Well the meeting wasn’t exactly a picnic, but it could have been worse.

The lawyer/advocate, seemed to be more on a fact-finding mission than an attack-and-destroy mission. She was not at all unreasonable and had apparently talked the parents into pursuing medical advice for controlling this child’s attention deficit disorder and obsessive/compulsive disorder.

This is a good thing, especially for the little girl. Each day must be an exhausting struggle for her, and the fact that her parents weren’t willing to check out the medical possibilities that might help her bothered me a lot.

I don’t think medication is the answer for all her problems, but I do think that it might be helpful to her.

I think the testing results had also done a lot to take the wind out of their sails. It was very clear that this child has a great skill base and just can’t figure out how to apply her skills.

No decisions were made at this meeting. We’re just planning to reconvene in April after they’ve had the chance to give medication a shot. I can’t say I’m thrilled that we’ll have to meet again, but hey, that’s eight weeks away.

The substitute fiasco of yesterday got even worse.

I had to test one of the boys from that class this morning. He told me even more disturbing information. The sub grabbed him by the arm, took him from the room and told him that there was no need to be "putting up with these goddam fucking kids".

Good Lord!

I was dumbstruck. I asked John to carefully consider what he had told me and to be sure that they were the exact words the sub had used. He assured me that they were.

After I finished testing him I went to find the principal. He had already gotten calls from the parents as well as a couple of notes, so he had already been dealing with it.

The sub will not be working for us again.

I found a great new book to read with my little group when we get back from vacation. It’s called Harry’s Mad by Dick King-Smith. It’s not actually a new book, it’s just new to me. This is the same author who wrote Babe. (Yes, it was a book before it was a movie.)

It’s about a little boy from London who finds out he has been left something in the will of his American uncle. Of course he imagines all sorts of riches and wealth, and is convinced the uncle was a millionaire. It turns out to be an African gray parrot.

When the parrot arrives it doesn’t speak, so Harry decides he’s going to teach it to say his name, which is Madison. He very slowly and carefully says to the parrot "my – name – is – Madison". The parrot looks at him and says "Well that would be a remarkable coincidence, so is mine!"

This book is a scream. The parrot is incredibly smart and the plot is very funny. He’s kidnapped and has a bit of an adventure. The book is meat for 8-12 year olds, but I think I’m going to give it to my mother to read.

I just loved it, and found myself laughing out loud as I read it. I’m going to try to come up with some worksheets and activities to accompany the book. That will be a vacation project.

>

I don’t think I’ve mentioned lately that I have next week off.

I do.

Nine glorious days of no alarm clock ringing.

Listening to: Capital Sings Cole Porter

Reading: Call It Destiny Jayne Ann Krentz

Weather: 30, partly sunny

Trivia: Why do we call a book of maps an atlas?

A collection of maps or charts, typically bound together, has its name derived from a custom initiated by one Gerardus Mercator in the 16th century. It seems that Mercator used the figure of the Titan Atlas holding the earth on his shoulders, as a frontispiece for a book of his father's maps, and the name stuck. Of course, Mercator wasn't the first to bind a bunch of maps together for convenience's sake; Abraham Ortelius' Theatrum orbis terrarum (1570; Epitome of the Theatre of the World) is generally thought to be the first modern atlas. Yet another monument of 16th-century cartography is the Lafr=E9ri Atlas, containing maps compiled by gifted Italian cartographers between 1556 and 1575. But by the following century, the Dutch reigned supreme in the production of high-quality atlases, as evidenced by the works of aforementioned Mercator. By the 18th century, the French were creating atlases, which were less ornate but equal in accuracy and richness of content to the maps of the Dutch and Italians. German atlases of the same period were, unfortunately, burdened with enormous detail, numerous insets, pictures, and notes. In addition to maps and charts, atlases often contain pictures, tabular data, facts about areas, and indexes of place-names keyed to coordinates of latitude and longitude. Over the years, three types of basic atlases have come into popular use; General-reference atlases emphasize place locations, the connections between them, and the relative size or significance of these places; Thematic atlases deal primarily with a single subject, such as the agriculture, geology, climate, history, industry, languages, population, religions, resources, or other characteristics of a particular geographic area; and National atlases are usually produced by government agencies to cartographically present the whole range of a particular nation's important features, including physical, historical, economic, social, cultural, and administrative. Among the most widely used great atlases of modern times, indexing 250,000 to 500,000 place-names, are Andree's Allgemeiner Handatlas (1881-1930), the Russian Atlas Mira (first published 1954), and the London Times's Atlas of the World, 5 vol. (1955-59).

Cool word:dupe (doop) - To fool, trick or deceive; a person so deceived. skepticism (SKEP-tih-siz-um) - An instance of doubt or uncertainty. "Dave felt certain that all he needed was a healthy dose of skepticism to keep him from becoming the boss's dupe, as so many others had before."

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