Summer Skewl

I’m sitting across the dining room table watching Tore do online school with Mrs. Grodin and they’re working on math right now. Specifically the FOIL system. It’s very good that he still gets this help even during the summer but also we know his school will end when we turn 26. I don’t know where he’s at exactly but I believe his intelligence is around the middle school level. A lot of time I think about how I can help him getting improving especially once his schooling ends but I have no idea right now although just because I don’t know right now doesn’t mean I’ll never know although although it’ll take work to find out more.

He just looked at me for a brief moment.

Education is everything. Not just for Tore but for everybody especially our children. How do we better educate everyone about everything? More and more these days I’ve been thinking about how important education reform is right now and I believe education is truly the best place where we can start fixing everything else. To rebuild a broken system, it will take smart people who know the best way to rebuild it, and even if they don’t know for sure at least they’ll have a better idea of where to start than if they didn’t educate at all.

I think Grodin just made a mistake and is rechecking her own math.

I think about Dad as the financial director of the Dearborn Public School system and even though I never got to have adult conversations with him about what he did for these schools, the biggest thing I can remember is how hard he worked to save money and cut costs all in order to put as much as he could into the resources and education of the children. He wore ties with the words “Save the Children” on them. He read to kindergardeners once a month. He was not afraid to be the bad guy in everybody else’s eyes as long as it meant he could be the good guy where it mattered: making those schools the absolutely best schools he could possibly make them.

Tore remembers the fraction part.

He was such a strong advocate for public schools that I remember how difficult it was for him to send us to Catholic Central even though his family was so historically connected to the school. He knew we would get the best possible education at CC and he was right and I am beyond thankful for that, but he also made it clear that he would be wearing Dearborn attire to any football games we might play against them. Now I don’t think he actually did that when we actually played Fordson, but it was the thought that counts. And at the end of the day, we knew just because he sent us to CC did not mean he had given up on the public school system.

Tore answered, “6,” correctly.

And now I think about Detroit and its own system of failing public schools and what can I do as a suburban white kid who knows nothing about education let alone education reform? However, I do think covid is forcing us to rethink education as a whole so if I believe this is our time to start making change no matter how incremental nor unprecedented. But I can’t do anything until I know more. But I do believe that the more we go virtual, the more that the old geographical boundaries that have historically kept lower income children out of the higher income schools become obsolete so maybe that’s a start.