Student Parent Group Writing Sessions

The Student Parent Group (SPG) has just released the schedule of planned writing groups for this quarter. You can sign up for one or more of these sessions here.

In order to sign up, you need to be a registered student at the University of Chicago (undergraduate or graduate), and also to have completed your registration at the Family Resource Center, where the childcare takes place.  

About the SPG Writing Group:

The SPG, the registered student organisation for student parents on campus, developed the Writing Groups to provide an opportunity for student parents to get work done in a supportive environment, with free childcare if needed. Children are cared for by experienced babysitters  at the Family Resource Center (now located in the WSSC Building at 950 E. 61st St), while parents get academic work done in a dedicated room in the same building. Parents are asked to remain in the building during the sessions, so that they can be easily reached by babysitters with any questions or concerns. 

Childcare for the student parent writing groups is provided by undergraduate and graduate students (mostly the former), all of whom are CPR-certified and have experience with childcare in various settings (babysitting, summer camps, etc). The child to carer ratio is 3:1.

Childcare is provided in the Family Resource Center, which is a safe and well equipped with a collection of toys and books mostly targeted for babies and children aged 0-8. Although we have not specified a minimum age for the children participating in these sessions, it should be noted that our childcarers do not necessarily have experience in caring for infants.

To register for one or more sessions, please see  here.  We will do our best to accommodate everyone's schedule, so do let us know in the comments section if you have a preference between available dates, because we expect a high demand and thus may not be able to register you for all the dates you request.

Please contact me (email: florajroberts@uchicago.edu) if you have any questions about logistics, childcare providers, or anything else.

Sign the petition to make childcare truly affordable for UChicago students!

The results of the childcare stipend are in, and the research we conducted indicates that the stipend is not sufficient to make childcare genuinely affordable for our most needy students. As a result, members of the Student Parent Group and GSU (Graduate Students United) have composed a petition with concrete asks to improve the childcare stipend program. Please consider signing this important petition in behalf of all student parents at the University of Chicago! If you are concerned about privacy, it is possible to prevent your name from being published on the online petition. (It will still appear on the petition that is delivered to Deputy Provost Deborah Nelson).

http://www.change.org/petitions/university-of-chicago-make-childcare-truly-affordable-for-our-students

Please share the petition widely! Students, faculty, alumni and staff are all invited to sign it.

New Lactation Space on Campus!

The Student Parent Group is pleased to announce that there is now a locking lactation space available on campus! The space is in the Regenstein Library. All the details are on the flyer above, which was made available at the Family Resource Center recently. The room is open the same hours as Circulation, and the key can be checked out at the circulation desk. For more information, contact Jim Vaughan at j-vaughan@uchicago.edu.

This space exists because of the sustained advocacy of the Student Parent Group and Graduate Students United. For more on how you can support future campaigns to make the campus a more equitable and parent-friendly place, follow them both!

UPDATE, 4/9/2014: According to Regenstein Library staff, the lactation space is not yet ready. They expect to have it ready early the week of 4/14/2014.

Childcare stipends update

We received the results of our application for a childcare stipend last week. The University has awarded my family, which includes two preschoolers, an elementary school aged child and two graduate students, the sum of $1,000 "to cover spring and summer quarters." We are certainly glad to have this money!

On the other hand, it cannot be said the University has now demonstrated a serious effort to address the childcare needs of graduate student parents. The grant of one thousand dollars to last us six months means that we have been allocated $166 per month, or $83 per child under 5 per month.

[To put this amount in context, graduate students like myself who have entered advanced residency at the University, and support themselves by teaching, can earn 3,000 $ per quarter as TAs, or 5,000$ per quarter as lecturers. The maximum amount of teaching that a graduate student may take on is capped in my division (Social Sciences) at four TAships or lectureships during the academic year, such that the maximum possible yearly income from teaching is between 12,000 and $20,000 (though I have rarely heard of any grad student securing more than two lectureships in a single academic year). With yearly incomes of this order of magnitude, an extra $1000 is very welcome]

Fast food workers nationwide are lobbying for a minimum wage rise to 15$/hr, and I certainly could not square it with my conscience to pay anyone less than that to look after my two (very precious) four year olds. So that 166$ a month will buy me eleven hours of babysitting per month, or an additional short afternoon of undisturbed work per week.  Given that this is my eighth year in grad school and I have hitherto had no assistance with childcare, this is a very welcome step in the right direction.

This spring, I will be able to take the quarter off from teaching and focus on my dissertation for the first time since the spring of 2009, when I was pregnant with my twins. Of course, by taking time off from teaching I make myself liable to pay AR tuition fees, which now amount to 784$ per quarter. There goes most of that childcare grant - and with it the hope of additional afternoons when I would be able to work on my dissertation. Academics who are mothers need time of their own, just as Virginia Woolf needed a room of her own.

