here's the story. last nite we had the first set of parent/teacher conferences at the new school. it went for about four hours. and on a sidenote, i sat in a chair for the WHOLE four hours. no restroom breaks, no water breaks, no anything. there were that many parents that came out. now, keep in mind that i'm coming from a different school. at this different school i would maybe see a parent if i was lucky. i have to admit that i was completely caught off guard by the...fervor...that these parents have for their children. it could have been heartwarming...you know...if i had a heart.
so things are going in a pretty hectic manner, and i get this set of parents with their child (who's in my homeroom) who put on this...what i can only describe as a performance. this is what sent me on my downward spiral into this semicolon. this kid...let's do "paul"...and his parents walked up with ne'ry a smile on their faces. they came up looking like someone had already done them wrong, and they hadn't even gotten paul's report card. when they did, they pretty much went in on me because they could not, and would not, understand why their child got the grade that he did in my class.
i proceeded to explain that he is quiet and doesn't say too much, but that he'll participate when he's called to do so. i said that he's not a particular problem, but reiterated that he is a quiet person. i showed them grades that he received. they looked at every other child's grades (which is illegal) and pointed out that on a particular test, most of the students did poorly, so "it must be something that you are doing." the "you" was apparently referring to me, wesley. it's probably a good thing that we can't see our own faces, because i'm quite sure that i made a face i wouldn't have wanted myself to see upon hearing a comment like that. it was approximately fifteen minutes that they went in on me, criticizing my teaching methods and anything else that came into their heads. they talked about my homework procedures, mainly that they way i assign homework is too advanced for a fourth grader. well...i give out homework on monday and it's due on friday. i'm an open-minded person who can see things from many perspectives. however i could not see the logic in their reasoning. and that's probably because they were being illogical. it was basically one of those things where, as a teacher, i had to sit there and listen, even though my mind had checked out a long time ago.
as much as i do for these kids, to be got at like that was unacceptable in my eyes. meanwhile, MEANWHILE, paul is standing off to the side, crying as if it was part of the whole act. had i known better, i would have given him the award for best supporting actor in a parent/teacher conference. it was...strange.
i almost forgot...the grade that they were so pissed off about...was an eighty-six (86). it's a B+. it's not an A, but it's a B...+. now, had they come in raising hell about how paul received a forty-three that would be different. this was what caught me off guard so hard. every parent likes to think that his/her child is a straight A student.
excuse the hell out of me for teaching science with academic rigor. i'm sorry...excuse the sh*t out of me for teaching science with academic rigor. actually...excuse the f*ck out of me for challenging the students and not bogging them down with worksheets every day. excuse the f*ck out of me for raising the bar.
needless to say, i was, and have been, utterly pissed off about this since that night. i've vented, and now i've blawged about it, so i feel vindicated a bit, but until i see them again and get this straight, it's always going to be there. i'm such a passive-aggressive person that i feel like i need to do something to balance the scales. it's not a "two wrongs don't make a right" thing, but more of a "i need to right your wrong" thing. it pisses me off that students like paul act a certain way in class, then go home and tell something completely different to their parents, making me out to be the bad guy. don't get me wrong, i am cold-hearted, and sand flows through my veins, but i'm never unfair or outright evil to children.
i remember the days when a teacher would tell a parent that his/her child did something and there were no questions asked. the parent would deal with the child. nowadays, if a teacher tries to communicate something with a parent, there has to be explicit documentation, no less that two hundred pages worth, recorded video and audio, signed and notarized affidavits, and written confessions for a parent to even consider the possibility that his/her child did something in class. ri-damn-diculous.
and if that weren't bad enough, here comes parent after parent trying to do more or less the same thing. now, i realize that i made a mistake in the grading of the students on the computer, so this weekend i'm going back in and manually calculating grades. one error kind of threw off a lot of scores. i didn't know that people weren't allowed to make mistakes. so now parents are up my arse about it, even though i'm telling them that there has been a mistake. でも実はあなたの子供はバカバカしい事をして、何もやってないし、多分確かに落ちるんだ...or something like that. oh well...i am in the process of formulating a plan, which is great because then i get to do my plan laugh...
when no one's watching or listening, i sneak off somewhere and laugh like that. it makes me feel like i've done something insidious, which is just a fancy word that means good. anyway, when i get my plan together and execute it, i'll blawg about it. operation: payback is in the works, people, it's in the works. you know it's serious because i've repeated a sentence...that's right, i've repeated a sentence.
so...that is that...now to this. my semicolons bring me to a point where i don't want to do anything with anyone. i just want to be by myself and work my way out of it, because i'm resourceful enough to do that. trip and luby, bless their hearts, convinced me to go and do karaoke with white people at a bar in midtown. i can't say that i had the best time, for a number of reasons which i will decline to mention here (that whole hurting people's feelings thing, i guess), but i tried to at least pretend i was having fun. it probably didn't go well, though. you know, that whole not being able to see your own face. i just hope they don't ask questions about it...because then i'll have to talk...damn.
it wasn't because of them...mostly, but it was the semicolon, and the added bonus that i didn't want to do anything. i think i've put myself into an awkward position. i tend to live on the lighter side of life. i joke around a lot and don't take things too seriously. however, those few times where i do get serious, nobody seems to believe me. it's almost like that idiot who cried wolf. i'm not an idiot, though. i'm an idiot savant...shout out to stella valand (nee morrison).
speaking of idiots...
it's not exactly like that...have you ever prejudged a person based on their everyday actions and then gotten surprised when they did something that caught you off guard? i'm not saying (not at all) that he's a great singer. it's just that...his talking voice and his singing voice are like two different people. the sitcom that perpetually plays in my head had the studio audience laughing for five minutes from the face i made when the first note came out of his mouth. i guess i was expecting a barry white voice, but got keith sweat instead. it was...funny to me. now that, i did enjoy at the karaoke. he whined for two songs, and i could not get enough. i want him to sing at my wedding...for my own fiendish purposes...and then i'll sneak off somewhere and...
luby looked like a free spirit, just moving where the wind blew her as she danced with that man. bless her heart; she didn't care how she looked. life should be that way. she's going to lead the soul train line in my wedding...again, for my own fiendish purposes...and then...
oh goodness,
i have a training in less than five hours...nappy time...
-w
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