Once again: Saluting the mothers among us
Thanks for the gift of life!
Editor’s note: This post was originally published here on Special Education Today 12 May 2024. I am republishing it this year, because it will be new to all the new subscribers since a year ago, because I like the sentiment of it, and because I hope it’ll remind special educators that we are in this endeavor-adventure with parents—especially, mothers, and a few dozen are loyal readers of SET—and they deserve the recognition that comes not just on mothers’ day, but year ‘round.—JohnL
In the US, the second Sunday in May is Mother’s Day. In other cultures mothers are honored on other dates—en Mexico, diez de Mayo es dia del los madres. Regardless of the day-date, it’s regularly a good time to honor one’s mother for the time and effort (the blood, sweat, and tears) she put into bearing and raising us, to say “Thanks, Mom.”
When I was a teaching assistant with Teddee Blumberg, I helped children to make gifts for their mothers. It was a sage and savvy activity. One year we had them make papier-mâché flowers; it was a multi-day project that required lots of fine motor activities—cutting the petals from newsprint; layering a few starch-soaked petals and then letting them dry overnight so that the flowers grew thicker every day; painting the three dimensional products; gluing a polished stone1 in the center once the flower had dried; affixing a pin assembly to a heavier weight piece of cardstock to serve as a stable backing and as a way to affix the product to clothing; and assembling the personally created flowers with the pin assembly. All the time we worked with the kids on making the parts of the Mother’s Day Pins (15-20 min a day), we promoted language development: We kept up a stream of questions for them about what they were doing and why they were doing it.
Of course, we showed them a completed example, but I doubt more than two or three of the 12 knew what they were doing. why they were getting their fingers all gluey, practicing holding paint brushes in Teddee’s prescribed way, and doing the same thing over and over again for days. And the finished products were quite variable. Mark, as I recall, talked (a mile a minute, as usual) about how much his mother was going to like the pin, and Kenny (an 11-year old rowdy with a heart-melting streak and a flair for art) actually made an attractive pin.
We had the kids sign little cards (hand-over-hand guidance for several of them; the older and higher functioning ones added decorations), They put the pins and cards in bags. Each child2 took her or his bag home on the Friday before mother’s day.
I don’t recall the kids providing any feedback the week after Mother’s Day. I never saw any of the mothers (they were the parents who usually had to drop off and pick up their children at school, sometimes driving 30-40 min each way in LA traffic) wearing a pin, though I have vague recollections of Kevin’s and Angela’s mother telling us they were very pleased to have a child-made gift.
It was a good lesson for me about teaching not being all reading, writing, arithmetic, and behavior management.
Happy mother’s day!
Footnotes
Teddee lived near the shore and had a stone polisher. She gathered stones, polished them, and then let each child choose one for his or her mother’s day pin.
For the long-term readers, Angela of the “Dear John” letters was one of these students.