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Chasing Joy

Chasing Joy

Tag Archives: education

independence day

27 Monday Apr 2020

Posted by Suzanne Buchko in Growing a Daughter, Pondering Quietly

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Coronavirus, education, high school, home

How did it get to be the end of April?

Setting: rain and 40 degrees.  The house is dark.  This is a day for the potato leek soup that is in the fridge and a book and a cozy chair and throw over legs.  Maybe it is not a day for momentous accomplishments or even folding the wash.  

Time: Monday morning.  That time when online school work comes streaming in and students are supposed to get organized for the week.  In this house, it is the time to wrangle Julia to help me organize her work. This morning, Julia has a check in with her case manager and a speech group.

Back story: Last week, I advocated for support from school to get school work done.  Two weeks ago I advocated for her speech services to resume.  The weekly plan came back this morning with no more help than last week.  There is a speech group meeting this morning.

Character: Increasingly, Julia lives and talks in a fantasy of teen sex and anime violence.  Lots of blood and boys obsessed with her.  She talks to herself.  More and more often.  She resents being pulled into the reality of our lives (which, at least to me, is not so bad at all).

Plot: Julia is declaring independence today.  She doesn’t want me to have anything to do with her schoolwork.   Continue reading →

lessons

02 Thursday Apr 2020

Posted by Suzanne Buchko in Educating Julia, Growing a Daughter, Journaling My Days

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Coronavirus, education, home, Learning

A friend commented yesterday that this time is like a wild roller coaster ride.

Agreed.

Obsessively, I watch the John Hopkins virus resource center through out the day. Today, the worldwide total confirmed cases will reach one million with 50,000 dead. I stare at the numbers.

I have written for a post every day. I draft and leave it for awhile as is my usual process. By the time I get back to the draft a few hours later, even a few minutes later, I am in a completely different head space. Mind and soul seem to have climbed another mountain or fallen down another well. And it does not seem possible to edit to reflect where I’ve been or where I’ve gotten to. Continue reading →

Image

20 Friday Mar 2020

Tags

art, Carona Art, education, home

24C78390-72F8-4899-848E-2EAB296E4CB6

Posted by Suzanne Buchko | Filed under Educating Julia, Growing a Daughter

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Image

19 Thursday Mar 2020

Tags

art, Carona Art, education, home

B8D8C7A4-0C11-4DCC-91AC-AC6467E15551

Posted by Suzanne Buchko | Filed under Educating Julia, Growing a Daughter

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walking, swinging & breathing

18 Wednesday Mar 2020

Posted by Suzanne Buchko in Educating Julia, Growing a Daughter, Journaling My Days

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Tags

Carona Art, Coronavirus, education, home, politics

4DF06869-363F-43FE-97B2-448FF55F3326We are proceeding slowly through our day.  This is truly our first day alone.  During the weekend, we had a guest who lingered and we saw Cheshire and Justin twice since school let out.  So, this is day 1 alone. 

No word from the school about work so it’s time to devise some of my own.  Looking through work from a few summers ago and thinking about what Julia is doing in her community math class, I decided on time as our math focus, one of Julia’s weaknesses and something that she needs to become proficient in to succeed as an adult.  Today, I made up a worksheet for the passage of days.  In school, they are working on the passage of minutes. Continue reading →

our new world

11 Wednesday Sep 2019

Posted by Suzanne Buchko in Growing a Daughter, Journaling My Days

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Tags

education, high school, Learning, meditation, Newton

F4797A75-796A-4825-A9D8-80FCB91A8BBFLast week, Julia’s inclusion facilitator (a post previously called “case manager” and hereafter IF) told me that Julia was not put on the bus list in error and if it was possible for me to drive her for the week, she would get the bus this second week of school.  I agreed, jotting down the bus as a topic of conversation for our meeting this week.  Sunday evening, the bus service called me to tell me when Julia would be picked up on Monday.  This morning the bus was early and so tooted its horn for us.  I went to the door and Julia was out a few minutes later.  I talked to the driver who actually seemed to know the the time quoted to me was too late and that they were still making adjustments.  She apologized that I did not get phone call before this morning about changes.  I feel like I’m living in some utopian bizarro world!  In Madison (I’m not going to repeat the bus saga, the sped bus never tooted its horns if Julia was not waiting for it.  A bus pulled up to our house, waited a few minutes and then left.  There were a few times when I complained the bus never showed up and the dispatcher said that the bus was there, waited and left.  If the bus was early, especially in the early days of ninth grade, it could have escaped our notice.  So, this little curtesy, a tooting of the horn seems like a miracle to me. Continue reading →

finding her feet

05 Monday Aug 2019

Posted by Suzanne Buchko in Educating Julia, Growing a Daughter

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Tags

Boston, education, independence, Learning

573DDFF9-13E7-4F93-A7A9-3FDC17E9DA0CSunday, second day of the Framingham PopCult Anime Con.

Spiky green hair or extraordinarily long pink hair, intricate foam weapons, knee high boots with lifts, tails and long gray gloves, short skirted Japanese school girl uniforms, maids and sword carrying warriors stalk the hotel halls. There are a few other functions going on in the hotel. Did the family reunion in the Concord Room know they would be running into imaginary adventurers?

