Seattle Schools are closing its “Highly Capable Cohort” (Gifted & Talented) program because the claim is that too many of the participants are white or Asian…. “in an effort to make the program more equitable and to better serve all students, the district is phasing out highly capable cohort schools. In their place, SPS is offering a whole-classroom model where all students are in the same classroom and the teacher individualizes learning plans for each student.” Think about what that means for each classroom teacher.
Our local schools had a GT program called “Project Challenge”, involving our sons …. until the system abruptly ended the program, leaving stranded students who were taking classes 2+yrs ahead of grade level. We fought the repercussions until we found an advocate who enabled one son to commute daily from middle to high school for math, to skip multiple years of Spanish and to take advanced classes at the university. Those programs are more common now, but they were not at the time we were involved. I wrote about it here: https://www.virtualmusicoffice.com/the-system-worked-for…/
We wrestled with teachers who wanted to use our sons as tutors (noble and helpful, but does not address their “special needs”) or to do individual study in the back of the classroom (like what could happen in a discipline situation).
We are seeing some of the results of closing most mental institutions and “mainstreaming”. How many tragedies are blamed on “mental health” issues? If people need help, let’s help.
And here’s another problem I have with the “too many whites and Asians” racist argument….. Which pro sports teams, such as NFL, NBA, MLB “mainstream” players to ensure they have a balance of ethnicities and abilities? No! We want to win, right? Olympic teams are not balanced per quotas. We want to win, right?
I won’t argue that DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion), which sounds wonderful is the new AA (Affirmative Action), but it all seems so similar, aka fad trend of the era.
Yes, let’s work to benefit those with “special needs”, but special needs at both ends. Let’s NOT label people ‘insane’, but also, let’s not ignore them. We NEED GT graduates coming into our society, even if they are white or Asian.
March is both “Women’s History” and “Disabilities Awareness” month. My hero, in both those categories, was my polio-inflicted mother.
Beulah McCormick was born in 1922 in a house (not a hospital) with an outside toilet. Her dad was a mean, verbally and physically abusive Irishman (McCormick) who was in the trenches of France during World War I. Growing up during the great depression, one of Mom’s journal entries stated, “There were no toys”.
At 12 yrs old, she was inflicted with one of the most cruel diseases ever…..polio.
In a 1935 pic taken 1 year after her infection, you can see that her legs are different sizes. She is likely bracing herself with her left arm (good arm).
Iron lungs enabling many polio survivors to breathe
She wasn’t as bad as some, who had to spend the rest of their lives in “iron lungs“, but her body was infected as if there were a vertical divide between left and right. Her right arm and leg were smaller, shorter, and weaker than her left. She had to buy two pairs of shoes because her feet were different sizes. She could write right-handed but picked things up with her left.
She refused to allow her disability to handicap life, evidenced by her high school class of 1940 1/2 voting her “most athletic”.
Hobbies included hunting, fishing, horseback riding, swimming, and gardening. She was a proficient typist and avid reader. She walked with a significant limp until her last four years when her back and knees just couldn’t do it anymore.
Her teenage friendship with Betty Swindler was so strong the Swindler family wanted to pay Mom’s way to go to college, but the proud papa wouldn’t allow it.
She thrived despite her parents.
Her childhood included going with parents (no choice) to area saloons to watch them drink and dance.
Somehow she got involved in a local church where she met her future husband. They had 5 children before divorcing affecting siblings from age 1 to 12.
So how does a divorced, polio survivor without a car, find a job and raise five children?
She was qualified, but never accepted welfare. Eventually, she took a job and spent about 25 yrs as an Activities Director at the Nursing Home she would retire from, move in to, and die in …. only two blocks from our house so she (and we) could walk to and from. I used to tease her for getting paid to play games all day.
My sisters had to experience daycare in a home nearby. Mom cried about that.
Life was plain, but she didn’t complain.
She paid her debts. Thankfully, the pediatrician allowed her to make $5/month payments.
We walked two blocks to a small neighborhood church my father’s parents helped start. She put a dollar in the plate and, when someone complained about the six of us for her dollar a week, swallowed her pride so we could have a better upbringing than she did. Kudos to the church for installing a handrail on the two steps going into the sanctuary. They did try.
She encouraged us to sell lemonade to the golfers at the course down the street. Those lemonade sales paid for a bicycle I wanted and then for my part of a new clarinet.
Sometimes she got some extra sugar for her lemonade. Mom’s Aunt Georgia passed away and I distinctly remember walking with her and her uncle to the kitchen door that went into their garage.
“Beulah. Georgia wanted you to have her car. Here are the keys.”
Chores were a reality. She organized us in rotations for dish washing, providing a step stool until we were each tall enough to reach into the sink. Until I left for college, it was mostly my job to push the non-motorized mower, and I was not always the compliant, cooperative teen.
There was one episode where she was following me back and forth over the lawn convincing me with her belt that I should continue.
Another job I loathed was cleaning the dog pen. Grass and hedge trimming, leaf raking, and garbage taking were regular chores. The Christmas decorations weren’t so bad and I liked putting the flag out….but had to take it down at night.
