Carter started second grade two weeks ago. It’s been quite a ride, ending with a very emotional Thursday evening and a “mental health day” on Friday, consisting of Carter staying home with me and Archie to decompress.
Carter started off second grade optimistic. Two days before school, I was struck with melancholy over the end of summer.
Me: I can’t believe the summer is almost over.
Carter: Yes, it’s been fun, Mom, but don’t worry. In a couple of days, something even better is going to happen. (serene smile) School.
I had the familiar excitement of new pencils and fresh homework assignments- empty pages waiting to be filled with productivity. On Monday, Carter came home with his first assignment, consisting of a phonics worksheet and a request that we sign the phonics worksheet and his “home reading” including Title, Author and pages read. The phonics lesson presented issues of its own:
Carter: Mom? Can you help?
Me: I’d love to. How can I help?
Carter: This question. (Points to a fill-in-the-blank rhyme) Oh look there’s a ______, it’s sitting in the tub.
Me: So the choices are, boy, cub, book and school. Which one rhymes with tub?
Carter: (quite perplexed, and might I say, Stressed) Why would anyone write that sentence? Why would there be a cub in the tub? There might be a boy in the tub, but not a cub. That’s crazy.
Me: Sweetie, no logic when doing phonics. That’s a rule. Just rhyme it and get out.
Tuesday, we had our parent-teacher meeting. Dedicated parents filed into the classroom and crammed their bodies into desks made for people 1/3 our size. We gamely attempted the “Are you smarter than a 2nd grader” and confirmed that indeed, we are not.
Mrs. Teacher-who-must-not-be-named won me over by talking about bucking the trend towards minimal parent involvement in the classroom, sharing that she wants parents to feel free to drop in at any time, although the school would frown on that (warm smile).
She distributed the parent letter and asked for questions. As I was still mortified by getting answers wrong on the “Smarter than a 2nd Grader” quiz, it took some deep breaths to jump in, but I did.
Me: (Raising hand and patiently awaiting acknowledgment) Yes, I have a question about homework.
Teacher-who-must-not-be-named: (Brightly) Yes?
Me: Well, the information sent home at the start of the year indicates that in second grade we should expect 20 to 30 minutes a night. Does that include the 20 minutes of reading? (blathering) Because we read a lot, but even without doing the reading, he had been working on homework for about an hour this evening when it was dinnertime and I couldn’t get him to come to dinner (somebody stop me from talking) because he wouldn’t stop running around the house looking for numbers for his math homework. And it had already been over an hour.
Teacher-who-must-not-be-named: (If possible, more brightly, with great enthusiasm) That’s Great!!
Me: (feeling the red creep up my neck) Not so much for me. That’s too long.
Teacher-who-must-not-be-named: Well, I just want them to do their best- I really don’t want them to stress at all about it. They are too young to be stressing out about grades and stuff.
I opened Carter’s class notebook to find the Class Procedures contained on the first page. Note, these were not distributed to parents– I had to swipe a copy for Kevin. It wasn’t hard to translate it to the language of my seven-year old:
Be very quiet.
Do not move.
Do not engage your friends in conversation, even before school starts.
I do not trust you to be capable of standing in line without cutting or hurting your classmates, so I will assign you a number, to last all year long.
Ignore any signals your body might send you regarding hunger, thirst or going to the restroom.
Do not complain.
As we left, my friend warned me not to read the letter from the art teacher, as it would warrant another blog entry all on its own.
Coming Soon:
In which the Makice parents attempt to limit the amount of stress entering their son’s life, use active listening to hear Carter’s concerns, and balance on the precipice of rebel parenting.