Returning home tomorrow.

Today is my last day of summer vacation. Tomorrow I will head back to school. It is a bittersweet time for teachers. Another summer has come and gone, faster than we can believe, and while most of us wish that our summer days would never end, we are also returning to a profession that we love with all our hearts.

Sadly, the first two days of every school year are consumed with meetings. My students don’t arrive until Wednesday morning, making the beginning of school especially difficult.

I love to teach. I despise meetings.

As my school year begins, I can’t help but think that I am returning home after a summer abroad. After fifteen years of teaching, my school has begun to feel more than a little like home. It has become a fixture of my life, and during my years spent teaching, I have worked and continue to work among people who have become some of my closest and dearest friends.

I have taught children who return to my classroom on a weekly basis to apprise their former teacher about their adventures in middle and high school. As they grow older, some of these students have become friends. I play basketball with them, counsel them on difficulties that they are experiencing and share in their accomplishments. Some of my former students now babysit my children and attend important family events with us. It’s something I could’ve never imagined when I began teaching so long ago.  

I have also developed friendships with the parents of some of my former students, and these friends have become some of the most important people in my life. I count many of them as my best  and closest friends. One is my daughter’s godmother, and two others are my son’s godparents.

Recently, I came to realize that some of the most important events of my life have taken place inside the walls to my school.

On September 11, 2001, I watched the second plane strike the World Trade Center and the both towers fall on a television in my principal’s office. Immediately thereafter, I retrieved my students from music class and went on with my day without telling them that anything had happened, giving them a few more precious hours of normalcy in a world that had suddenly changed.

In the fall of 2002, I met my future wife in the first staff meeting of the year. Ironically, our first real conversation would take place a few weeks later at a YMCA camp as we hiked around the lake with students and discussed the plans for her upcoming wedding, an engagement that she would later break off.

In the fall of 2004, I revealed plans to ask Elysha to marry me to a colleague and friend in our Curriculum Specialist’s office. A month later, while Elysha was trapped in an after-school meeting, a committee of teachers and friends helped me choose Elysha’s engagement ring. During the next month, I would hatch my plan to ask her to marry me in the principal’s office with several friends who were instrumental in pulling off the surprise.

In the spring of 2005 Elysha and I would knock on the door of our principal’s office after school one day and ask him to marry us on our wedding day.

That same spring, I received a call from the veterinarian before school informing me that my dog required life threatening spinal surgery. I went on to teach for the rest of the day while Kaleigh was in surgery, waiting to hear if she was alive or dead.

In the winter of 2006 I found a set of golf clubs in the back of my truck in the parking lot of my school, tied together by a thin, red ribbon. They were a gift from a friend and colleague. That set of used irons, which he had purchased for $10 at a yard sale, began my long and joyous road to golf mediocrity.  

In February of 2007, I was sitting at the desk in the principal’s office when my aunt told me over the phone that my mother was dead. I spent a few moments alone before returning to class to finish the day with my kids.

In May of 2007, I received a call while teaching from a member of Human Resources, instructing me to come to his office immediately. That phone call and the subsequent meeting led to nearly a year of turmoil and terror that included an anonymous conspiracy to destroy my career (as well as the  careers of my wife and friend), a large-scale attempt at character assassination and public defamation, a legal battle over my First Amendment rights and the unexpected and overwhelming support of the community.     

In the fall of 2008 I was sitting at my desk when a call came in from the geneticist, informing me that I was a carrier of the muscular dystrophy gene, and that I was almost certain to contract the same disease that killed my mother.

That same year, I was sitting at the same desk when I received the call from my agent informing me that Random House had made a preemptive offer on my first novel. I spent a moment collecting myself before finding Elysha alone in the hall and informing her of the news. She collapsed to the floor in tears, sparking great concern throughout the faculty that something terrible had happened (and that perhaps I had broken up with her). I was standing by the library after the school day had ended when negotiations over the book had finished and the call came in with the final purchase price.

In the spring of 2010, a student teacher and I had a conversation while on recess duty that gave me the idea for my third novel, Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend. The book that I didn’t want to write and thought would be stupid was born on my school’s playground and has now been published in more than 20 countries around the world.

With experiences like these, and so many more, is it any surprise that a school can begin to feel like a home?