As much as we didn’t have, Mom always helped us understand that there were other people worse off and that they needed our help. At Christmastime, she would ask us to give up a toy to be donated to a “needy” family.
When someone would knock at our back door asking for food, she would fix a fried egg or peanut butter sandwich.
Both parents were hunters, and when dad left, she kept her little (she couldn’t hold a full-sized rifle) “over/under” gun; a combination 22 rifle and 410 shotgun. I got to watch her use it once. There was a bad flood and the water from the river about a mile away covered the golf course, came up over the 4-foot wall at the end of our street and stopped about two houses from ours. In the aftermath, there was a terrible, thankfully temporary neighborhood rat infestation. She instructed us to get into the house when she saw a huge rat on our side yard sidewalk. From the bedroom window, we heard the ‘pop’ and saw the rat briefly stand up on its hind legs before tottering over.
Good shot, Mom.
I’m not sure how I got started in 5th-grade band. With all the other bills, I have no idea how Mom managed to pay off that rent-to-own clarinet that I played at Tenth District School. Seems the band teacher, James Copenhaver, in his very first year of teaching, convinced her that my aural testing was so high that she really needed to get me involved in band.
Another of her favorite stories was during my high school band time. Watching the end of a rehearsal, she heard Mr. Copenhaver say, “Gardner, you march like a cow.” She went up to him afterward and went, “Moooooo” and then identified herself with, “I’m the cow’s mother.”
Mom who taught me to drive, to shave, to do my laundry (for college), to polish my shoes, and to type. She made me take piano lessons, allowed me to take clarinet lessons and somehow managed to be there for most major events. She taught me conservation techniques; the thermostat seldom went above 60 in the winter. There was no air conditioning and the summer window fan had to be turned off before bedtime.
I learned the difference between a need and a want. She took care of my needs.
She wasn’t able to buy many gifts. One year, I had asked for a clock-radio. To make the gift opening last longer, she hid it and placed clues all around the property to help me find it. Like most teens, I wanted a car….so on my 16th birthday, she gave me a little battery operated VW bug and made it clear that would be the only car she would ever buy me.
There was an extended episode where her back was really messed up from her years of walking with legs of different lengths. There was a really hard-core brace that she had to wear for a while and I had to help her get it on and off every day. By the grace of God, she improved and was able to get rid of it. She confessed years later that she was afraid she was losing her ability to walk, which would have cost her the job she had….and she feared not being able to raise us.
We didn’t wear the latest fashions, but always had something respectable to wear.
My brothers always got my hand-me-downs. Sorry. We were all in band and had instruments and everything we needed for that. Three of us used my beginning clarinet and the pro-level horn I bought in high school.
Grandpa McCormick moved in for several of his later years. After living alone for several years (Grandma Mamie died my high school freshman year), he married a lady who stole nearly everything he owned. Terrified and trounced, he came to live with Mom.
So after all the terrible things she had endured over the years, she would be his care-provider.
I was off to college and then away, so I didn’t have to deal with him much. On visits, at least, he seemed to have mellowed, although he could still unleash a verbal barrage on occasion. I hope he paid some rent to help with the finances, but I never heard and never asked.
Mom did well raising the five of us. No one is rich, but all five are self-sufficient and raising (or raised) a pretty good next generation.
Mom paid for all of her wedding because her parents would not.
In a 2001, handwritten letter, she wrote,
“my life has been very fulfilling and rewarding. Sometimes I am confined to “cell 423” (house number), but this week I went to the Reds ballgame (via radio) and “watched a horse race (TV) at Churchill Downs, tearing at the playing of ‘My Old Kentucky Home and ended in a “musical production in Branson, Missouri, where I had no parking hassels and had the best seat in the house.”
That was Mom, always finding the best in everybody, finding good in her situations and being thankful for what she did have instead of complaining about what she didn’t.
She used life’s sour lemons to make the best, sweetest lemonade.
Love you and miss you Mom…..and will see you soon.
PS Over the last several years, Mom always accused me of bringing the cold, nasty weather of Northern Indiana with me when I would come to visit. She would have said that again about her own funeral with the dismal driving rain that prevented the graveside ceremony.
“I know, Mom….. but I wanted you to know I was there.”
Beulah celebrating her 85th birthday, the last she would celebrate at her Baltimore Ave home.
According to the 4-digit serial number, my Selmer/Paris Series 10 clarinet was manufactured in 1967. In 1968, my hs band director told my mother I had to get one. Not optional. He might as well have told her I needed a Mercedes for my first car. Dad made me a 50/50 deal, and after selling lemonade to golfers and hanging ad papers on doors … I got it.
I used it all through hs. It got me Solo/Ensemble medals, traveled with me and Holmes Band to KMEA and MENC, to Murfreesboro, TN and Virginia Beach, VA…. to All-State Orchestra, to band clinic and select bands, to summer music camps at Eastern Kentucky and Morehead State Universities, and followed me to Europe/U.S.S.R. with the United States Collegiate Wind Band in the summer between hs and college. I had to replace it at UK bc the clarinet prof kept saying things like,
“That was awful. I can’t tell if it was you or that crappy clarinet.”
