First Parent/Teacher Conference
0 CommentsI must say that it went very very well.
I mean, I already knew that The Elder was doing remarkably well. Better than I could have ever hoped for. Yesterday I sent an email to The K Teacher with just a list of questions and concerns that I might have. Sorta to the tune of, can you just reassure me that he isn’t standing out from the others?
She had a lot of complimentary things to say about him. Her concerns were connected to maturity. All of which are true when you are indeed a newly 5 year old boy in Kindergarten with 6 year old girls and boys. Most of them deal with attention span and behaviors in the cafeteria which she said was a pretty chaotic place with a million kids and only 3 teachers*. *I’m beginning to understand why my group was so valuable to the school we sponsored when I worked for TVA. We always came the first couple of weeks of school to assist in the lunchroom. I understood a little but now I understand a LOT. So it was good to hear that he was “normal” and wasn’t standing out. I think she is pretty understanding and is really good at not labelling him which I really appreciate. She said that he is reading at a C level which I didn’t know what that meant. But she assured me that “that was a great place to start.” Which tells me that (especially since she said it twice) that is the script she tells all parents whose kids are reading at a C level in Kindergarten so that their heads don’t get so big that they can’t get out of the door. The Elder has been reading since he was 2.5. Who knows, if he could have communicated then, perhaps he was reading before then? You’ve seen those kids on Oprah who are reading before they are 2, right? Don’t worry, ma’am. We don’t get too big for our britches ’round here. So he is reading…great…is he keeping his clothes on? Is he biting anyone? Has he freaked anybody out? Fortunately the last two answers were no. Unfortunately the first one was also a no. And it was on the first day to boot. She let us know that she didn’t tell us because it was the first day of school, he needed to know who was in charge, it was under control and it hadn’t happened since. Sweet. I like her. She is very confident. I should call her The Sweet Teacher, but I won’t change the casting on my readers. Too confusing.
I did tell her that one of the things that The Teacher gave us a heads up on was that once he starts getting into territory of things he actually has to learn (as opposed to review) we might start seeing some behaviors coming back. That whole “frustration with perfection, defiance with a nonpreferred task, I’m gonna scream and spit now because you obviously can’t read my mind” type of behaviors. She agreed and said that we will have to make sure we keep on top of that.
So today… I pick him up from school and I didn’t notice right away that he wasn’t talking about school. This was how the conversation started…
The Elder: Is it red or green? The one on my card?**Which made me nervous because they have a card system where green is a warning and yellow is time out and red is bad (I guess sent to the principal?). So neither red nor green would make Mommy relax right now.
Me: I don’t know which card you mean?
The Elder: The one with my naaaammmmeee. My name?” He proceeds to tell me his full name. “What it is on the back of my name?”
Me: You mean this? As I lift up his name card I use in the pick-up line so they can bullhorn his name out.
The Elder: Yes, turn it over. Ooooooooohhhhhhhhhhh, it’s red. I forgot.
Yes, it is a white piece of paper with his name on it, laminated over a piece of red construction paper. Ok, no REAL red card. whew!
…STAY TUNED…for the rest of the story…
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