I can’t help but wonder: Does this happen to everyone at the workplace, or is there something different about working in a school?

Updated from a post originally written in 2010.

My daughter loves butterflies and tarantulas.

As I was driving my four year-old daughter to preschool, she revealed that her two favorite insects are butterflies and tarantulas.

 

I know.

She explained that she loves butterflies because they are beautiful, and she loves tarantulas because “they’re the only bug that makes a good pet, too.”

We don’t own a tarantula, nor will we ever own a tarantula, but she has seen so many of them at the museums and zoos that she’s grown accustomed to their creepiness and thinks of them more like a dog or a cat than the terrifying subject of a 1955 monster movie.

The girl thinks refuses to eat chicken and hamburger because she says it’s disgusting, but she loves tarantulas.

As a teacher, my inclination was to use this as a teachable moment to introduce the word dichotomy to her. I tried to explain how her affection for butterflies and tarantulas represented represented a dichotomy in terms of her insect choices.

One is light, winged and colorful. The other is large, dark and hairy.

She was quiet for a moment and then said, “Dad, can we just listen to some music now?”

After 15 years of teaching, I’ve learned that not every teachable moment is a teachable moment.

The toughest question of the year

As a teacher, I am asked hundreds of questions a day. Occasionally I am asked a question that is so new, so strange or so challenging that I make note of it.

Last year’s most memorable and challenging question was asked by a student in the throes of adolescent love.

The student asked, “Mr. Dicks, why is love so hard?”

Had I been better prepared, my answer might have been better or at least more utilitarian. I might’ve offered some useful advice. But I can count the number of times a student has asked me a question about love on one hand.

It’s not exactly my area of expertise. 

My answer was this:

“Love is hard because the heart wants what the heart wants. Even when your head knows that love will be hard and maybe even impossible, the heart doesn’t stop loving until its ready to stop.”

My student did not seem overly impressed with my answer.

Rightfully so.

“Dinosaurs lived with people” violates the basic human right of not being stupid.

This is an actual science test given to fourth graders in South Carolina. I consider it a human rights violation.

Every nine-year-old child has the right to not be stupid. I believe that the  teachers administering this test are violating this basic human right.

The fact that children are being taught like this is a national tragedy, and I believe it goes a long way in explaining why one in five Americans are now non-believers.

You simply cannot hang your religion’s principles on faulty and ludicrous science and expect rationale people to continue believing. You may indoctrinate the lowest common denominator, but the thoughtful, intelligent and (worst of all) curious people will see something like this and run away as quickly as possible.

My eleven year old publicist

One of my students arrived to school on Friday with a business card in his hand.

“I booked you a speaking gig,” he told me and handed me the business card with the name of a manager of a Barnes & Noble bookstore where I have never spoken before.

“What?” I asked. “Are you making this up?”

“No,” he explained. "My mom was buying your book again, and I told the person at the counter that you were my teacher. They’re celebrating their 20th year in business and wanted an author to speak, so they said they would love to have you. So I said yes for you. Here’s the information.”

In addition to the printed text, the manager of the store wrote his name, the date of the appearance and some other necessary information.

The kid booked me a gig.

I always tell me students that when they become independently wealthy, I would not be averse to them becoming my patrons. This isn’t quite patronage, but it ain’t bad for an eleven year old.

It makes me think that I’m not taking enough advantage of my army of small soldiers.

Why you shouldn’t tell your kid to fight back

As a teacher, I often find myself in the position of telling a parent (most often a father) that it is a bad idea to encourage his or her child to fight back if confronted with aggression.

I understand the instinct. As a teenager, I got in my share of fights. Most often, I was battling an aggressor or defending my honor. Even though I didn’t win every fight, it always felt good to stand up for myself. It let people know that if they messed with me, there would be consequences.

No one wants to raise children who cower in fear or are unable or unwilling to defend themselves when necessary. Though you would never hope for your children to end up in a fight, you’d like to think that if pressed into battle, they would stand their ground, protect their physical being and defend their honor.

This instinct is wrong.

In nearly every fight that I have seen or participated in throughout the course of my life, the option of running was always available. This is what I tell my students to do. I advise that they “fight with your feet.”

“Run away as fast as possible.”

