Archive for the ‘Parenting Issues’ Category
Thursday, June 1st, 2023
As mentioned before, when my son started school at Cal Poly SLO, I added a Cal Poly Pride shirt to my wardrobe. I wanted to show my support for him, his school, and the LGBTQ+ community. Naturally, when my daughter started college last fall, I pulled up her school’s online college bookstore to order myself a pride shirt. Alas, it was not to be.
My daughter is a musical theatre kid through and through — so much so that she is braving the bitter cold of upstate, middle-of-nowhere New York to get a BFA in MT from a little, no-name state college that just happens to have a great musical theatre program. In fact, the entire performing arts department is just musical theatre and they pretty much have the entire Dowd Performing Arts building to themselves. She’s attending the State University of New York (SUNY) Cortland in Cortland, NY.
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Tags: college, Education, glbt, holidays, lgbt, LGBTQ, LGBTQ Families Day, LGBTQFamiliesDay, Pride, Pride Month, Pride Shirts, school, schools, SUNY Cortland
Posted in Education, Holidays, LGBT Parenting, Parenting Issues, Parenting News | No Comments »
Wednesday, June 1st, 2022
I totally get that not everyone fits into the he/she dichotomy. I totally feel like a guy (although maybe not entirely the classic macho “bruh” kinda guy) but I get that some people don’t. They may not feel like either or maybe both or they may even feel more masculine one day and more feminine another. We barely know anything about how consciousness works so why would we try to force our notions of it into two narrowly defined category, especially in the face of evidence that they don’t work?
My daughter has a very good friend whose pronouns are they and them. This friend has been so very good for her and I am happy they have found each other; my only wish was that they had met earlier in high school. My daughter (who uses she/her) has no problem using they/them pronouns and does so consistently.
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Tags: glbt, lgbt, LGBTQ, LGBTQFamiliesDay, pronouns
Posted in Bad Parenting 101, LGBT Parenting, Parenting News, Race and Equality | No Comments »
Tuesday, June 1st, 2021
My oldest is finishing his freshman year (albeit with sophomore standing, if I may brag a bit) at the California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo (or Cal Poly, as most people call it) and while I have worked hard not to be a helicopter parent, I have been following his college career very closely. I never really went to university — just a couple of years at the local community college before dropping out — and so the entire process is fascinating to me. I’m also incredibly proud of my son and enjoy watching his progress. I am involved with a couple of parents’ groups on Facebook and of the Cal Poly subreddit on Reddit. It was on Reddit that I came across a post about the campus Pride Center which, apparently, is literally in the closet — an old electrical closet that was remodelled.
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Tags: CalPoly, college, GLBTQ, LGBTQ, LGBTQ Families Day, Pride, Pride Month, Pride Shirts, university
Posted in Education, LGBT Parenting | No Comments »
Tuesday, June 1st, 2021
I’m not going to lie — the last year or so has been a doozy. My kids’ school shut down in March and, like everyone else, we’ve been just trying to keep our heads above water. College selection, high school graduation, senior dance performance, summer teaching job — all these were scaled back or shifted to virtual for my oldest. The robotics competition season was simply cancelled; our living room became a storage locker for tools and materials, in case the kids were able to work on their robot outside the school or over the summer. This past school year was all online — my oldest did go off to school but took his classes from his dorm room, while the other two attended Zoom school in their bedrooms. My wife turned our dining room into her classroom, complete with posters and number corners; she worked overtime all summer learning new technologies and creating materials to teach remotely.
And so, here we are at the start of another Pride Month and — I’ll be honest — I’ve not really had the time or energy to think about it. Heck, I haven’t even really been wearing my pride shirts (but in my defense, I haven’t been wearing anything, so…)
With that in mind, I’m thinking about it now. Specifically, I’m thinking about Prides past.
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Tags: GLBTQ, LGBTQ, LGBTQ Families Day, Memories, Pride, Pride Month
Posted in Holidays, LGBT Parenting, Politics, Race and Equality, Religion | No Comments »
Monday, June 1st, 2020
Last December, I was at the San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department tree-lighting ceremony in front of McLaren Lodge in Golden Gate Park. I was there to video my daughter and the theatre company of which she’s a member. Before they went on, however, there was another group — a family of singers. There was the mom and dad, of course, and six or seven kids, and they were performing Christmas carols. They were a regular Von Trapp family.
