So I get to go to a mandatory parent-teacher meeting today at 1 p.m. so I can hear just how hard my son’s teacher’s life is. Aside from the misspelled notice on the front of David’s homework packet, my favorite part of this entire thing is that we were given less than 24 hours’ notice for a mandatory meeting. I realize there are families out there that can shake loose a parent on short notice to serve the whims of of their child’s teacher (for the time being, ours is one), but many people that I know live in households where both parents work (or in a single parent home, just the one), and unless one is extremely fortunate, he or she cannot just get out of work at the last minute for something in the early afternoon. I know that when I was managing, I would have been extremely upset to lose an employee for most, if not all of his shift so that he could attend a 30 minute meeting sprung upon him at the last minute. As someone who has been scheduling employees for years, to take someone out of a crafted shift plan with less than a day’s warning is a massive pain, and that someone would demand it, is beyond inconsiderate.

So my son’s teacher is either clueless about the impact that her summons is causing, lost somewhere in the sitcoms of the past where every family not only survives, but thrives on a single-income budget, or she doesn’t understand the definition of the word “mandatory,” which also would not surprise me. I am sure that she has excellent qualities as an educator, but it gives me pause to think that this woman, with whom I am constantly pleading to just speak to me in her native language, as her accent is so frequently difficult to decipher, this woman is responsible for not only teaching my son proper English, but for correcting his mistakes and enforcing grammatical regulations- something I’ve seen that she, herself, has had issue with. Of course, there is a real possibility that she felt this meeting was too important to put off, and that today was the only day to get it done before it would have been too late. Except… she indicated in the homework packet last week that she was going to have a meeting (no time frame mentioned), to be announced in the coming week’s packet (which we received yesterday), with absolutely no hints whatsoever of its compulsory nature.

One of the topics sure to arise in this little get-together is the dearth of students actually turning in their completed packets every week. Apparently, according to the notices on the front page of this week’s packet, only about a third of the class is actually following through on these assignments, and she believes that this is making her life harder. Now, I know that there are strategies my wife and I have been trying to implement to get David to do his nightly pages, but ultimately it’s up to him to get them done. I could do it all for him in just a couple minutes, but the entire point of schoolwork is to reinforce the concepts that he’s learned. If enough parents are facing the problem of uncooperative children, if they simply don’t have time for a  battle every afternoon, between however many jobs they have to work, maybe the solution isn’t to keep ramming pages down their throats each and every week. I don’t recall getting much, if any, homework before I was in the 3rd grade. I can remember this clearly, because our teacher asked if anyone would like to start doing it that year, and several hands shot up. I wondered if, since I didn’t raise my hand, I would be obligated to participate. I would, as it turned out. I guess what I’m getting at is that if there is a failure rate of close to 67%, maybe it’s time for my son’s teacher to reevaluate the method she has chosen.

That being said, I’m not just going to be that dad that lays all the blame at the feet of everyone but himself and his. I know there are areas and opportunities for improvement in how we, as a family, move forward with David’s education. Every day is a five hour battle to just get two pages (front and back) done, and by the end of all of that, he is supposed to read (or be read to) for 30 minutes. I would love to set him down and read to him (I’ve loaded the Kindle up with tons of awesome books that I read as a kid, and a handful that I would have, had they been available), to show him that, at least in my family, books are treasured friends, and authors, the true celebrities (full disclosure: I may be a bit biased on that last point). But to accomplish all of that would mean that he wouldn’t get to bed until somewhere close to midnight, and that is too far past his bedtime. My wife and I have tried both the carrot and the stick, but he seems to want nothing to do with either. The bribes my wife has offered (I too, on occasion, have succumbed to negotiating with the terrorist) are all too soon forgotten, as he’s only ever looking toward what he’ll get tomorrow, and any punishments we lay down upon him are also ineffective, as he’s smart enough to have a backup plan for his backup plans when all his privileges have been revoked.

I’ve recently begun discussing the prospect with him, of repeating the 2nd grade. Despite what my wife may think, I am not bringing it up to try and hurt his feelings, or even to motivate him so as to avoid that. He was about six months younger than I was upon entering Kindergarten, and half a year in a child’s development can be profound. I know that it would be humiliating for him, and, honestly, that’s probably the one thing to have kept me from pursuing it since I had to face that possibility. But if he can’t keep up with the work at his current level, he will simply be left behind as he continues to advance. We saw that he was running into problems toward the second half of last year, but his testing showed that he knew what he should know, and so could move up to the 2nd grade. This year, however, we’ve been behind the 8 ball the entire time, and I just think that allowing him a mulligan would be better in the long run. I wish I knew what I was supposed to do, or to how to make this easier, but I do know that if he can’t pull out of this nosedive soon, the decision may be taken from us.

I’ll update everyone after I get back from the thing.

-Tex