The reason is simple:

As soon as you begin fighting, you risk seriously injuring or killing your opponent. That may sound overly dramatic, but it is not. Fights result in serious injury and death all the time. Even the single, one-handed shove from an elementary school student can result in a life-altering head injury. A head can hit a desk on the way to the ground. It can strike the floor at an unnatural angle. It can smack against a concrete floor or parking lot. 

Sometimes even a single punch can kill a person, like a high school student found out last week when, unhappy with a referee's decision during a soccer game, punched the referee in the head.

Two days later the man died from bleeding in his brain.

The high school student is expected to be charged next. week.

A man is dead.

A family mourns his loss.

A high school student’s life has been changed forever.

I am certain that the high school student did not want to kill or even injure this referee. Regardless, a life has been taken.

Please don’t tell your child to fight back. You could not give him or her worse advice.

A book about sex that I should’ve written.

The Daily Beast reports on a new book, The Newlywed's Guide to Physical Intimacy, available in stores soon:

A new sex guide to be published in Hebrew aims at teaching orthodox Jews the basics of sex.

How basic?

The book goes as far as outlining the anatomical differences between males and females. The author, Dr. David Ribner, has a doctorate in social work and is an ordained Rabbi. He has spent the last 30 years working with orthodox Jews in Israel, who often know absolutely nothing about male-female interactions.

As a fifth grade teacher, I actually teach some of this basic anatomy as part of our health curriculum. I would’ve been the perfect person to write this book. I have plenty of experience dealing with students who are clueless in this regard. 

Of course, the book also address sex, which is not a part of our fifth grade curriculum. But it does so very carefully. Rather than actually including information about sex in the book, there is a a sealed envelope on the back flap, with a warning to readers that it contains sexual diagrams. If you don't want to look at them, you can rip off the envelope and throw it away.

Inside are three diagrams of basic sexual positions.

Just three?

This could be the first and last word that these people ever receive in terms of sex, and all they are being given are three positions?

These are grown men and women who have no idea what the anatomy of the opposite sex even looks like, and in many cases, they don’t understand how their own anatomy works.

Just three positions?

They need as much help as they can get.

I should’ve written this book.

Children swallowing poisoned beads was not my original plan. I swear.

In 2012 I participated in the Books on the Nightstand Booktopia event in Santa Cruz, California. The culmination of the weekend is an event called the Celebration of Author, wherein each author speaks for about ten minutes.

My talk, as well as that of author Cara Black, was broadcast on the Books on the Nightstand podcast this week. I spoke about the importance of reading Shakespeare by telling some amusing stories from fifteen years of teaching Shakespeare to elementary students.

You can listen to my talk (as well as Cara’s) here.

An interview with my not-so-fictional character

In case you didn’t know, Mrs. Gosk, the third grade teacher in MEMOIRS OF AN IMAGINARY FRIEND, is a real person. I’ve worked with her for the past fifteen years, and when I started my teaching career, she served as my mentor. When it came time to choose the best teacher possible for Max and Budo, I couldn't help but use Mrs. Gosk.

She is essentially a non-fictional character in a fictional story.

Mrs. Gosk and I recorded an interview that appears at the end of the audiobook, but in case you didn’t listen to the book and wanted to hear a small portion of the interview, it’s available here.

If you want to hear the interview in its entirety, you'll have to buy the audiobook.

Best use of duct tape ever

I received a gift in the mail last week from a former student. Here it is.

At first I thought that she has simply seen the Patriots logo, been aware of the versatile nature of duct tape and decided it would make the perfect gift.

If this had been the case, I would be have been quite happy with the gift.

But she transformed a great gift into an unforgettable, top-10 of all time gift by adding the following to the accompanying note:

Mr. Dicks, use this to shut the hollering mouths of the Jets, Giants and especially Dolphins fans in your classroom.

The principal informed me that duct taping the aforementioned children’s mouths was not appropriate (something I also suspected), but that’s okay.

When it comes to gift giving, it’s always the thought that counts.

Charity sucks. At least in this instance.

There was once a device marketed to housewives  that would charge anyone who wanted to ring the doorbell 10 cents as a mean of reducing the number of traveling salesmen knocking on their doors.

In order to ring the doorbell, a visitor had to deposit a dime in a slot right next to the bell. This would trigger the bell to ring. If the guest was a friend, the dime was returned upon entrance. However, if the visitor was a stranger, the money was retained by the device and was given to charity.

