Walking to school

Alex is Kindergarten-ready, circa 1979

My friend Chelsea sent me this article today.  If you don't have time to read it, the author came across an American first-grade readiness checklist from 1979.  Her kids could do everything in spades–count to ten, copy letters, color in the lines–with one blaring exception: "Can he travel alone in the neighborhood (four to eight blocks) to store, school, playground, or to a friend's home?"

Then the author went on to talk about how she didn't let her kids walk to the bathroom alone, much less across the neighborhood.  And she doesn't plan on changing this: she ended the article with a bland "I don't plan to send mine romping any further than the yard. But I will try to broaden my ideas of what else they're capable of—besides math and reading—this year."

Chels sent me this article for obvious reasons: she knows how I've loved watching my kids gain the confidence (not to mention the sense of direction) that comes from being independent enough to navigate the neighborhood.

Not to mention the convenience.  In most ways, my life is much more challenging than it was in Kirkland.  But I don't have to load the kids into the minivan each morning, navigating through the traffic of carpool lanes. I've become utterly spoiled this year, being able to boot my kids out the door each morning, sending them on their way without worry that any harm will come to them.

I suppose that most of my certainty that the kids will be all right comes from knowing that the whole neighborhood is looking after my children as they walk each morning and afternoon.  Not only is there the safety in numbers of the steady stream of children pouring out of the houses and apartments in our neighborhoods, but also there are parents peeking out the windows, making sure everyone is okay and that the kids are behaving. And everyone driving around between 8:00 and 8:20 well knows that the school kids are out, and they're hyper-vigilant in watching for the kids.

I suspect that what is holding back the author most of all, from letting "loose our kindergartners on the neighborhood" is this culture of the whole neighborhood working together to make sure sure the kids get to school safely and on time.

At Ella's school in Kirkland, each October the school and the police department host a walk-to-school week: the classroom with the most walkers wins a party at the end of the week, and all walkers get little prizes each morning.  I think that the week was intended to promote this walking culture that I've discovered in Switzerland, to help parents get into the mind-frame that their kids really can learn traffic safety and walk the mile to school each day.

But of course that's not what happened.  Ella, like most every other kid in the neighborhood, wasn't allowed to go to the end of the block by herself.  Having her walk to school alone would have been a disaster.  But, gamely, Dennis would linger at home long enough that he could walk Ella the mile in to school.  Or, on the mornings when Dennis was busy, I'd load Joey in his front-pack carrier and Alex in the stroller, and the three of us would cumbersomely chaperone Ella to school.

But the majority of the parents in our neighborhood took an entirely different approach.  There was a suspicious rise in the number of SUVs and minivans near the Starbucks, just a block from the school. We watched moms and their kids drive there, park, and walk the final block to school, where, with innocent smiles, the kids picked up their stickers and keychains. Those kids were learning a different lesson entirely!

But I also know moms in my neighborhood who have their kids walk to school, alone, on a year-round basis: not mothers of kindergartners  but I remember a mother talking about her second-grader.  One morning, when he was on his way to school, he'd gotten distracted by something and was going much to slowly.  That morning my friend received phone calls from three different friends who'd noticed him and realized that there was no way he'd make it to school on time.

That helps me believe that it's in the realm of possibilities that my kids will be able to walk to school again at some point in their elementary career. There are eyes out there, watching.  I'm pretty sure I biked the mile and a half to school when I was in 4th grade; I know for certain I was doing it by the time I was in 5th.

But, as for my Kindergartner, I have my doubts. There just isn't that critical mass of walking kids to make it safe: rather, there's too much of a critical mass of moms talking to each other on their cell phones, haphazardly driving their kids to school. And that's too bad: I know that my kids find the peace of their morning walk bolstering and refreshing, and I love the way they band together, the way nochElla comes and picks up my kids, and then how the two girls make sure Alex gets to school safely.

The kids like it, too, especially Ella, who tells me that being grown-up enough to walk to school is one of her favorite things about living here.  It probably doesn't hurt that I usually press a few gummy candies into their hands when they return to school after their lunch break.

Where walking to school was once a sign of kindergarten readiness, now, in our Kirkland neighborhood, the big benchmark for kindergartners is that the kids ride the bus alone. Never mind that the bus driver picks each child up at his doorstep, and won't leave until he sees the whites of his parent's eyes.

This year, one of my poor friends a lot of flack on Facebook from her brothers and sisters because she posted photos her son boarding the bus on the first day of Kindergarten, and then photos of her son getting off the bus at school, and then more photos of her boy in the classroom. She put her kid on the bus and then raced him to school in her car, so that she could see him walk into the classroom. "Helicopter Parent," they taunted. But, she protested, everyone else was doing it!  I know she's right.  I did the same darn thing on Ella's first day.

I'm spending a lot of space musing this evening, but while I'm at it, I'll contrast my Ella's first day of school with my sister Kathy's, back in 1980.  As family legend has it, my sister was put on the bus for Kindergarten on the first day of school with her backpack and a package of cookies, for the classroom snack cupboard.  Mom didn't race the bus to school: that wasn't done, of course. (My sister and I were, indeed, loosed on the neighborhood, our territory ranging across three cul-de-sacs.)

There wasn't even a monitor to make sure that the kids got to their appropriate classroom.  She marched off the bus and found her way into a fifth-grade classroom, and plopped herself down in a desk, announcing, "Well, here I am, and here are my cookies!"

I don't know if it has anything to do with the independence she gained by riding the big-kid bus alone, but that's pretty much been the modus operandi for Kathy, every day since then. She approaches any and all challenges bravely, and with baked goods in tow.