Bullying tops the headlines these days just about anywhere you look. In the wake of our attentiveness is a mountain of information available to parents should their child become a victim. At the top of most help lists is contact with the teacher or school. What happens, then, when it’s the teacher doing the bullying?

Listen with your eyes and see with your ears in this interactive workshop that explores the shared elements of music and the visual arts.

Imagine walking by your living room desktop (you keep your family computer in a social space, right?) and noticing your child, let’s say an 11-year-old, is chatting via Facebook with his fifth-grade teacher. Or this: Your seventh-grader doesn’t understand the homework, so she texts Mr. Jones.

When I was in grade school, heck, even high school, I never dreamed of contacting a teacher after school hours. If I didn’t understand something, it was too bad, so sad for me.

Fast forward a few decades and, boy, are times a’changin.

A few weeks ago during lunch with my friend and co-writer/editor Amy De La Hunt we somehow got on the topic of punctuation and grammar. Actually, I know how we got on the topic; because she’s an editor, she’s my go to girl for lamenting the truly, truly awful slide away from proper grammar/punctuation towards the ‘who gives a darn’ English we’re now writing and reading. And actually, since I’m being honest, it wasn’t really a conversation…it was more of a monologue/tangent Amy was enduring.

Improper punctuation has become the commonplace.

When I dropped off my daughter at school early this week, I noticed something. Or, more accurately, I noticed the absence of this thing: The new is gone. The spick and span cleanness in the hallway has been replaced with skid marks and paint scrapes. The pencils are down to nubs, the markers missing their right lids, the lost and found is already near to overflowing. Even the energy is softer, reflecting the calm of kids and teachers settling into a groove. I love it.

Don’t get me wrong. The beginning of school, those first few weeks are special in their own way too. But there’s just something uniquely sweet about the end of the honeymoon phase, when the kids' personalities come out and teachers start getting to know your children as individuals.

It’s right around now, too, that we start to get a good grasp on students who may be struggling.

Everyone has their own very personal, very powerful 9-11 story. My husband was camping in rural New Jersey and was unaware of anything happening until Thursday of that week. He never felt the initial jolt, or saw the horror unfold time and again in the media.  My daughter wasn’t even born yet, and my son, in Jr. High at the time, remembers teachers shutting down classes and watching TV live all day. As a parent, I have issue with that.

I was teaching second grade in urban St. Louis when my principal sent a sub to my room with word for me to come down to her office. “You’re the calmest person I know”, she said. “Help me figure out what to do.”