Obviously the ability for a person to knock on a door rather than ringing the bell mitigates the effectiveness of this device, but my real problem with it is the idea that the money collected was given to charity.

While I am not opposed to charitable giving, it seems to me that if you are forced to endure an unsolicited solicitation from a sleazy salesman, you should be able to profit from the time lost.  

I encounter a similar issue when students in my class win writing contests and are awarded cash prizes. Oftentimes the parents of these fledgling wordsmiths want their child to donate their winnings to charity or to some school-related cause.

I’m always appalled at this notion.

I explain to parents that this is the worst possible thing to ask a child to do. In almost every case, it’s the first time in the child’s life that he or she has received monetary compensation for mental exertion and creative output.

Reinforce this incredible feeling by allowing your child to revel in the joy of cold, hard cash.

Better yet, expand upon the experience. Enhance the reinforcement.  

Take your child to the most decadent candy store on the planet and allow him or her to spend every dime on jujubes and lollipops.

Allow your child to purchase the book that you thought was inappropriate for his or her age level.

Permit your child to purchase his or her first rated R movie ticket.

There will be plenty of opportunities in a child’s life to help those in need, and a charitable spirit is a quality that is well worth fostering in young people.

Just not immediately after a child has been paid for something he made up in his head. Don’t ruin the moment by forcing your child to give this money away to starving children. Not this time.  

It’s no surprise that it took me three years to complete my first novel but less than a year to complete my subsequent books.

Once you get paid for your efforts, you want to be paid again and again.

Miss me, damn it.

Thousands of North Koreans faced six months in labor camp for not being upset enough about death of Kim Jong-il.

I impose a similar rule for when I am absent from school. I expect my students to pine over me while I am gone and lament every moment that they are forced to spend away from me.

As with many things in teaching, expectations and reality do not always jive.

Affirmation from a Moth audience is unbelievable. Affirmation from a bunch of kids is damn good, too.

As a second grader, comedian and actor Jamie Foxx was so talented at telling jokes that his teacher used him as a reward.

If the class behaved, he would entertain them.

I don’t know who Jaime Foxx’s teacher was, but I suspect that I would have liked him a lot.

One of the rewards I give students throughout the school year is stories from my life. Most often these stories are about my childhood, but not always. There are also occasional stories about my children, my wife and events from my adult life as well. I will be reading a book aloud to the class or listening to a student tell me a story when I am reminded of a moment from my past, and I’ll say something like, “Oh, that reminds me of the strangest pet that I ever owned.”

“What was it?” a student will ask.

“Oh, you won’t believe the pet I had as a kid. It was amazing. But I don’t have time to tell that story now. But maybe later. When you’re especially productive.”

My personal secretary (a student) will then add the story to the growing list of topics lest I forget, and when my students have been especially productive and achieved their goals ahead of of schedule, I will offer to tell them a story from this list. The personal secretary will review the list and choose one for me to tell.

It’s a five minute reward that my students adore, and it also serves to reinforce the elements of effective storytelling with my kids. Oftentimes I’m also able to embed some meaningful life lessons into these stories, and best of all, I am able to make my kids laugh.

Kids who laugh at school like school, and kids who like school learn more.

It’s that simple.

The strangest pet ever, by the way, was a raccoon. His name was Racket. Perhaps I’ll tell you that story someday.

Of course, you must be a good storyteller in order to make this reward work.

Earlier this year I was telling a story that included one of my fellow teachers, and halfway through the story, he happened to enter the classroom. He heard the story being told, realized that he was an integral  part of it and sat down to listen. A minute later he jumped in to clarify a point and then proceeded to tell his part of the story for himself.

“Stop!” one of the kids said after few moments. “You’re not telling it right. Let Mr. Dicks tell the story. He knows what he’s doing. Just listen.”

Several others nodded their heads in agreement.

And they were right. He wasn’t telling the story right. He was butchering it.

Winning two Moth StorySLAMs and placing second in four others over the past year has been a dream come true for me (actually, the second place finishes have been damn frustrating), but that moment of affirmation from a bunch of ten-year-olds meant just as much to me.

Read Shakespeare and avoid children’s theater

On Saturday night I had the honor of joining nine other authors and audiobook narrators for Books on the Nightstand’s Celebration of Authors. Each of us were asked to speak on a topic of our choice (presumably pertaining to books and literature), and I decided just a few minutes before my turn to speak to talk about Shakespeare and the horrors of children’s theater.

