to jump right into it so I can go back to sleep and be up to take the kids to the science center in the morning as I promised.

While there were a few sessions that offered practical advice to this newby (notably how to tell if your child is ready to learn to read; ADHD vs. kinesthetic learner; and fun, educational things to do with your preschooler), I came away with two key impressions: 1. the homeschooling community has fought so long to legitimize themselves that they believe the only right way to educate your child is at home, and 2. forget about grades, grade levels and preparation for college as following your child's development and interest is paramount. I have trouble with both of these ideas.

First off, I don't believe homeschooling is for everybody in every situation. Sure, anyone can and should be able to homeschool if they want to. But it's not the best choice for every child and every parent. Even if it may work well for the child and parent, circumstances may prohibit it. I'm not talking about government regulation here. I'm all for the legal right every American citizen has to choose to educate their children at home. However, there are a myriad of personal and intricate circumstances that just make traditional schooling a better choice for some families. I'm sure I'm not the only one at the conference with this belief. The last speaker of the day basically said the same thing as I, but many other speakers and parents said that homeschooling was the best choice.

The second idea is the one that I find most troubling. It seems that when you enter the homeschooling world the expectation is that it is for your child's entire education. As one speaker said, "we lose a lot at high school," implying that some wimpy parents coop out at that stage. When I asked about how do you know your child is on grade level or ready to go to college, the response reminded me of Bobby McFarrin's boppy tune, "Don't worry, be happy."

I'm approaching this decision to educate Owen at home on a year-by-year basis. It's completely overwhelming to me to think this is an either-or mandate for the next 12 years. Next year, we may decide to send Owen to school, or the year after, or the year after that. I want to know that he is somewhat on par with his peers and won't be woefully behind. Even if we choose to homeschool through high school, which I just can't fathom at this point, I want him to be capable of succeeding in college.

What's most important to me in educating my children, whether at home or elsewhere, is that they learn to think for themselves, can analyze and coherently express their resulting opinions verbally and in written form, and have a lifelong love for learning. With the pressure schools have to meet state and national education goals that are only measured through test scores, most teachers simply teach to the test. The students cram to memorize facts that they forget two weeks later. Students end up hating school because their natural love for learning is killed by endless busywork and boring memorization that holds no point of reference beyond the test. By the time they get to college they are so "schooled" in this method that the most common question professors hear is, "Will this be on the test." Jack even hears this from his graduate students.

Home education offers an alternative--an appealing alternative that I'm willing to try. I just have to do it my way, which includes lot of fun, tailored activities to keep Owen excited about learning along with references that let me know what a typical kindergartener should know.

Ready to read

Owen has known how to read the letters and the sounds for each letter for nearly a whole year now. I was so excited when he got that down that I was ready to jump right in on teaching him how to put those sounds together to make words. The few times I tried though, Owen got frustrated and stomped off saying, "I can't do it." I admit, I really had to fight the urge to force it. Just because I begged to learn to read at age 4 and have loved it ever since, doesn't mean that my firstborn is the same. All I have to do is look at this child, who looks nothing like me, and know that he's his own person. Frankly, that's who I want him to be. So I backed off.

Fast-forward to today and that same child can sound out cat, bat, mat, hat, rat, pat and sat. And I had nothing to do with it. The last couple of nights Jack has been spending a few minutes before bedtime with Owen helping him to read. He started with AT and quickly moved on to these rhyming words. I guess this is what the experts mean to wait, it will come when they are ready.

Raising (and educating) Cain

I first started researching homeschooling because I had read a few studies that said boys aren't typically ready for formal education at ages 5 and 6 when we're typically ready to trot them off to the nearest yellow bus. I have also read several articles about the rise of ADHD diagnosis, predominantly in boys and in the first few years of school. Let me hasten to say that I do believe there are many legitimate ADHD diagnoses. However, there are many boys labeled ADHD that are simply active boys who aren't ready to sit still for a few hours every day in school.

As Owen quickly approaches 5, I've been searching for answers. When should I send my active boy to school? Could he be labeled ADHD? What type of environment is best for him? What qualities should I look for in a good school? And what about the teacher? So I've read several education books to find an alarming trend: Kids don't like school! This may not surprise you, but it did me. Educator after educator wrote about kids losing their natural love for learning in the schoolroom. My motivation to seek out an alternative became even stronger. Not only was I thinking about my boys developmental needs, now I was seeing a strong connection between that and their future academic success. The more I read about education and the development of boys, the more I am convinced that homeschooling, at least in these early years, is the right option for my family.