----
In order to advocate better for student parents on the University of Chicago campus, members of the Student Parent Group (SPG) and Graduate Students United (GSU) are gathering information on the recent child care stipend results. We strongly encourage student parents to fill out the brief form at this link with their results. Give as much information as you feel comfortable reporting. All information submitted is anonymous.

Having access to these results will help advocates to hold the University administration accountable to its publicly stated commitment to helping student parents succeed.

Logan Family Saturday March 22

One of this campus's best kept secrets is coming up this Saturday at the Logan Center: a Family Saturday, an afternoon of free cultural activities for children and families.

It's almost bizarre (or, intentional?) how poorly advertised these events are, given their high quality. 

Here is the schedule of the Family workshops offered at Logan this Saturday. They are free, but you are advised to register in advance, which you can do by following the link to each one. 

Family Folks and Songs with Mama Zahra
2-3pm,  Logan Center, Room 603
Parents and children can sing, stomp, and sway together to traditional songs, chants, finger-plays and rhythms, with folk singer and teaching artist Mama Zahra. 

Suitable for families with children ages 2-5. Maximum capacity: 15

 "Musical Mind Games" with South Side Suzuki 
3:15-4:15pm Logan Center, Room 603
Through a series of colorful and creative games, children will learn the fundamentals of music theory, including reading simple rhythms, understanding the music staff, and singing the notes of the musical alphabet.
Appropriate for ages 6-11; maximum Capacity: 15

Camp DJ with DJ Mastermix Academy 
3:15-4:14pm Logan Center, Gidwidtz Lobby 
Join the DJ Mastermix Academy as families get hands on experience with learning the basic essentials to DJing with standard turntables and video technology. 
Appropriate for ages 7-11. Maximum Capacity: 20

Oh, and there’s also an event that you have to pay for, which looks good, but I think I will stick to the free workshops. 

Eth-Noh-Tec Storytellers 
Family Matinee March 22, 2pm; Logan Center Performance Hall
 Nancy Wang and Robert Kikuchi-Yngojo of Eth-Noh-Tec weave music, dance, and rhythmic dialogue, to inspire the imagination and to bring their stories alive. Run time: 60 minutes. Appropriate for ages 6 and up. Tickets: $10 General, $5 Children under 17

Need-based child care stipends for doctoral students: application now available

Doctoral students at the University of Chicago received an email today from Deborah Nelson, providing a link to the application form for the need-based child care stipends announced last quarter (see here).

"The application for spring quarter stipends is now available on the Graduate Education website’s Grad Community page, under Resources for Student Parents. You can access the application directly here."

Nowhere on the application form itself or in the accompanying information is any mention made of the projected size of the awards, other than that it is not forecast that these will cover "the bulk" of childcare related expenses. So, we will just have to apply to find out how much the University has decided to allocate to graduate student parents - go!

Schools and preschools in Hyde Park and beyond

Deciding where to send your child to school or preschool is one of the hardest decisions we make as parents, and, as I am discovering to my chagrin, it does not necessarily seem to get easier - my second grader is now attending his fourth school since kindergarten.

So I am putting out a call for parent reviews of all area schools - private, charter or CPS, preschool to high school. We are interested in hearing about any school attended by children of UChicago graduate students.

In time, I hope this will become a vital resource for student parents moving to the area, so please encourage fellow parents to contribute! We gratefully welcome reviews by non-student parents too, although we are mostly interested in those schools that are attended by student parent families. Some schools appear to be mostly beyond the reach of grad student families, but if there are such families who have found a way to enrol their children at the Lab School, for instance, it would certainly be interesting to hear about that.

Here is an initial, partial round up of schools we are hoping to have reviewed - please volunteer!

Preschools:
Bright Horizons
Chicago Child Care Society
Parent Coop for Early Learning
CPS pre-K program at Ray Elementary
Ancona
Akiba Schechter
K.A.M.

Elementary:
Ray (CPS)
Bret Harte (CPS)
Shoesmith (CPS)
Carnegie (CPS)
Carnegie Regional Gifted Center (CPS)
Lenart Regional Gifted Center (CPS)
Ancona
Akiba Schechter

St. Thomas the Apostle

Story online

My kids can never have enough stories, and stories before bed is one of our favourite times of the day. But the often want stories at other times, when I'm busy making dinner or something, so I'm rather pleased to have found this rather charming collection of stories online, some read by rather famous people (Al Gore, Elijiah Wood...).

It's here: Story Online

I never usually let the kids anywhere near my computer, so I am not quite sure how this is going to work, but I'm interested in beginning to explore the opportunities offered by the internet to keep my children entertained.

What websites or other media resources have you discovered that your kids enjoy?