Unbeknownst to me, friends and readers of my work were recording my talk and posted it to YouTube shortly thereafter. An audio recording on my talk, as well as the talks of Tayari Jones, Ann Packer, Tupelo Hassman, Simon Vance, Grover Gardner, Cara Black, Sarah McCoy, Adam Johnson, and Lynne Cox, will be available on the Books on the Nightstand podcast in the coming months, but if you can’t wait, you can hear and see my talk from that night.

Spite is right

I’ve often said that spite is the best reason to do anything. Here is further evidence of this fact:

British scientist John Gurdon is told by his high school teacher that there was no hope of him ever studying science, and that doing so would be a complete waste of time for him and anyone forced to teach him.

Gurdon was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology this year for his discovery that mature cells can be reprogrammed to become immature cells, capable of developing into all tissues of the body. Their findings have revolutionized our understanding of how cells and organisms develop.

Though it is highly unlikely given Gurdon’s age, I hope that his high school teacher lived long enough to eat his words.

A message I try to drill into my students every single day

The most critical lessons that I teach my students each year

As I prepare to re-enter the classroom next week for another year of teaching, I was thinking about some of the most important lessons that I will attempt to impart on my students in the coming school year. There are too many to even begin to try listing, of course, but there always seems to be a few that become a constant refrain throughout the year.

The following is a list of twelve that came to mind:

_______________________________________________

TWELVE OF THE MOST CRITICAL LESSONS THAT I TEACH TO MY STUDENTS EACH YEAR 

1. One exclamation point. Never more than one regardless of circumstances.

2. Never ever ask a woman if she is pregnant.

3. The world is full of talented people who did nothing with their lives because they didn't try. Effort is everything.

4. If you learn to use you're and your, too, to and two and there, they're and their correctly, you will already be better than half the writers of the world.

5. If you learn to write in complete sentences, you will be better than the other half.

6. Memorization of the multiplication tables is essential if you want to be successful in math. You will fail if you do not memorize them.

7. If you cannot find a good book, you are not trying very hard.

8. Acknowledge blame quickly. Apologize sincerely.

9. Understanding of basic geography will prevent many moments of academic and social embarrassment.

10. Lots of great music was made long before you were born. Don’t be an ageist. Give older music a chance.

11. Excluding anyone from anything for any reason will always make you look like a coward and the biggest jerk in the world.

12. You are the hero of your own story. Act like a hero.

My book launch included three very special people

Last night’s book launch at Barnes & Noble was wonderful, and I thank all of my friends and family and fans for their support. We had about one hundred people in attendance to hear me read a smidgen from MEMOIRS OF AN IMAGINARY FRIEND, tell some stories related to the book, recommend some of my favorite books, and answer some interesting, challenging and probing questions from the audience.

Included in the audience were three former students who were in my first class fourteen years ago. When I taught these three students, I was teaching second grade and they were seven years old. Today they are are preparing to enter their junior year in college, and yet whenever I launch a book or premier a musical or direct a Shakespearean play with my class, they always seem to find a way to be there.

I cannot tell you how much this means to me. 

Brandon was my first most difficult student, so he is also one of my most memorable students of all time. He was a handful to say the least, and he would have been a handful even with a decade of teaching experience under my belt. He was a class clown, a rambunctious boy, a slightly disinterested student and perpetually happy, which made it almost impossible to punish him. No matter what I did to make him suffer and learn his lesson, he would continue to smile. 

Today Brandon is studying to be a surgical physician's assistant and doing great. He has a mature young man who continues to impress me every time I see him. At last night’s launch, I charged the audience to go home and write something and make it a habit that they never stop. Before I had even returned home and paid the babysitter, Brandon had written about something he had overheard that night and sent it to me for my review.

I can’t tell you how overjoyed I was to see it.

If only he had been so quick to complete his homework assignments in second grade.

