It's All about the Kids, 'bout the Kids

You know The Bush School Library has all kinds of resources for parents and teachers too, right? We have books and videos encouraging adults in their work of raising and educating children -- everything from Experience and Education, by John Dewey (who inspired Helen Bush) to Madeline Levine’s Teach Your Children Well: Why Values and Coping Skills Matter More Than Grades, Trophies,or “Fat Envelopes”.

We have Free Range Kids: Giving Our Children the Freedom We Had without Going Nuts with Worry, a book by the World’s Worst Mom. (Lenore Skenazy is not really a bad mother, but the online controversy when she let her child ride the subway alone? OMG.) We have that wonderful French documentary, Babies. Four babies from birth to walking, four countries, four very distinct parenting styles.

I’m thinking about this today because I was looking up Kylene Beers this morning. (Do you know her? No reason to if you are a parent. If you are a reading teacher, I highly recommend checking her out. We have her book, Notice and Note: Strategies for Close Reading. My friend, a second grade teacher in Los Angeles, has been singing her praises for a year now.) So, anyway, like I said, I was looking her up this morning and here were the first words I read:

. . . a couple of weeks ago, I came across the Meghan Trainor music video hit “All About That Bass.” To be honest, I found that song because of the brilliant riff by some high school kids titled “All About Those Books.”  That song sent me in search of the original.  Now, with both lyrics in mind, I find myself humming “It’s all about the bass/books” all the time. And those lyrics set my mind in motion: what is _____________ all about? No surprise, I fill in that blank with the word “education.” What is education all about? I answer that with it’s “all about the kids.” That’s it. It’s not about a test. Not a blue ribbon. Not racing to the top.  It is all about the kids. When we lose sight of that, well, we simply lose.

Wow. There is it. What is best for our kids? There are lots of answers to this. Here are some of mine: Clean air, clean water, good food. Shelter, love, confidence. Opportunity, trust, faith. How do the actions we take as parents, educators and taxpayers support our children? Not our pocketbooks, not our schools, not our egos . . . our children. We love them with tender voices and soft hands. We feed them with food, stories, ideas, choices. We shelter them with a clean environment and safe spaces. We let them take risks appropriate to their age; we let them fail and experience disappointment and give them comfort in our arms. We celebrate their successes. We accept them for themselves, this amazing gift that the universe has loaned us for a time.