My Beef: An Update

Thanks for all of your support and your honesty on Kira's incident at school. All of your thoughts, comments and emails gave me a lot of food for thought, and I think I finally unclenched my teeth at around three o'clock today, just in time to stuff in a doughnut.

I had a long talk with the counselor this afternoon, and he was able to clear up a lot of things and I feel a gazillion times better about the situation. As I mentioned, he's been Kira's counselor since the 6th grade, and is the administrator at the school that knows her the best. I thanked him for being an advocate for her, and in return he said a lot that eased my mind.

In addition, I found out from another source some information about the VP, and it's made me have a better understanding of him as well. I'm not going to talk about it here, but if you want to email me privately (and I know who you are) I'll explain it - it's not something to discuss in this forum. Yes, hard to believe, but there are some things I won't talk about on this blog.

Another thing that made me feel a lot better today? Shocking, but it was chaperoning a field trip for Kira's class, which required a long ride across town with a bus full of eighth graders. The group was headed by the art teacher, and in addition to her art students consisted of the kids from an elective homeroom called the Rainbow Council that Kira's a part of, one that is made up of of students that the teacher hand-picks from the 8th grade. This is a multi-cultural group of kids that work on charity projects like delivering food and clothing to the homeless and working in soup kitchens. Their slogan is, “We are a human spectrum of color, wisdom, understanding, and acceptance, dedicated to making this world a better place on our campus and in our world.” This is what I talked about with the teacher practically the entire bus ride, and who couldn't feel better after a conversation like that? It was like a chapter out of Chicken Soup For The Angry Parent's Soul.

I'm still ready to rail about the dress code, though, and as one commenter suggested the school site council would be a good platform for that. Also, I'm thinking of starting a Don't Judge Me By The Width Of My Straps movement - I'll make sure and send you a sign-up sheet and a refrigerator magnet.

Oh, and until then - I've bought Kira an entire wardrobe of Amish clothing she's going to wear until graduation.