I think that my "hover mother brake" broke today. I have been trying to help my kids without being overly zealous about it and then my son said, "Quit hovering, Mother, I've got this." Well now. Part of my whole deal here is that I'm trying to back out so that he can take over and succeed or fail on his own so that then he can say... "Oh, I did that all on my own." Good or bad, that's what I'm looking for. Balance. Try again.
So I would rather reflect on teaching 1st graders today. I have a young boy who is having a hard time in school, and it turns out it is the direct result of the opposite problem I have with my own offspring. His parents simply don't parent much at all. There is the flip side of the Mom who cares too much. He is having difficulty learning to read and is just not buying into the whole learning/school system. Today, after my after school reading class, I played some basketball with him. Now, I am bad at basketball and was missing every shot, but having a great time running around with my students. Jose finally said (in Spanish)... Look, teacher, what you need to do is stand like this and hold the ball like this and then do your wrist like this... and he showed me. Wow! I was determined to follow his instructions and I made two shots in a row! Jose was smiling like I have never seen him smile before. Being a teacher I couldn't help but make it a teachable moment and told him, "See, Jose, you can teach me how to shoot baskets and I can teach you how to read... you are a great teacher!" He liked that a lot. So did I.
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