When I was running around the country trying to get people to buy copies of my book, one of the things that seemed to really resonate with parent groups that greeted me was the notion that the quality of a child's teacher can end up impacting the child's entire family for that school year. When your son or daughter has an awesome teacher, it impacts the entire family in an amazing way. It's all good. You feel like public education is the greatest bargain out there. You are happy to visit the school, happy to contribute to what the school is trying to do, happy to write the frequent checks that public schools want you to write to keep things afloat.

But when you've got a teacher who stinks up the joint, things fall apart for the whole family too. It's just dark from September through the end of June. Tensions run high, marriages get tested, parents and children are at each other's nerves. You get pissed off every time you approach the school. You feel hopeless. You feel guilty. You know deep down that you have wasted a precious year out of your child's life.

I've felt both extremes with my kids.

Last June I posted about some of the ugly things that my graduating fifth grader endured in his Manhattan elementary school. I expressed some optimism that things were getting better for my younger son. In the interest of fairness, and because I've got a bit of egg nog in me, I want to provide an upbeat update.

The elementary school, which was mediocre at best and was running on leftover fumes from the 1990's, is an entirely different experience for my younger son than it was for my older son. My third grader learned to write script this year. (My sixth grader was never taught in school, so we've been teaching him on our own.) The teachers (who helped parents adios our old ineffective principal) seem happier than ever, and the good cheer is spilling down to the students and parents. The new principal, a product of the NYC Leadership Academy, kicks total rump. He sweats the small stuff, treats teachers, students, and parents with respect. The school feels like it is pointed in an actual direction for the first time in years, and that direction is up.

My middle school son was lucky enough to make it into one of the few NYC middle schools that seems to prize academic rigor. This was a bit of a shock for him, but he seems to have gotten caught up -- even if he only did so by the middle of December. There's a little bit of "getting lost in the crowd" of the busy middle school, but there are a lot of people working hard to make sure kids don't completely slip through the cracks.

In short, it has so far been the kind of year that makes for happy times for the whole family. I wish that every kid in New York State could be so lucky.

Merry Christmas. Light posting this week.