I'm currently reading Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys and just in the second chapter I've found some excellent quotes that summarize well some of the research I've read that has led me to this decision:

From kindergarten through sixth grade, a boy spends more than a thousand hours a year in school, and his experiences and the attitudes of the teachers and other adults he encounters there are profoundly shaping. The average boy faces a special struggle to meet the developmental and academic expectations of an elementary school curriculum that emphasizes reading, writing, and verbal ability--cognitive skills that normally develop more slowly in boys than in girls. Some boys are ahead of the others on that developmental curve, and some girls lag behind, but when we compare the average boy with the average girl, the average boy is developmentally disadvantaged in the early school environment.

We are not suggesting that boys are good and schools are bad, or that teachers don't care about boys. Quite to the contrary, much of what we know about boys' difficulties in school is confirmed by the many caring, creative teachers we know who struggle with the challenge of working with boys in the school setting. We know, too, that there are boys whose talents or temperments make them exceptions, but if we're going to talk about the ways in which boys' life experiences complicate their emotional development or compromise it, we have to talk about the hidden hurt that the early school years inflict on so many boys.

Studies that track children's development through the school years suggest that, by the third grade, a child has established a pattern of learning that shapes the course of his or her entire school career. We see this clearly with boys: the first two years in school are a critical moment of entry into that world of learning, but boys' relative immaturity and the lack of fit they so often experience in school set them up to fail. Many boys who are turned off to school at a young age never refind the motivation to become successful learners.

The average boy's gifts are wrapped in high activity, impulsivity, and physicality--boy power--and the value of these gifts depends on the teacher, the boy, and the moment. These qualities serve boys beautifully on the playground, where there is room and respect for bold strokes of action and impulse. In the classroom, however, alongside girls--who are typically more organized, cooperative, and accomplished school learners--those "boy qualities" quickly turn from assets to liabilities. Even among those who aren't considered problem boys, many teachers identifiy the ordinary boy pattern of activity, attitudes, and behaviors as something that must be overcome for a boy to succeed in school.

When school is not a good fit for a boy, when his normal expressions of energy and action routinely meet with negative responses from teachers and classmates, he stews in feeling of failure--feelings of sadness, shame, and anger, which can be very hard to detect beneath that brash exterior. Unable to "talk out" the emotional pressure, boys typically act out though verbal or physical aggression that walls them off emotionally from others, straining or severing emotional connections to the people and circumstances they find painful.

The most important thing to remember, the guiding principle, is to try to keep your son's self-esteem intact while he is in school. That is the real risk to his success and to his mental health. Once he's out of school, the world will be different. He'll find a niche where the fact that he's can't spell well, or didn't read until he was eight, won't matter. But if he starts to hate himself because he isn't good at schoolwork, he'll fall into a hole that he'll be digging himself out of for the rest of his life.

When normal boy activity levels and developmental patterns are accommodated in the design of schools, curricula, classrooms, and instructional styles, an entire stratum of "boy problems" drops from sight. When a boy's experience of belonging at school is greater than his sense of differentness, then the burden of shame, inadequacy, and anger drops away, and he is free to learn.

Let children be children

Melissa over at The Lilting House posted the following article from the San Francisco Chronicle and I had to share it. This is one of the reasons that I'm choosing to homeschool kindergarten.

Let children be children
Is your 5-year-old stressed out because so much is expected?

by Penelope H. Beven
published in the San Francisco Chronicle
Sunday, June 3, 2007

I was watching one of my second-grade girls try unsuccessfully to tie her shoes the other day, and I thought, "This is a person who is supposed to be learning plural possessives?" I think not.

We've just finished test time again in the schools of California. The mad frenzy of testing infects everyone from second grade through high school. Because of the rigors and threats of No Child Left Behind, schools are desperate to increase their scores. As the requirements become more stringent, we have completely lost sight of the children taking these tests.

For 30 years as a teacher of primary kids, I have operated on the Any Fool Can See principle. And any fool can see that the spread between what is developmentally appropriate for 7- and 8-year-old children and what is demanded of them on these tests is widening. A lot of what used to be in the first-grade curriculum is now taught in kindergarten. Is your 5-year-old stressed out? Perhaps this is why.

