BACK TO THE BASICS : The Clothes: Outfitting Body and Sole
You may not recognize the scruffy kids of summer, even if some of them are yours.
Suddenly, they have fresh haircuts and added bright suspenders and Batman clothing to their wardrobes. Bored with the beach, they have turned earnestly to the selection of lunch boxes, notebooks and lip gloss.
“I’m not a trend follower,” said Allison Fedrick, 13, who brought her mother, Linda, along to help choose the eye shadow shade that would proclaim “individualist” to every other eighth-grader at Ensign Middle School in Newport Beach.
“I usually wear green, but I think I want to try something different,” Allison said while scanning the cosmetics racks at a Target discount store in Santa Ana. “Maybe more blues . . .”
Linda Fedrick, who attributed her calm to the fact that she has only one child to accompany through the rigors of back-to-school shopping, said her recent expeditions with Allison have been much different from the annual battles she recalls with her own mother.
“Allison is very opinionated; she knows what she wants,” said Fedrick. “The secret is not to fight it. If she doesn’t like what I buy, she won’t wear it anyway.”
Eight-year-old Kevin Kopitch found exactly what he wanted in the store’s towering rack of notebooks--a laminated model with a sports car cover. But for his sister Cristy, 12, the search was fruitless.
“I can’t find anything,” she said, exasperated. Asked what she was looking for, she just shrugged her pink-shirted shoulders.
“The styles have changed, and I can’t keep up,” said their harried mother, Gwen Kopitch of Santa Ana. “Last year backpacks were cool and this year they wouldn’t be caught dead with one.
“What don’t they like? Anything I show them.”
Teachers are out doing their own shopping, getting what they need to spruce up their classrooms to make a good first impression. And they need new goodies every year to keep up with what’s hot and what’s not.
When classes start Tuesday at Haven View Elementary School in Huntington Beach, Nancy Fowler will begin her 26th year of teaching. Fowler, like most teachers, is a collector. Here are the Styrofoam balls she has been hoarding for two years, just in case she teaches a unit on clouds. Here is the dinosaur poster that was so popular last year. Here is a new addition to the bright jumble--cardboard characters on slides, behind trees and climbing ladders to teach the tricky spatial concepts of up, down, near and far.
She has assembled her classroom on faith, because she still doesn’t know what grade level she will teach. Declining enrollment in the district, coupled with a burst of last-minute student registrations, has kept the student rooster in flux.
“I think I’ll be teaching first grade,” she said. “But I won’t know for sure until the first day of classes.”
One thing has remained constant for Fowler, and it is the reason that she is still teaching after many of her peers have retired or found other careers.
“Every year is a new begining,” she said. “It’s not a 7:45 a.m. to 3:15 p.m. job. Education is a lifelong joy for me, and that’s what I want to pass along to my children.”
* BRISK SALES Retailers report brisk back-to-school sales in children’s clothing. Business, Page 2
WHAT’S IN * Batman
* Dinosaurs
* Barbie’s coming back
* Scandinavian design lunch boxes from Stor
* Nike Air shoes for teen-age boys
* LA Gear shoes for Boys and girls
* Reebok still in with teen-age girls
* Neon colors
WHAT’S OUT * Bears, especially the Care Bears
* My Little Pony designs on lunch boxes, girls clothing
* Ruffled skirts with attached pants
* Pro-Wing shoes * Jeans that are blue
Taken from an informal survey of children, parents and teachers
