Education

If anyone should have noticed her daughter had a learning disorder, Liz Green figured it would have been her. As a kindergarten teacher, she had been specifically trained to spot learning difficulties. But since her daughter, Hayleigh, was an excellent student and an enthusiastic reader, the subtle clues went unnoticed.

“Each night we read, Hayleigh made more and more substitution errors,” she says. “She read ‘rampant’ for ‘repellant’ and ‘habitat’ for ‘hatchery’.”

It didn’t make any sense. Ms. Green asked her daughter’s teachers about the errors, but nobody seemed particularly concerned. Until second grade.

It was a winter day in Austin and the rain had fallen for days, a surefire recipe for cabin fever. Nature needed to be explored, blue lips notwithstanding. After all, this is Texas, and before we know it we’ll be longing for a chilly breeze. Besides, there are a few young pirates around these parts who hanker for buried treasure.

And buried treasure is exactly what my three pirates found, when we combined forces with our friends John and Donna and asked them to introduce us to the world of geocaching. After spending a good part of the day chasing down boxes large and small in locations ranging from a solitary hiking trail to a hidden corner of a busy parking lot, we almost felt like we had rediscovered Austin. I think we might be hooked!

If you’re looking for artistic education in Round Rock, Chisholm Trail Middle School is the place to go. Now, the whole state knows it.