college knowledge

By Joyce Szuflita
We are almost done sending the freshmen off to school. I have gathered a couple handy sources that you may want to add to the college file.

• 2 charming articles from the Motherlode about the send off: sending a son off, sending a daughter off

• tax deductions: (I really had no idea!) this article from Prospect Heights Patch is Awesome!

• I need this book: The iConnected Parent by Barbara K. Hoferand Abigail Sullivan Moore, I have gone to lengths (sometimes great) to not be a total helicopter parent, but the temptation to stay in contact electronically when they leave is too emotionally satisfying to be healthy - for me even more than for them

• linens: after doing the round of BB&B, Marshall's, Target and Amazon we broke down and got the cheapest XL Twin dorm sheets from Residence Hall Linens, and they were good quality too, go figure.

• computers Caroline at Ivan Expert told us what to get (Macbook Pro 13") plus the external hard drive and dropbox for backup. Then we all signed up for skype. I upgraded our homeowner's insurance so that when their roommate steps on the laptop they can get another one and they registered them with campus security. One college had the Microsoft Office for free download as long as she is a student, the other had a link for a cheaper version.

• our favorite dorm room items: shower caddy (small, light, holds everything and the handles don't break off), most dorms don't let you have microwaves or coffee machines but we are hoping this super cute water kettle will pass, this cheap cute and useful drawer unit comes disasembled so it is easy to take in the car and put together on site, and finally the must have dorm poster of 2011

How is it going being a sudden double empty nester? I will tell you in two weeks when we return from the March Through the Arch at Northwestern to the shambles of our once gracious apartment. I do crave a little peace and quiet, no more skyrocketing emotions and last minute fire extinguishing, and the invitations for cocktails from our long lost friends seem to be sincere.

great allegheny passage and c & o canal bike trek

By Joyce Szuflita
If I was going to design the perfect 340 mile bike trek, it would be two completely flat, car free, shaded stretches, separated by a 20 mile downhill coast through beautiful farmland, with charming trail towns conveniently placed for lodging, food and homemade ice cream. When I was told that there were no up hills, I just didn't believe it, but it was not misrepresented and I did not disgrace my family. This is two combined trails; the GAP (Great Allegheny Passage - a Rail to Trail) and the C & O Canal Tow Path. The direction you take makes a difference - definitely go from Pittsburg to DC and not the other way round (and don't just do half starting at Cumberland like many people do, because you just miss the best stretch of road!) We did it all in 10 days (approx. 34 miles a day). We were two families (4 parents and 3 high school grads). We stayed in hotels, hostels and B & B's for the first 5 nights and then alternated camping in the free sights provided with hotels for the second week. These paths do go over the eastern continental divide but the grade is so low on the way up that it is truly not noticeable (believe me, I would be complaining if I had noticed). Our friends first did this trip with their son when he was 8 years old, but I think that it is the perfect trip for 12 years and up (you need some endurance). There were a lot of father/son duos and college roommates (both young and old) on the trail. The trail on the Pennsylvania GAP portion was very well maintained cinders. The C&O varied wildly in maintenance from newly packed clay to stone chips and muddy ruts, but aside from sore bums we had no injuries. You don't feel the heat on a bike because there is always a breeze.

Here is a brief list from the trip:

• 3 high former train trestles (the photo is taken from the first one - there are railings)

• 3 lonnnng dark tunnels (super fun and very disorienting)

• 75 antique C & O canal locks

• 1 continental divide

• 1 twenty mile coast downhill (worth mentioning twice)

• 4 rivers (Ohio, Youghiogeny, Casselman, Potomac)

• 1 beautiful 6 mile detour that did have some hills (not part of the official trail)

• 1 almost disastrous hotel reservation in Harpers Ferry (on a 4 lane highway)

• 1 round of drinks at the bar, courtesy of the hotel in Harpers Ferry

• 4 soaks in a river (Youghiogeny - cold and Potomac - warm)

• 1 Frank Lloyd Wright masterpiece (Falling Water)