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Tags: equality, LGBTQ Families Day, LGBTQ Families Day 2020, LGBTQFamiliesDay, Racism, Representation
Posted in Education, LGBT Parenting, Parenting Issues, Parenting News, Race and Equality | No Comments »
Saturday, September 21st, 2019
According to a survey from the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, only two out of every five Americans could name all three branches of the federal government and one in five couldn’t name even a single branch. This is better than it has been in past years, but the survey unequivocally shows that Americans really need to know more than they do about how their country works. Fortunately, there is a solution.
High school civics classes, as you’d expect, make a big difference in an adult’s knowledge on the topic. With that in mind, Florida Representative Alcee L. Hastings, along with 62 cosponsors, has introduced a bill to allocate additional funding for civics classes as a means of addressing this issue. Rep. Hastings, however, is not the only one tackling the problem. The Center for Cartoon Studies might seem an unlikely ally in the push to increase civics awareness, but they could very well be the key to getting kids — and adults — up to speed on the way government works.
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Tags: civics, comics, democracy, Education, government, laws, lesson plans, politics, sausages, webcomics
Posted in Education, Entertainment, Legislation, Politics | No Comments »
Thursday, September 12th, 2019
I try to be an involved parent, I really do. It’s hard, though, when you spend most of your time trapped behind a little desk in a cluttered little office, doing things that have nothing to do with your kids. Fortunately, however, I can at least keep tabs on their schoolwork, even while sitting at my desk. Our school district has an online system where parents can view their student’s grades, assignments, and attendance.
With my older two in high school, I want to make sure they are taking the classes they need, not only to graduate, but to get accepted to the colleges of their choice. Further, as part of my efforts to keep their resumes up-to-date, I want to be able to calculate their grade point average. While it might seem like a simple matter of counting up their As, Bs, and so on, giving each a value, and dividing by the number of grades counted, it is actually more complicated than that.
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Tags: A-G Requirements, Advanced Placement, AP, courses, gpa, grades, graduation, high school
Posted in Education, ParenTech, Parenting Issues | No Comments »
Thursday, September 12th, 2019
One of the things I’ve done for my kids is to create a resume for each of them and keep it updated over the years. Even if you’re not in the market for a new job, it’s always a good idea to update your resume on a regular basis to avoid having to try and remember what you accomplished over the years when you do decide to look for a new opportunity. While kids may not have much in the way of real work experience, they do have other accomplishments to keep track of for when they do look for a job, apply for college, or audition for a part in a show.
My oldest is currently working on college applications and his resume has come in handy as a reference for the experiences and achievements he wants to share with colleges. My daughter actually has two, an academic resume and a performance resume. The latter lists, in detail, her skills, talent, and experience in the world of performing arts while the former includes a summary of her performance experience and training along with her academic accomplishments. They are two very different documents intended for very different audiences. My youngest doesn’t have much to put on his resume yet, having just started middle school, but nonetheless I’ve listed his musical instrument training (piano, trombone, and congas) as well as the sports he has been involved in.
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Tags: Accomplishments, job, jobs, Resume, school
Posted in Education, Money and Finance, Parenting Issues, Tips and Advice | No Comments »
Monday, June 3rd, 2019
At the end of 2016, I wrote about the election of Donald Trump to the office of President of the United States and how to talk to my kids about it. I made some predictions about the effects of a Trump presidency, all of which came true. (Don’t congratulate me too hard; they were all quite obvious.) Even as he tweeted about Pride Month, the Orange Menace was rolling back protections for the LGBTQ+ community.
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Tags: civil rights, equal rights, LGBTQ, LGBTQ Families Day, LGBTQ Families Day 2019, trump
Posted in LGBT Parenting, Parenting Issues, Politics | No Comments »
Monday, March 4th, 2019
In his opening remarks at the annual San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) school site council planning summit, Superintendent Vincent Matthews, Ed.D. displayed the slide below. He explained that all the of these technologies had been developed in the last year, highlighting our need to ensure our students are prepared for a changing world
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Tags: art, arts, engineering, literature, math, mathematics, science, STEAM, STEM, technology
Posted in Education, ParenTech | No Comments »