Liz is the reason that I teach Shakespeare to my students. I was having an especially difficult day in class. No one was listening to my instructions, students were unfocused and loud, Brandon was probably causing trouble, and so in an act of desperation, I shouted, “Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears!” The class went quiet, everyone stared at their wild-eyed teacher, and then little Elizabeth, seven years old at the time, said, “What does that mean?”  I took a deep breath, calmed my nerves and explained that the line came from a play entitled Julius Caesar. Then Liz asked, “What’s the play about?” I began to summarize the plot of the play to the class, and for the first time in what seemed like a week, my students were paying attention to me. Seizing on the moment, I gathered them at my feet and told them the entire story of Julius Caesar and his tragic fall from grace. When I was finished, the class was staring at me in utter fascination. They asked if they could perform the play, and thus my career in children’s theater was born.

Liz was one of my best and brightest students during that first year of teaching, and she remains so today. She is also going to be a junior in college this year, and as expected, she is doing remarkably well.

Allison is one of the few students who I had the pleasure of teaching for two years in a row. After teaching second grade for that first year, I was moved up to third grade and about half a dozen students moved up with me, including Allison. I call them “The Tainted Few.” Allison was a quiet but inquisitive student  who wore the same purple sweatshirt almost every day and never stopped smiling. She has thankfully left that purple sweatshirt behind and is now attending college and studying marketing, though she also wants to pursue a career in set design and lighting. More than just my former student, Allison has become my friend and an informal member of our family. She is now the primary babysitter for our children and a fixture at family events. Clara refers to Allison as her best friend, and I couldn’t imagine a better best friend for her. 

When I began teaching elementary school fourteen years ago, I never expected that three of my tiny second graders, who who were still learning to read and write and behave, would continue to be such an ever-present part of my life. There were many other former students in the audience last night, and each of them mean a great deal to me, but these three former students from my first class own a special place in my heart. They serve as a reminder of who I once was and who I am today, and they have taught me that the bond that forms between a student and a teacher can last long after the students  have left the classroom and moved onto bigger and better things.

It’s not something they tell you about you when you’re in college, studying to become a teacher, but they really should.

The paycheck isn’t great, but the benefits are incalculable.

Parenting is supposed to make you sad, frightened and neurotic. Don’t make your kids suffer by mitigating the pain.

When I was a boy, I spent much of my summer at a Camp Yawgoog, a Boy Scout camp in Rockville, Rhode Island. My troop would spend a week at camp, and then I would spend another 2-7 weeks at a campsite designed for boys who wanted to spend more than just one week away from home. It was called Camp Baden Powell, and it consisted of a mishmash of boys from various Boy Scout troops around the country and abroad who were overseen by a theoretical Scoutmaster but were essentially on their own unless they got into trouble.

These were some of the best days of my life. The freedom, the independence, the personal responsibility and the decision-making that I was afforded helped to make the me the person I am today.

It was also fun as hell.

Parents were invited to visit the camp on Sundays, but this was an opportunity that my parents never exercised. I was also required to send a postcard home every Wednesday. If I did not arrive at the dining hall with one in hand, I would not be served dinner.

I often opted to eat a candy bar for dinner or stockpile bread at lunchtime rather than take the time to pen a missive to my parents. For my time at Camp Yawgoog, I was blissfully disconnected from the rest of the world.

As a parent, I will probably send my children to summer camp someday. Ideally, my son will find his way to Camp Yawgoog like his father did, and if I had my way, my daughter would as well. While my children are away at camp, I know that I will miss them a great deal, and I may even find myself nervous about the prospect of turning them over to the care of people who I don’t know all that well.

But as a parent, this is part of my job. I want my children to experience the same level of independence and personal responsibility that I did while away at camp, even if this means cutting the cord for weeks at a time.

It is not supposed to be easy. It may be hard on my children (for about four seconds), and it will most assuredly be difficult for me and my wife. Heart wrenching and frightening, even. Of this I have little doubt.

I have seen it many times before.  

For the past several years, I have taken my fifth grade students on an overnight trip to a nearby YMCA camp. For some students, this is the first time that they have ever slept away from home for any reason. Over the years, I’ve had to work hard in order to convince some parents to place their child in my care for those three days. Though I was always sympathetic to their needs and feelings, I never truly understood how difficult it was for some of these mothers and fathers until I became a parent myself.

A few years ago I had a student whose four older brothers and sisters had never spent a night outside the family home until after graduating from high school. As you might imagine, the idea of sending their youngest child away for three days was unfathomable to these parents, but through much discussion, repeated reassurances, some light-hearted cajoling and a smidgen of tough love, I managed to convince her father (the decision-maker in the family) to send his daughter to camp with me.

