So, um, can you talk about flowers?
My parents think it’s cool that I’m a lawyer. My kids? Not so much. It’s kind of hard to define what it is that I do really to a four year-old. And to make it worse, my daughter’s classmates have parents that are doctors and teachers and artists - things that are more easily definable - and an airplane pilot. I mean, c’mon! How can you compete with that? That’s the epitome of cool among the pre-K set.
But all of the other parents were showing up at school to discuss their jobs, so I kind of felt like I should do it. And tax day seemed the most logical day to do it.
I had this whole great lesson planned and I have to say, it went off amazingly well. I was very pleased. I handed out stacks of pennies to the kids and we talked about the kinds of things that taxes pay for (the boys in the class were psyched to find out that taxes paid for the Philadelphia Eagles stadium) and everybody paid a penny or two into the kitty. It was great fun. Afterwards, we colored the phrase “Tax Day” since the kids are working on spelling and they were short words.
So, I was feeling really good. And this was my conversation with Katie:
Katie: “So, are you going to talk about flowers?” (I love to garden.)
Kelly: “No, it’s tax day so I am just going to talk about taxes today. Did you have fun?”
Katie: “Yeah.”
Pause.
Katie: “So next time, are you going to talk about flowers?”
April 18th, 2007 at 7:13 am
You have to admit, thought, that it’s a *good* REM song. Mr. Mac used to do this, and he always talked about politics rather than his job as a computer programmer. We have a foam-core cut-out of Howard Dean, and “Flat Howard” was always *the* hit (not Mr. Mac).
April 18th, 2007 at 12:21 pm
My dad is a lawyer (transactional) and I never really *got* it until I worked for him in high school. That turned me off lawyering (although that’s what I do now). In elementary school, I had my mom come talk on career day … about her prior career as a stewardess in the 60s. Much more cool and understandable to 3rd graders.