Have I mentioned that school is back in session? YAY for the kids becoming engaged in society again after a three-month hiatus!
Earlier this week I went to meet the kids’ teachers. They are in 7th and 8th grade this year. Somehow they ended up with a bevy of teachers who are anti-homework, or at least anti-homework every night.
CootieBoy ended up having all of the teachers CootieGirl had last year, save one. He was happy about that because he knew all his teachers would be nice thanks to CG’s gushing over them last year. CG didn’t recognize any of the teachers on her list, but came home the first day gushing about her math teacher ("he’s hilarious!") and one other teacher ("she’s funny but no one laughs at her jokes for some reason"). All in all, both are tremendously pleased with their teacher assignments.
Meet the Teacher went well although I didn’t actually get to MEET any of the teachers. They did this weird thing where you went through your child’s schedule as though it were a school day. So for ten minutes I sat in CG’s 1st period class while the teacher talked about the curriculum, and then the bell rang and the parents all shuffled over to the 2nd period class. There was very little time for actual interaction with the teachers.
Once CG and I were done with her teachers, we ran over to the 7th grade area so I could meet the one teacher CB has that I had never talked to. We spent a few minutes chatting while CG went to go say hey to her teachers. At some point we were in the hallway with two of her teachers and they were gushing about how great CG was last year – I could see her preening under their praise. I promised them I would not be a helicopter parent this year (last year I did a bit of helicoptering when CG went through a period of about 2 months where she was NOT ENGAGED in school and her grades were suffering as a result – there were a lot of emails between her teachers and me about getting her grades up). Her English teacher scoffed when I mentioned helicopter parenting and said, "You are not a helicopter parent – trust me. You are just involved, which is a good thing." I said, "Well, nonetheless hopefully you’ll hear from me much less with CB this year."
I told the kids that even though their school now has a 10-point grading scale to match the college system, our *family* has a 9-point grading scale, which is more generous than last year (which was an 8-point scale) but not as generous as our the state has dictated for this year. They were not happy about that, but when I reminded them I’d be happy to stick with the 8-point scale, they quickly acquiesced.
We’ll see how this year goes.