• 3 nights camping

• 1 raccoon, 6 fauns, 5 woodchucks, 7 turtles, 2 herons, 1 buzzard, 3 bright green caterpillars, countless songbirds and butterflies

• 1 spider museum (women's bathroom)

• many, many trains

• 0 cars (except in the first 13 miles leaving Pittsburg)

• 2 very brief rain storms (just enough to cool us off)

• 5 blown tire tubes, 2 repaired luggage racks, 1 cracked axel, 1 cracked rim

• 2 panniers bounced off mid ride

• 1 lost bathing suit by the side of the trail

• 3 Ruben sandwiches, 5 crab cakes, many Caesar salads and a coconut cream pie

• 2 root beer floats

• 1 one match campfire

• 7 happy campers

that's right! i am traveling 334.5 miles on a bike this summer with all my camping gear

By Joyce Szuflita
So what does a middle aged, soon to be empty nester do on her summer vacation? She ships her bike to Pittsburgh and travels under her own steam with the camaraderie and encouragement of her super fit family and their adventurous childhood friends to Washington DC. It is called the Great Allegheny Passage and connects to the C&O Canal tow path - motorized vehicle free! (I guess that means no ambulances or Enterprise Rent-a-Car pick ups)

We will do 10 days of biking (I have been assured that it is flat, flat, flat, but I grew up in the shadow of the Skyline Drive so I am skeptical) with stop overs to visit Frank Lloyd Wright's Falling Water and see the grandparents in northern VA. What will you see when you book a consult with me in August? Tanned, toned and ready for the Albany to Montreal trek or beaten limp noodle? Kind of exciting isn't it?! We will be camping a bit and staying in the little towns along the way a bit. I will be out of the office from July 16 to July 31. I am not sure that I will be able to update on our progress along the way, but I will eventually give you a full report.

Wordsworth for parents of all graduating students

By Joyce Szuflita
I heard a wonderful interview with Priscilla Gilman on Leonard Lopate's WNYC show yesterday. Her memoir is called "The Anti-Romantic Child" about her son with hyperlexia. It sounds like a terrific book, but I had a driveway moment (while parallel parking) when she read an excerpt from "Lines Written a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey" by William Wordsworth. Yesterday was my daughters' effective last day of high school. It is over. We did a good job; they did a good job. It is time to push them out of the nest with a brave face. So for all of you getting ready to leave the fours, 5th grade, 8th grade or 12th grade...

--That time is past,

And all its aching joys are now no more,

And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this

Faint I, nor mourn no murmur; other gifts

Have followed, for such loss, I would believe,

Abundant recompence.

teens on the train

Overheard on the F train heading northbound, crossing through the sunlight at Smith and 9th.

Girl 1 (stylishly urban, approximately 16 years):

"Everybody at Beacon lives in Park Slope."

Girl 2 (working her own unique style, the same age):

"Or it just seems like they do, they spend so many nights there"

"I heard that it used to be that nobody from Manhattan ever came to Brooklyn!"

"Weird."

"I love Boerum Hill. It is sooo pretty. Dumbo too."

"Yeah, good restaurants. Brooklyn Heights is kind of just houses. I love Red Hook."

"Have you eaten at The Good Fork? It is awesome."

"My dad is totally into Ocean Parkway. He bikes there."

"My mom wants to retire to the Upper West Side!"

"Big dreams!" (all of us laughing)

Lovin' 5th ave. from 11th to 25th St.

By Joyce Szuflita
It is the last day of the month and I had to go get the car inspected. Usually, I grab a coffee at the Red Horse (6th Ave./12th St. - they also have great scones I think from Baked in Red Hook), drop the car with the St. of Ancient Silver Hondas (Mohammed at Bartroni on 5th Ave./24th St.) and go up the hill across the street to sit by Minerva in Greenwood

Cemetery to watch the ferries go back and forth. But today we needed more work and I walked home, discovering and remembering some wonderful things along the way.

