Tales from the Steppes

2005-11-10

11:40 a.m.
Thursday, November 10

As I roved out one evening fair,
It bein' the summertime to take the air

- Steeleye Span

This morning I had my parent-teacher conference with the MM's teacher. Now I do not mind these conferences but rarely do I actually learn anything from them. It is good to sit and chat with the teacher so you can both see where you are coming from and brainstorm some strategies to manipulate and motivate your child. For example, the MM blows through his homework in ~ 15 minutes and never needs any parental help, except with the organization of a major project. Which means he is not being challenged. So we talked about finding harder work for him, as he needs to learn how to actually apply himself.

The biggest problem I have with these parent-teacher conferences is figuring out how to react when the teacher tells me something that they consider noteworthy and want a response on. For example, the YM's teacher told me that he has changed what name he wants to be called by four times already this year and he dresses "colorfully". I am not sure if I am supposed to be surprised (I'm not) or even care (I don't) about this. The best I can come up with is a sympathetic murmur of support for her challenge. If his behavior is not causing an actual problem in her class, then I am ok with it. He keeps his clothes on, pays attention when she is speaking, and mostly follows directions. If he decides to be a dog or his brother, and wears a Hawaiian shirt with a kilt and yellow boots and it causes no problems, then I am ok. Does she not think that I know that he does these things? I really care more that he is learning what he is supposed to.

With the MM, the situation revolves more around his test scores. I guess it is hubris to expect that your children will be smart and not be surprised then when they are. I will always be proud of their achievements but standardized tests are not accomplishments, they are mostly measurements. And they are not even generally "true" measurements. There is a whole lot of other crap that goes into those tests - do you think the same way as the people that wrote the test, are you from the same culture, do you take tests well. So I cannot bark like a seal because my children do well on these things and this is not the reaction that is expected. My noncommittal "Oh" or "Ok" is just not good enough. And that bothers me.