Primary-grade children have only the most tenuous grasp on how the world works. Having been alive only seven or eight years, they have not figured out that in California there is a definite wet and dry season. They live in high expectation that it will snow in the Bay Area in the winter. They reasonably conclude, based on their limited experience with words, that a thesaurus must be a dinosaur. When asked to name some of the planets after he heard the word Earth, one of my boys confidently replied, "Mars, Saturn, Mercury, Jupiter and Canada!" to which a girl replied, "No, no, no, you gotta go way far outer than that."

Research has shown that it takes approximately 24 repetitions of a new concept to imprint on a young brain. The aforementioned plural possessives come up twice in the curriculum, yet they are supposed to know it when they see it. This is folly.

Currently, 2 1/2 uninterrupted hours are supposed to be devoted to language arts and reading every morning. I ask you, what adult could sustain an interest in one subject for that long? Yet the two reading series adopted by the state for elementary education require that much time be devoted to reading in the expectation that the scores will shoot up eventually. Show me a 7-year-old who has that kind of concentration. Show me a 64-year-old teacher who has it. Not I. The result of this has been a decline in math scores at our school, because the emphasis is on getting them to read and there isn't enough time to fit in a proper curriculum. Early math education should rely heavily on messing about with concrete materials of measurements, mass, volume and length, and discovering basic principles through play.

There is no time for this. The teaching of art is all but a subversive activity. Teachers whisper, "I taught art today!" as if they would be reported to the Reading Police for stealing time from the reading curriculum, which is what they did.

It is also First Communion time in second grade. Yes, I teach in a public school, but First Communion happens in second grade, and it is a big deal, the subject of much discussion in the classroom. The children are excited.

A few months back one of my girls exclaimed, "Jeez, I have a lot to do after school today, Teacher. I gotta do my homework, go to baseball practice and get baptized." I laughed to myself at the priorities of this little to-do list, so symbolic of the life of one second-grader. But there was a much larger issue here. What is happening to their souls? You may ask, what business it is of the schools what is happening to the souls of these little children?

I will tell you. Any fool can see that those setting the standards for testing of primary-grade children haven't been around any actual children in a long time. The difference between what one can reasonably expect an 8-year-old to know and what is merely a party trick grows exponentially on these state tests.

Meanwhile, children who know they are bright and can read well are proved wrong time and again because of the structure of these tests. Teachers spend inordinate amounts of time trying to teach the children to be careful of the quirky tricks of the tests when they should be simply teaching how to get on in the world.

Twenty years ago, I had a conference with a parent, a Sikh, whose child was brilliant. I was prepared to show him all her academic work, but he brushed it aside and said, "Yes, yes, I know she is quite smart, but I want to know how her soul is developing."

The present emphasis on testing and test scores is sucking the soul out of the primary school experience for both teachers and children. So much time is spent on testing and measuring reading speed that the children are losing the joy that comes but once in their lifetime, the happy messiness of paint, clay, Tinkertoys and jumping rope, the quiet discovery of a shiny new book of interest to them, the wonders of a magnifying glass. The teachers around them, under constant pressure to raise those test scores, radiate urgency and pressure. Their smiles are grim. They are not enjoying their jobs.

Our children need parents and teachers who, like Hamlet, know a hawk from a hand saw, who know foolishness when they see it and are strong enough to defend these small souls from the onslaught of escalating developmentally inappropriate claptrap. The great unspoken secret of primary school is that a lot of what is going on is arrant nonsense, and it's getting worse. Any fool can see.

Lessons in the produce section

The boys were taking turns picking the food items off the shelves at Stater Bros. this morning.

"Jonas, please find the bananas," I say.

"I got nanas," says Jonas.

"Great! Owen, what's the first thing we put in salad?"

"Guacamole."

"Well, yes, sometimes we put avocados in our salad. But what is the first thing we put in the salad bowl?"

"Uhhhh...," he replies.

Then I realize that he calls all forms of lettuce salad, as in he wants pickles, cheese and salad in his sandwich. So I switch my tactic. "Where is the lettuce?"

"Right here!"

At this point a woman leans close to me and says, "You're doing school right here."

Exactly!