Julia’s passion for My Hero Academia is completely in line with the many, many con attendees who are dressed as Hero characters or sporting identifiable tee shirts. Lots of bought costumes and some more original hand made ones are on display. A beautiful looking Howl from Howl’s Moving Castle won best costume of the con.  The character, Howl, is male; I am not sure of the con’s Howl. The gender of many bewigged attendees is a complete mystery and after awhile I stop guessing. So many of the anime characters could be either or both depending on the adventure, the plot line, or the preference of the composer. Boys in skirts and make up; girls as male warrior characters. Julia has gone from rigid identifications of gender when she entered high school to the ability to accept the fluidity of this gathering.  She declares that she wants to cross-dress but either I don’t understand exactly what she means or she doesn’t understand the concept.  She still wants to wear dresses and skirts all the time.  Now, how is that cross dressing? Continue reading →

bullet points of now

24 Friday May 2019

Posted by Suzanne Buchko in Educating Julia, Growing a Daughter, Journaling My Days

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Boston, cheer, education, moving

So much moving, nothing stops time, nothing stops emotion ebbing and flowing. There are lessons of impermanence around every corner.

The bullet points of the now:

-We have a place to live!  Last Thursday, Cheshire and I saw the first floor of an owner occupied 2-family victorian house, 3-bedrooms, good kitchen, laundry hook-ups in basement, off street although not garage parking and relatively close to stores and restaurants and pretty.  I made application on Friday, was rushed along when another prospective renter expressed interest, the RE agent called me (in Indianapolis, thank goodness, we don’t need land lines anymore) and broke the good news.  Lease signing, check sending, other document signing was a stuttering flurry over the next few days.  I think I can safely say that we have a place to live in Newtonville. Continue reading →

transitions, holidays & scratching

02 Friday Nov 2018

Posted by Suzanne Buchko in Growing a Daughter, Journaling My Days, Uncategorized

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Tags

Boston, education, family, home, politics

F8FE9971-36D3-4C2F-9DAF-16512D3E1919State of my world:

Julia’s head scratching has not abated with the delousing and aftermath.  She is losing hair and areas without hair are increasingly visible to the casual observer.  I think she is doing most of her scratching at night before she goes to sleep and when she is alone in the bathroom.  Anxiety, habit, stimming or something else?  Years ago, the way she finally stopped scratching her skin was on a three-strike-and-she-was-sent-home-from-school program.  It was radical and it worked.  I don’t know right now how much scratching is going on at school — I’m checking.  I don’t think that school staff would be willing to put such a discipline into effect.  Of course, if it is mostly at night, that it wouldn’t work anyway. I am in full worry mode.  We will visit our doctor next Tuesday and her shrink on Thursday.   OT is working on it as well. Needless to say, I am without control.

I spoke with a local reporter yesterday about Shabazz High School and my experience last spring when Julia applied for admission and was first asked for an interview and then rejected before the interview took place.  I talked about inconsistent messages and requirements, and apparent exclusion of kids with IEPs.  I told him that just before school closed for the summer and we were about to travel, how I got a call that they were reconsidering everyone who had applied and was rejected.  (I don’t remember if it was rejected without interview.)  Julia couldn’t interview before traveling and when we returned home, I check out the requirements again.  Julia had been summarily rejected for not doing grade level math.  Neither the requirement for doing grade level math nor her math skills had changed.  I decided not to put her through an interview.  I acknowledged to the reporter that the school has been good for kids there and I didn’t want to jeopardize the school for those kids.  And yet, what of kids like Julia?  I am conflicted. Continue reading →

follow up & rugelach

18 Tuesday Sep 2018

Posted by Suzanne Buchko in Educating Julia, Growing a Daughter, Journaling My Days

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

advocacy, cooking, education, high school

CCCD0247-5F0D-4278-B8F6-9758819B1B5AAfter two reminder emails to my list of PTB (“Powers That Be”), Julia was picked up this morning in time to get to school on time. Her case manager texted me that her bus was on time and  she was not marked late during first period. I’m holding out for a week before I ‘get off my high horse,’ as my grandma used to say.

However, just because nothing is ever sweet and easy—This morning we went to the door three minutes before her ride has been scheduled to find the bus waiting.  I don’t quite know when it got there and I hadn’t received any word that she would be picked up sooner than her scheduled time.  I really don’t mean to look a gift horse in the mouth (Barb, lots of horse idiots today!), but it felt that it was just a wee bit passive aggressive to reschedule the pick up without any word to me.  Because the bus has been coming late, we have been going to the door just on time.  If we had this morning, the bus would have probably left.  I’ll swallow this complaint right here, because I know what response I would get.  I’m not even going to add to my thank you that a schedule getting Julia to school on time should have been worked out before school started.   Continue reading →

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Chase Joy with Us

We are a young artist on the autism spectrum and her warrior writing mom making family and discovering the world. Home is Newton, Massachusetts in a blue house where we are spending ALL our days and nights. We’ve loved traveling together and we hope to do it again when COVID19 is a memory. Visit awhile, read and comment. Nothing like a good conversation to keep us all sane during this unexpected adventure.

Check out Julia’s art blog: https://quarantineart.wordpress.com

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Italy 2015

Pizza with procuiltto. Better than pepperoni!
Pizza with procuiltto. Better than pepperoni!
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Waiting for the taxi
Waiting for the taxi
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Duomo of Siena
Duomo of Siena
View from inside the Doge's palace.
View from inside the Doge’s palace.
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First impressions, lasting memories.
First impressions, lasting memories.

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