Wednesday update

One clear loser in the end of the house arrest (though still often profiting from Vincent not being at school everyday) is Frisco, who today for example is home alone for a protracted period for the first weekday day in a long time. I’ll stop at home to walk him in about an hour.Also – Great news on the school front: Unbeknownst to us at the time, Vincent failed his spring-semester junior-year social studies class (second-semester World Civilization) last spring, before he went to Denmark. (Of course, he also failed six classes last fall semester.) Passing World Civilization and passing one of his fall-semester classes (first-semester Senior English) are both required for him to graduate from high school (in addition to getting some eight or so more semester credits and passing second-semester Senior English). Today Vincent (after getting up at 6:45 a.m. and going out for a two-mile walk that would have been banned Tuesday morning) went to the Jefferson County High School main office – in the same building where he went to two disciplinary district meetings – and earned an 81 on the final (he said he forgot who Gorbachev was), passing World Civilization with a “B” (with a 92%).

Vincent said he picked up a job application at our local Heine Brothers coffee shop and may apply on-line when he gets to the Fourth Street Alive Borders Books and Music store (pictured above) (where he’s going to hang out now).Good going, Vincent!

P.S. Aunt June has started chemotherapy treatment (weekly) and radiation treatment (five days a week), but even with this her doctor says she probably has a year to live. She has trouble eating because her throat (which has throat cancer) hurts all the time. Please pray for June, her health care providers, and Barb, Sandy, Diana, Dustin, Jay, and Justice.

P.P.S. Vincent came home for a while and then went back out to one of his friends’ house within St. Matthews – and played four square, then had half a dozen of his friends stop by to “welcome him back” (from house arrest/being exited from school). Most of these were friends he started hanging out with this year, partly in connection with the Danish exchange.

-- Perry

Educational emergency

Stephanie got closed out of an Indiana University Southeast teaching English as a new language class this winter (one that they had actually asked her to teach once) on Saturday mornings. She figured she needed to take some classes by this summer in order to keep her IN teaching license and her job. This week she was told that she won’t be allowed to sign her contract for next year – or something like that – if she hasn’t taken six credits of continuing education by April 15 – and that there are a couple of IN-licensed ENL teachers hovering looking for jobs. Stephanie has received some info about graduate-level classes taught on-line at your own pace (so she wouldn’t have to wait to the summer to take the classes on a regular semester schedule – as at Florida State) at – ironically – my old MN employer, the University of St. Thomas (downtown Minneapolis campus with bulk of education grad school pictured above)– for just $600 total (seems affordable for private school tuition). We knew one St. Thomas ed profess, but she wouldn’t be teaching these. Ironically, Stephanie is looking – structurally – for exactly the kind of classes we were looking at for Vincent – and – hopefully, will be taking exactly the same kind of classes. Unfortunately, they’ll now be in competition for computer time – although at night and for the week I’m in Guatemala Stephanie may be able to use my laptop. Also, Stephanie has a week of spring break during which if she gets up at a regular time she’d probably have a couple of hours before Vincent normally even thinks of getting up (unless we wake him up). We’ll see how this works out. It’s important that Stephanie keeps her job, but we also don’t want to give Vincent an excuse to put off working on his classes. In hindsight, Stephanie probably should have worked on classes like this – or taken them in person – instead of helping out with my Mom last summer or instead of painting the living room and dining room – but that’s hindsight. Also – Stephanie can get a raise of she develops a plan of study to take 30 graduate-level classes. But those probably have to be pre-approved, and she’d like to take Spanish for that – but it’s not clear how that would do double-duty to satisfy state continuing ed licensing requirements also.

Best wishes to Stephanie trying to sign up for and take those classes and keep her job. Hopefully, things are going to settle down a little with Vincent.

One of Stephanie’s colleagues said the obvious – that Vincent is very lucky he faces these possible court charges while he is a minor – and that it’s possible they’ll put him on a very long juvenile-court (?) probation which means he’ll have to stay especially on his toes.

-- Perry