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November 5, 2006
Parent Teacher Conferences
The horror! The horror!
Through the course of my academic career, I have had some truly fabulous teachers and some notorious stinkers. I have had the teachers that tried to squelch every creative impulse that they could sniff out and terrify anyone who might be thinking of attempting something new or special. Of course, I've had the opposite, too. The teacher who inspires and encourages and helps you find things inside yourself you never knew were there (Joan Yen, I think of you often and fondly!).
None of this, however, prepared me for the horror of (da da dum) the Parent Teacher Conference.
There's nothing like cruising into a meeting, happy and content with your lot in the world, just to find out that your little angel is a disruptive influence and can't spell his way out of a paper bag. Or that he hasn't handed in his math homework that you have laboriously watched over him doing for weeks on end. Or that every other child's poster project is hung up on the wall except yours because your child decided to include several obscenities worked into the decorations on the edge of the poster.
I have had way more friends blindsided by Parent Teacher Conferences and Open Houses than by husbands leaving them for twenty-year-old secretaries.
The first step in the humiliation generally comes when they make you sit in the little chairs. You know, the tiny ones that my young skinny child fits in just fine, but barely has room for one of my butt cheeks? So I'm perched, already off balance, when they hit me with the news that my child has supposedly been working on a research project on early hominids for the past three months and should be ready to hand it in next Tuesday when as far as I know the only thing my child has been researching on the internet are funny videos and games.
Next, while I'm still trying to regain balance on my single buttock, I learn that my kid talks too much. Now, they don't say that. Instead, somewhere in the notes, will be the comment that "Little So and So is very social." That is not a compliment. It doesn't mean that my child works and plays well with others. It means, he is unable to shut his mouth for more than a few seconds at a time.
Somewhere in there, the teacher also usually says something nice about my kid, but my brain is still figuring out how to make a quilt square representing the tools of early man or pondering if it would be child abuse to actually duct tape my kid's mouth shut or wondering if I'll ever get circulation back in my right butt cheek that I've missed it.
This blog was brought to you by Whitney's new book, Testing Kate, a novel about surviving law school, finding love in unexpected places and turning your luck around.
Posted by Eileen at 7:00 AM | Comments (10)
Comments
Nothing compares to the conference I had with my son's 1st grade teacher (he's in 7th grade now) and she was worried about his comments on blowing up the school. She asked me where he got ideas like that and I said 'Cartoons' and just smiled at her. One of my finer moments.
Posted by: Terri at November 5, 2006 11:25 AM
My mother loves to tell everybody about her conference with my first grade teacher (I was painfully shy then) where the teacher told her "Alesia will always be slower than the other children."
For me, I had to restrain myself from pounding a teacher into the ground when she said she not only punished Science Boy but EVERYBODY AT HIS TABLE when he "read too much in class."
I may still have the 2-year-old bruises in my arm from Navy Guy clutching my arm to keep me from going for her throat.
Posted by: Alesia Holliday ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.literarychicks.com/nav-commenters.gif)
at November 5, 2006 4:05 PM
I should just shut up about my good conferences then, huh? (All three of my boys got their grade/standards equivalent of As and Bs with no behavior issues other than being chatty.) But we did have an IEP meeting for my oldest child when he was 5 where the psychologist told me I'd better start looking for a institution for him, because it wouldn't be that much longer before we realized we couldn't take care of him at home.
Yeah. He's the kid in my house I have to watch the LEAST. He's smart enough to stay out of trouble.
Posted by: Cate at November 5, 2006 4:40 PM
In your child's defense, those paper bags can be tricky to spell your way out of. Maybe you could make him 5,000 of those little flashcards like Laurence Fishburne did in AKEELAH AND THE BEE. Then your darling boy could get the entire community of Davis involved, spell his way out of the bag, and go to the Scripps National Spelling Bee. Now wouldn't that be a nice vacation for the entire family?
Posted by: Susan Hatler at November 5, 2006 8:12 PM
Dream on, Susan! One of Thing Two's friends actually made it to the regional spelling bee. It was waayyyy too intense for us.
LC Eileen
Posted by: Eileen at November 6, 2006 9:56 AM
Aw, too bad. It would've been a great way to see D.C. on a low budget.
Posted by: Susan Hatler at November 6, 2006 11:36 AM
I loved your post because it is so true. I remember my husband and myself walking into our first kindergarten conference and the teacher asks us to have a seat. My 6 foot tall husband looks down, looks at me and asks, "Is she kidding?"
Posted by: Maureen at November 6, 2006 1:08 PM
Oh, great. Now I'm having nightmares about the upcoming Parent/Teacher conference with the kidlet's 2nd grade teacher next Monday....
Posted by: Dia at November 6, 2006 6:29 PM
Oh god! Stinky Boy's fourth grade teacher STILL gets honerable mentions during MY therapy sessions.
Posted by: Janina at November 9, 2006 2:25 AM
Much too late to be of use to Alesia, but I had a co-worker who was very proud of her punish all for the sins of one plan, because she said it meant the kids kept after each other to behave. My co-worker responded that since that was peer pressure the teacher needed to promise unteach it later.
Posted by: RandomRanter at December 7, 2006 4:42 PM
