School Project Causes Anxiety For the Parent

The two-page letter sent home to Simi Valley parents last month gave plenty of information about what was expected of their child’s fourth-grade social studies project.

But what the letter didn’t give was an indication of what really lay ahead: anxiety, feelings of inferiority, a view of the generational wheel and a blast back to emotions of the past.

And that was just for parents. Kids would have to struggle with their own issues.

The project sounded simple enough.

Since fourth grade typically is the time when kids learn about the California missions, the letter my son handed to me stated, it also is the year many children in schools throughout the state are given their first extended assignment.

First they read in their books at school about Father Serra and his cohorts. Then they visit a mission. Afterwards, they have between four and six weeks to build a replica at home.

Parents were encouraged to provide “direction” to their children, helping them to select appropriate building materials. But the mission didn’t have to be fancy. It wouldn’t be graded on how expensively it was put together.

“A mission made of cardboard can receive a very good grade,” we were advised.

Not surprisingly, there also was a caveat to all of this. Parents were not to do the work for their kids, even though their child’s social studies grade would rest on it.

Even though it might be hard to resist the temptation of taking over when the thing started collapsing in the center.

Even though, a lot of parents probably were thinking, a bad grade just might keep junior out of Yale someday.

*

My son didn’t want to go to the mission in Ventura. Ventura, he insisted, was too far from Simi Valley. I’d heard this separatist thinking around town before. It’s useless to fight it.

So we drove instead to the San Fernando Mission, where my son attempted to draw pictures of what he saw.

Not to brand him for life, but the same fairies that I suspect performed an art gene-ectomy on me seem to have done the same thing to him. A Leonardo he is not.

It was then that I got the first glimpse of trouble. The next came in the mission’s gift shop, where another fourth-grader’s project--an exact miniature version of what was outside the window--was on display.

As if the gift-shop owners knew what fear and loathing this would inspire, next to it were books on mathematical conversions for making miniature missions for $30, and mission-making kits kids could construct from paper for $25.

Buying a lucky rabbit’s foot I could understand. But somehow, the kits just didn’t seem kosher.

“Come on,” I said. “We don’t need that. We can figure it out on our own.”

Up in their heavens, I thought I heard the gods laugh.

*

The next trip was to the art supply store, where we gathered up a few 79-cent strips of balsa wood and some Mexican modeling clay. This would work great, I told him.

At home, my son smoothed the clay on the wood and cut out the mission’s arches. Four hours later, all sides of the mission were complete.

Disaster struck in the morning. The mission looked like my favorite cashmere sweater after someone tossed it in the dryer: shriveled and shrunken, a shadow of its former self.

My son looked at me accusingly. It was the same look I’d given my own mother years before, when she told me how great my mummy costume looked before the Halloween parade and it unraveled on the playground, and when she persuaded me that a moldy orange was a perfectly acceptable science project.

Back to the art store. Different clay. New wood. And 15 after-work sessions later, the project was complete: A humble mission, four inches high, with clay arches and lasagna noodles for the roofs.

We both felt proud.

Up in their heavens, the gods guffawed.

*

Mission Day. Hordes of parents are leaning into their cars, pulling out their children’s projects. At first we pay no attention. But as we walk toward the classroom, our position begins to set in.

Frankie’s mission is two feet high and built of stucco, with real stained-glass windows. Lisa’s replica is from home-made shortbread, with tiny ceramic tiles on the roof. Billy’s model towers into the heights of the classroom, made from gingerbread and covered with white frosting.

My son puts his model on the table with the others. I expect to see the reproach, the humiliation, the anger.

But there is none of it. He looks at me and smiles instead.

“Thanks, mom,” he says.

On my way back to the car, I remember his face when he finally got the sides to stick together. When he cut out an arch that wasn’t crooked. When he found the perfect branch to glue down as a tree.

And the more I think about it, the better I feel.

Let’s just hope Yale doesn’t require mission photos along with its application forms.