Officially the second best pizza in the USA is in a tiny ordinary looking store front named Luigi's (according to them, the first best pizza makers eat at Luigi's) on 5th between 21/20th St. Get the "grandma" pizza. If you don't enjoy watching them make it one pepperoni at a time go two doors down to Laurntino's for pastry (supposidely a former baker from Veniero's owns it). We heard that there were great empanadas along that strip and I think that I found them at La Boulangerie Lopez (20/19th St.). We have always taken out of town friends for a vodkha tasting at Adam's Liquors (corner of 17th St.). Don't go in asking for Grey Goose..."unless you are using it to kill rats". Try the Sobieski, Bull Grass or Honey Vodkha. Skip Eagle Provisions and go straight to Jubilat Provisions for your local Polish sausage fix (they smoke it in the back, or get the fresh which is garlicy and wonderful) - also great poppy seed loaf. Kumon has opened a new bigger location (15/16th St.) right across the street from the beautiful new home of Park Slope Schoolhouse (they should be moving in any moment now). I have been missing the Salvation Army that moved out of the big corner space on 13th St. years ago and was surprised to see a groovy new second hand store there, Life. They accept donations and give tax receipts for all clothes and furniture. It is staffed by volunteers and the proceeds go to Pediatric Cancer Research as well as other programs for children with serious illnesses. My daughters did all their tween budget fashion shopping at Rainbow and Mandees (12/13th St.) but Fresh (11/12th St.) is still the only place to get your skinny jeans. I was surprised at how many new little interesting bars have popped up like crocuses on the avenue and I am making a May 1st date with my husband. We will send off the first college check and then go for a pub crawl down 5th Ave.

twinsburg, ohio

Why drive 8 hours one way to the suburbs of Cleveland? - for the largest gathering of twins in the world. This trip has been my girls' dream for years and this summer they finally got us to agree by saying that they would use it as a topic for their college essays. They know how to deal with us. We figured it would be a silly goof of a weekend. I believe that they will probably attend every year from now on if they can.

On one side it is a small town fair; hot dogs, a couple of rides, a bouncy castle, a parade with antique fire trucks and a talent show. On the other, it is over 2000 sets of twins, triplets and quads of all ages, races, shapes and sizes, gathering for 3 days of unqualified understanding, comraderie and silly fun. I have rarely seen my kids as happy. In normal life, even in twin filled Brooklyn, they are oddities. "Who is older?" and "who is the evil twin?" are the first two questions that they are always asked. They occasionally enjoy the attention but it can also be a burden. During Twins Days they are the normal ones (we singletons are the misfits). Everyone gets it. Everyone has a bond that has no age, race or philosophical differences. It is a beautiful thing.

Side note: they will want you to know that they are not in any of these pictures although they did dress alike and had their picture taken by a National Geographic photographer (watch for the twins edition in Nov. 2011)

road trip

I have logged a lot of hours on the road with my family (masking tape down the center of the back seat). This is the summer of college tours so we will be doing even more. I choose to drive because then I don't have to be the one turning around to constantly monitor the food and fun in the backseat. Now that the girls have their music for the road, things have gotten a lot quieter back there, but there are some family traditions that they still enjoy participating in. I do believe that my family's love of brain teasers has been instrumental in their success on the SHSAT (it isn't why we did it, but they have years of experience with logic puzzles). The best test prep is an active mind.

50 miles. Every 50 miles there is a little treat, something to eat, a little game or activity, another chapter in Harry Potter on CD, a brain teaser or minute mystery from one of the many stoop sale books that we have collected. We add 10 miles for every time they ask if it is 50 yet, and we take away 5 if they have used the roadside clues (signs, mile markers or mph) to estimate how far we have gone (no fair looking at the odometer!)

