The Mission Report

Wow. What a torment to endure for a fourth grader. In California, nearly every 4th grade student, in the process of learning California history, must turn in a "Mission Report." We have the dubious "honor" of being the state that has 21 missions, which brought a certain Father Junipero Serra ("hu-NI-pero Sayra") a great deal of fame, both good and bad.

Students here are assigned either a report or a project--some can be video'd or a model can be built of the mission they've been assigned. In any case, the students and their parents as well as all their family members and neighbors get quite an education on the mission and the whole mission system.

Without telling the whole story, my eldest got assigned the Mission named "Holy Cross" or Santa Cruz. She has worked on this project for about 3 weeks and a few days ago became frustrated, so much so that her voice rose to a very high pitch and she teared up over this report. She was so very worried she'd not get it done in time. I had been helping her; her father had been helping her; but now our assistance intensified--including doing research along with her, printing quotes for her to use, learning how to site web sites in a bibliography, yada yada.

We could not find anything on Mission Santa Cruz's education of children, the music the mission used, or the artwork. (Most of it was stolen during a threatened pirate's raid, that didn't happen, but while all the mission residents were evacuated and hiding, the people entrusted with saving the icons and valuables stole them for themselves!)

So, we took all of our documentation and the report-in-progress to the teacher. Ms. Teacher said, with a smile, "then don't write about that part of the mission." I wanted to punch somebody. Neither Sarah nor I knew that we could omit sections of the assignment. Wouldn't that have been nice in college? Oh, I can't find information, so I'm not going to include that point of my thesis.

So with great relief, Sarah went on to class, and I brought all the paperwork home. She's done so very well on this report, that if she does get it done on time, we'll celebrate with a special dinner somewhere.

On to other things...