On the morning we were set to leave, he arrived at school to tell me that he had changed his mind, and once again, through hard work and many assurances, I managed to convince him that sending his daughter to camp with her peers was the best decision he could make.

When we arrived back at school three days later, her father was standing in the parking lot, waiting for me. As I climbed out of my car, he reached out, took hold of my arms and hugged me. He told me that the first night had been incredibly difficult for him, but by the time the sun was setting on his daughter’s second night away, he had come to realize how important this experience would be for her. “It was like a door opened for me,” he said. “I had to realize that this was not about my feelings but about what was best for my child. I called my other children and apologized to them for not realizing this sooner.”

I think I learned as much about parenting that day as he did.

This is why the recent trend for sleep-away camps to keep parent and child intimately connected via technology is one that I find disappointing and foolish.

From a recent TIME piece on the subject:

Summertime’s rite of passage — sleepaway camp — looks very different than it did a generation ago. No longer are children’s weeks away marked by subdued parental longing and the occasional piece of snail mail. Camp used to be a place kids went to learn self-reliance and discover themselves away from the watchful eyes of mom and dad, but now technology is allowing parents to keep tabs on their kids even from afar.

In a nod to helicopter parents’ inability to cut the cord, overnight summer camps are hiring staffers to take pictures of campers and post them on their websites or on their Facebook pages, or on the website of Bunk1, a service that hosts camp photos, facilitates emails between campers and their parents and exists solely to allay — or feed — parental anxiety.

I realize that the world changes constantly, and with it, parenting methods change as well. I am not opposed to change, nor am I foolish enough to believe that the way I was raised was ideal.

Nevertheless, I do not support this recent trend, and I think it is reflective of a overall trend in parenting that concerns me. In recent years, I have noticed more and more parents attempting mitigate the hardship and pain sometimes associated with good parenting by failing to impose limits on their children and refusing to allow their kids to struggle and suffer and learn life’s hardest lessons. Unwilling to make these difficult decisions, these parents are placing their own emotional needs ahead of their child’s developmental needs, regardless of the effects this may have on their children.

These are the parents who know they shouldn’t allow their toddler into their bed every night but continue to do so because stopping would be too difficult or painful for them.

These are the parents who feed their child chicken nuggets every night for dinner rather than providing a more balanced diet and sending the child to bed without dinner if necessary.

These are the parents who complete their child’s homework for them rather than forcing their child to face the consequences the next day at school.

In short, these are the parents who cannot be tough on their children because tough decisions are difficult decisions, painful not only to the child but to the parent as well.

Parenting was not supposed to be easy. Difficult decisions need to be made, and quite often, these decisions are most difficult on those required to make them. A crying toddler locked out of his parents’ bedroom will forget about the pain long before the parent who had to bury his or her head beneath a pillow in order to drown out the wails.

This is the cross that a parent must bear.

Whether my parents disconnected from me at summer camp because of thoughtful decision-making on their part or a general disinterest in my life (based upon the majority of my childhood, it is probably the latter), I cannot tell you how pleased I am that I was permitted to spend my summers at a Boy Scout adventureland where I was forced to fend for myself, fight my own battles, battle the occasional bully and develop a strong sense of  independence.

I don’t have a single photograph from my days at Camp Yawgoog, and while it would be nice to have a few of those memoires captured on film, I would take zero photographs over the prospect of being followed around by staffers whose job it was to document my existence at various times in the day in order to post my progress on Facebook so my parents could be happy.  

In the words of psychologist Michael Thompson, who wrote Homesick and Happy about the importance of summer camp:

“You can’t have your child away from you at camp physically but attached to you psychologically. That’s missing the point.”

I will use The Force if necessary. Or the humiliation of a Star Wars plush backpack.

I might buy the Yoda Plush Backpack (light saber not included) just because wearing it to school every day would make my students crazy.

After fifteen years of teaching, I have discovered that kids don’t like it when their teacher acts like a geek or a weirdo and will often say things like, “Why can’t you just be a normal teacher?” or “You’re embarrassing us! Stop it!”

I wouldn’t normally sacrifice my dignity in this way, but there are days when I’ll take any form of revenge available to me.