Parent Teacher Day

I came in early for Parent Teacher day to make packets for the kids so they would have plenty of work when I left for paternity leave. I was holding back a goofy grin while making those packets. They were the physical evidence that I was leaving, and I hoped that they were the last copies I would have to make. Ever. I was still banking on finding a job during the combination of paternity leave and Winter Break.

For my very first parent teacher day, I spent hours preparing portfolios for all the kids, planning on all of the parents showing up. One parent came. So this year I spent my time scrubbing off marker stains and making copies, but this time, instead of one parent, seven parents came. I guess the constant phone calls were becoming too much. So much for the portfolios; I had to just wing it.

My first parent conference of the day was an embarrassing one, with a mom who demanded her daughter, Abigail, be more challenged. She was afraid that Abigail might not be prepared for 3rd grade. I completely agreed with her because there was a secret that I wasn’t telling any parents. Too many times, I let the slower kids dictate the pace of the class because they were the ones who gave me the biggest headaches; it was the smarter ones who were left with their wheels spinning. Abigail was extremely smart, but I just treated her as a girl who liked to talk and more importantly, as a girl who didn’t like to fight which meant she didn’t get much attention. She had also been held back, and she was the largest kid in class. She was a new student and with every new student, I judged them on their propensity for getting into fights. When a new kid walked in for her first day, I would protect her from the crazies for at least the first few days. I would sit the new kid in the least warlike table; sometimes I would put a sweet girl on both sides of the new kid. I would find a friend for the new kid, someone that was marginally cool with the bad kids, but was good enough that he would also listen to me. Then, over the next couple days, I would carefully watch the new kid’s reaction to the inevitable teasing. If she was quick to fight, I had to play prevent defense, and if they avoided fighting at all costs, then they didn’t get as much attention. Abigail didn’t get that much attention.

I suspected a few parents weren’t happy that I was teaching their kid, and Evan’s mom, Ms. Lee, was the worst at concealing her disgust. According to Ms. Lee, Evan had been a well-behaved boy in 1st grade, and she seemed unconcerned he was such a problem now. If he truly was a well-behaved boy, then it was something I was doing wrong, she thought. In September, when he was upset, he liked to push back his feet, slide back on his chair and then topple over to the floor. He may have started out upset, but by the time he was swimming on the floor, he was smiling; the class was his audience, and he was the star. When I called home, this was her response, “I don’t know why he’s doing that. He didn’t do that last year. Is the other 2nd grade teacher a man also? Oh, she’s not. Ok.”

By this point I was starting to get a sense of the kids’ home lives, which gave me insight into their erratic behavior in the classroom. There was one time I called Evan’s mom, and I could only hear a man screaming at her in the background; I asked if I could call her back another time. Grandma James was convinced she was on crack, just by her appearance. When Ms. Lee came to school, she walked unsteadily with mangled hair and black rings under her eyes. Grandma James kept on mentioning how surprised she was that Evan wasn’t worse off. By this time, Evan was respecting me, and he was back to his pre-corrupted 1st grade behavior, I guess. However, Evan was still a fighter, and when his buttons were pushed, he went all out. When I broke up one of his rare fights, Evan started punching me. It wasn’t the first time he had done this, but I had to bring it up with her again, even though I knew it wouldn’t be worth it. After giving her the full details of what happened, including how her son hit me, she said, “Well, you shouldn’t ever lay hands on my boy anyhow.”

When Ryden’s mom came on conference day, I told her about how I caught him climbing a locker to pull down a bag of snacks during dismissal. I told him that he had to clean it up, but he refused, and so I told him he couldn’t leave the room until he cleaned it up. He pulled down all my book shelves and scattered my categorized books all over the room. I still wouldn’t let him leave until he picked up everything. I had to wait until his mom’s girlfriend came to pick him up an hour later before he actually cleaned everything up. As he was leaving, he stared me down, and it looked like he was going to spit in my face, but he held it back. He had learned nothing. In fact, he was getting meaner. When I told his mom the full story, I was really hoping she would be shocked. Instead she told me he does that kind of thing at home too. When he was upset, he liked to punch holes in her walls; she said she had seven holes so far. She was relying on school to get her son back on track; that’s ironic, I was relying on her.