Then and Now

I am the mother of two grown children, both of whom are in their twenties. I am also an English teacher. My son used to say it was simply awful to have an English teacher for a mom. He also claimed I was the only mom in town who gave consequences. I told my son that Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow reportedly, or possibly, had no-consequence moms. I also told him the Pope's mother was an English teacher.

When my children were very young, the world did not have blogs, at least not to my knowledge. I stayed at home with my children for about seven years, though, and you can't read a newspaper with a baby creeping into your lap and a toddler reaching for your coffee, so my knowledge bank might have been short on cash.

I am very excited about VLACS Baby Talk blog spot because it is part of a course for young mothers that will be offered at Virtual Learning Academy Charter School (VLACS) beginning this year. VLACS is New Hampshire's award-winning online public school. Our students live all over New Hampshire, and some of our students are young mothers who want to complete high school from home while caring for their children.

We've created a flexible course for moms because going to school and doing homework are tricky when there are babies around. Our course features literature about babies and motherhood, writing about babies and motherhood, and comprehensive instruction in health and wellness for babies and moms. Our students will post their own original writing to this blog. They'll post pictures here, too, as will our instructors.

Now that I have launched this blog, other instructors and I will post writing routinely. We'll see posts from Tara Emmet and Wren Hayes very soon. Wren might not write immediately, though, because she just had a baby daughter, Tanager Hayes. At this moment, Wren probably doesn't care any more about blogs than I did about newspapers. (But she will...)