Anyway, I just opened packages of cleaning supplies, including swabs, key and bore oil, silver polish, swabs, disinfectant and more….. I want to see if it still has all the notes and speed it once did. Students have heard me talk about instruments with “speed buttons”.
Oh, working on my 1973-ish Buffet R-13 also. Both are considered “vintage” at this point.
The Worship Ensemble in son’s church this morning included one American, one American-born Armenian…. and the rest all Ukranian — from the church’s Russian-speaking Ukranian Growth Group. That is genuine outreach. btw…I couldn’t pick up on the Ukranian vocalist’s accent….but Joan did… Don’t say anything political, because this is not.
This has happened twice, and I didn’t like it the first time either.
Several years ago, toward the end of a lunch period, there was a threat called into the school that resulted in the entire 1500 student/staff population’s immediate exit from the building. We were instructed to go to the football stadium. It was a bright, sunny day and we sat in the stadium until dismissal, about two hours later.
It was a mess as parents started coming to pick up students, but all the computer equipment with identification and information on students/parents was in the vacated building. A lot was learned for future.
I’m bald. I have a collection of hats I used for outside rehearsals. I didn’t have a hat for this event and my head burned moderately significantly. It went from embarrassingly red to sore and finally to flaking. I wasn’t happy about any of it. I posted on my personal social media site, something like this:
When they find out who did this, I hope they affix that person to the flag pole in the front yard and give us all an opportunity to walk by and expressure our displeasure.
The next day I was called to an admin office where I was mildly scolded with,
We all feel like what you said — but you can’t say that.
He was right. I deleted my post and that was the end of it…..except for wondering who saw fit to copy my post and take it to the office. Was it a teacher? I don’t know for sure, but I wasn’t happy about who it was, and glad I never found out.
Then, this week…
…I get a letter from the City
“It was recently brought to the department’s attention that you upgraded your electrical panelboard without first obtaining an electrical permit.”
When we hired a contractor to install a new HVAC system, he reported that he had trouble getting our 1950’s vintage “pushmatic” breaker box to engage and recommended we consider replacing it. I brushed it off as an “upsell”, but two days later, our neighbor’s house was completely totalled (on the inside) when their breaker box malfunctioned.
Neighbor house as breaker box malfunctions sending flames throughout the walls and outlets.
I immediately contacted my HVAC contractor to ask him to go ahead and replace my breaker box. He sent an electrician. I was happy with the results and posted them.
OldNew
I want to do the right thing. I worked with my contractor, the city, the city’s inspector and another contractor to make everything legal, correct and safe with the City.
My frustration….
…is with people who need to “turn me in” instead of communicating with me directly.
This is David’s entrance from his hs production of The Wiz. Once he gets fully lubricated, he adds choreography (his own) to the song. Video is under 4 minutes. Enjoy.
The Children’s Choir of Huntington County in their first Christmas Concert in 1993 at Huntington University and under the founding director, Dr. Rediger
In 1993 the Children’s Choirs of Huntington County were formed. Originally there were two choirs for younger and older children. Dr. Joann Rediger was the founding director and is on stage with the group in this picture at their first Christmas Concert in 1993. As high school and adult choirs have been added, the group name was changed to Community Choirs of Huntington County and currently includes the Children’s Choir, Copper Sound and Joyful Songsters. Follow them on their website at https://childrenschoirofhuntingtoncounty.org/.
Joan Gardner receives the Mary Sell Volunteer Award presented at the 4/15/23 concert of the Community Choirs of Huntington County.
The Mary Sell Volunteer Award recipient for 2023 is Joan Gardner
Joan Gardner receives the Mary Sell Volunteer Award presented at the 4/15/23 concert of the Community Choirs of Huntington County.
Mary Sell is a retired music teacher from the Huntington County Community School Corporation. She volunteered a lot of time for the Community Choirs of Huntington County and an award was created in her name. Joan Gardner received the award at the Spring 2023 concert.
Joan has been a choir parent, an accompanist, a volunteer and a board member for the CCHC. Her two sons, John and David, were in the Children’s Choirs during the very first season they were started – with Dr. Joann Rediger as the director. She was eventually asked to accompany one of the choirs for several years and is currently one of the CCHC Board Members.
According to the 4-digit serial number, my Selmer/Paris Series 10 clarinet was manufactured in 1967. In 1968, my hs band director told my mother I had to get one. Not optional. He might as well have told her I needed a Mercedes for my first car. Dad made me a 50/50 deal, and after selling lemonade to golfers and hanging ad papers on doors … I got it.
Anyway, I just opened packages of cleaning supplies, including swabs, key and bore oil, silver polish, swabs, disinfectant and more….. I want to see if it still has all the notes and speed it once did. Students have heard me talk about instruments with “speed buttons”.
This has happened twice, and I didn’t like it the first time either.
I’m bald. I have a collection of hats I used for outside rehearsals. I didn’t have a hat for this event and my head burned moderately significantly. It went from embarrassingly red to sore and finally to flaking. I wasn’t happy about any of it. I posted on my personal social media site, something like this:
