The main reason that I never had my mom as a teacher was because I took “academic” classes (and band) and she didn’t teach “academic” classes (or band). This was back in the days of “tracking” and I was on the “college track”. Mom was a home economics teacher who taught in the high school “skill center”, which was geared toward training kids for careers that didn’t require a college degree. Although I get the feeling that *many* of her students went on to obtain one. Like K, one of the head nurses at FV. One very smart woman who is probably more highly educated than yer favo-rite “college track” blahgger with her music degree…

One of The Commander’s claims to fame was that she created a class in child care education. I can’t remember exactly what the format was but she and her students actually ran a short-term nursery school / day care program. This was a popular program that even quite a few of the “college track” kids took. I get the feeling that some of them took the class because they figured it would be an easy A during their senior year. It may have been easy to get a good grade in that class but I’m sure those kids learned some life skills that were ultimately a lot more valuable than how to graph a sine function or solve a differential equation. (Oh, not to put down trig or calc. I *loved* math and I was very good at it and that’s partly why I was on the “college track”.)

It is probably for the best (for The Comm) that I was never in her classes. I remember what I was like when I was in her Bluebird troop. I was a pain in the frickin’ a**. I was a goody two shoes in a classroom environment, always doing what the teacher said to do. In my warped little mind, having my mom as a leader gave me “permission” to act up. I would speak out of turn and tease other kids and generally be disruptive. Do I regret that? You betcha! Had I outgrown that stuff by high school? I would like to think so. I really did admire my mom for the programs she created at the skill center but I’m pretty sure that I wouldn’t have been able to resist the temptation to be disruptive and disrespectful. Things I would *never* have done in Mrs. Velde’s Latin class, for example. Although now that I think back, I bet The Comm would’ve put up with my guff for just about soooo long and then squelched me by kicking me out of her class or sending me down to the [gulp] principal’s office…

The photoooo? I remember this one. The yearbook staff captioned it “What’s cooking?” Boy oh boy, was The Commander mad! The Commander was a fantabulous cook and during her teaching career she did teach some home-ec classes that focused on cooking. Heck, cooking is an important skill. How many people do we know who nuke things in plastic containers and call it dinner? (I don’t actually know all that many but still…) Overall, she pioneered a few programs at that high school skill center that taught valuable life skills and she regarded her work as valuable and even back when I was a snobby little “college track” idiot, so did I.

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