Friday, February 24, 2012

Conferencing


Yesterday was parent-teacher conferences at school, which I rarely attend, except they have cookies so I do sometimes.

The husband does it for me, because he likes to talk to people. I get bored. I feel like I already know everything that they sit and formally tell us from behind the teacher desk. In fact, I feel like I know things that they don't know, so it should really be me sitting behind the desk, telling them non-schoolish things like how Beth drew that picture in band and smudged it on purpose by rubbing it on her jeans, or how Kara figured out how to edit photos on her own or how James helps so cheerfully around the house that sometimes we pick him to take out the garbage too much.

Speaking of James (and the previous post below), the teacher from the biting incident had some words that made me smile when the husband came home to tell me. She said, when he apologized for James' random and weird offense, "Oh please don't squelch his spirit and his creativity. There aren't enough kids these days that have his spunk and his creativity."

I'm glad to know that when my children are off at school they have teachers like this, who see them as I see them.

Now I need to go wake them up, because they were supposed to have a snow day, but it didn't pan out, so I let them sleep in anyway.

*

Thursday, February 16, 2012

Names and Unanswerable Questions


Well, my babies are big now.
I have four teenagers.
They are all on Facebook,
they are all web-savvy and properly informed about Stranger-Danger.

And so I hereby Name them:

Michael: (previously The Teenager)
Kara: (aka The Middle Child)
James and Beth: (Twin Boy and Twin Girl)

Well that's done with.

Now on to the letter I received from James' teacher today.
My husband read it to me from behind his computer.
I sat with my hands over my face, shaking my head.

Mr. and Mrs. K,

On James' progress report today, he has a 1 on his Dam Comparison assignment. I'd like to explain that grade.

James did a fine job on the assignment, as did his classroom neighbor. For some reason, and I can't for the life of me make sense of this, James chose to take a large bite (yes, seriously) out of his neighbor's paper. James freely admitted to having bitten the paper. Since the paper was in no shape to be turned in, James was asked to recopy it for the young man to whom the paper actually belonged. He said he would do that and took the paper with him. James was told that if he did not recopy the other paper, the other boy would get his grade, and he would get the 0.

That was a week ago. As of today, James has not recopied the paper, and in fact, he reminded me of that. I put a 1 on the assignment so that I know it was done, but that it was not done correctly - or his part of the assignment was not done.

I hope that makes sense.

J

Well of course, it makes perfect sense.
sigh.

I have decided that when he comes home today I will say,

"James, why did you take a bite out of that Dam paper??"

*
peace