"which one is not like the others" This is a game we have been playing since they were very small. The only age requirement is that the child understands rules and that this is a game for fun and not for winning. The leader thinks of four things - one of which doesn't belong and everyone guesses which one. Sometimes people guess the right thing but for the wrong reason. The answer has to be guessable by the people who are playing and even though there may be many right answers the only one that counts is the answer that the leader is thinking of. The more creative the quiz and the answer the better. People are thinking up new quizzes as fast as they are guessing.

ex. Gettysburg, Antietam, Yorktown, Manassas: answer Yorktown

guesses could be Yorktown because it was a revolutionary battle or Yorktown because it only has two syllables

ex. lettuce, potato, corn, apple: answer apple

it could be that the apple is the only fruit, or that it is the only one that isn't a body part (head of lettuce, eye of a potato, ear of corn)

Greatschools.org has some good articles about traveling with kids.

test scores are only a small piece of the puzzle

How do you judge a school?  To start you can look at the test scores. These may come in the form of the School Progress Reports (the DOE's flawed number crunching), the more nuanced but not fool-proof Quality Reviews or the number rankings given by the national websites. The black and white reality of a simple number or letter ranking is that it predicts how well your child will be able to complete a standardized test, not the quality of their education. The scores are often clung to as a measure of quality by prospective parents, but the tests are scorned by parents whose children already attend school. Assessments need to be made and there has to some kind of accountability, but the richest learning doesn't happen within test prep and the score can be a smoke screen.

You can read reviews on insideschools, study the school's website and get individual parent comments on the list serves. You can tour the schools and stand outside at 2:45 for dismissal and eyeball the parents picking up their kids. All of these are pieces of the puzzle, but none of them will give you the the kind of information about the right school for your child except the school tour that you take with your own eyes.

If you are an informed consumer, armed with the test scores and comments by others, the tour should seal the deal or expose the school as a bad fit and be the biggest factor when deciding.  Even though many parents feel that there is safety in numbers (the most popular schools must be the "best") there are many quality programs laboring in obscurity (often with smaller class sizes). If you can tour several schools, you will start to see similarities and differences. Many of the differences will be comparing apples and oranges, an old building compared to a newer building, a variety of enrichment classes compared to a fabulous afterschool, etc.

Keep your mind open. Look for exciting classrooms instead of the highest test scores. Does what you see in the classroom make sense with the school's scores. Do they seem realistic? Is the work on the bulletin board suspiciously flawless or all the same? Remember to trust your instincts. There are no guarantees in life but it is very possible to get a wonderful public education in the NYC public schools.

looking online for a good school

There are a number of sites that show information on local schools. They often have links to real estate sites that show properties in the area.

insideschools.org is above all my favorite. It is a local non profit run by Advocates for Children. It has a tremendous reach and depth and the first thing any parent worried about schools should do is sign up for their newsletter alerts and send them a little tax deductible thank you for the incredibly good work that they do. (I am not affiliated with them, I just love them.) You can "Ask Judy" a question, browse their forum, check their calendar, and most importantly read their reviews. The data at the beginning of the review (test scores and numbers) are updated every year and any change in principal or location is added right away. Because they review every school in the city, some reviews are a couple years old, check the dates at the end of the review. Remember that all parents that comment on schools are on a mission. They either love the school or hate it and it is difficult to get an objective reading of how much the parent body as a whole feels. If you have trouble searching for the school by name, also try searching by zip and age level, one of these two ways always gets results.

schools.nyc.gov is the Dept. of Education's website. There are individual school pages here (go to find a school). You can find copies of state and city reports on each school under the "statistics" tab on their school page. I recommend browsing the menu on the homepage, often publications, calendars and procedures are listed here or downloadable as pdf files. This is a very large deep and sometimes confusing website. If you find a page that you like, bookmark it so that you can find it again.

https://nyccharterschools.org/ is a searchable NYC database of charter schools

greatschools.org is a national site where you can search by city, or address, district etc. The search tool is clumsy at best and it is difficult to browse. The comparison of local schools also gives a weirdly haphazard and incomplete mix and sometimes elementary, middle and high schools are incorporated in the same list. For a national site that doesn't really address the complexities of the NYC school system, it is the best by far. They give a number ranking to the schools that is mostly based on test scores which can be misleading and are only a small indication of school's quality. There are parent comments and lots of general articles.

schooldigger.com searches by zip or address or city and gives a clear map of public elementary choices, but their ranking system is out of date and based on scores. They have very clear links to real estate if you are looking for that.

All the others are just lists of addresses.