Not a Problem

Yesterday Hubby and I went to Parent Teacher conferences for Miss 14 and Mr 18. Conferences are set up as a block of time when parents can wander from room to room, wait in line, and meet with the teacher as they are free. Hubby and I decided to visit the teachers in order of how we felt the most problems might be. We decided to start with Mr 18's English teacher because his grade right now is SERIOUSLY lacking. Granted, I don't expect straight A's from my kids. I especially don't expect them from Mr 18 because he has serious problems with testing. His daily work can be perfect but it comes to a test, and invariably the grade is a C or lower, we realize this, but we still expect him to have a decent grade. Right now, English is far, far away from a decent grade.

We walked into the English teacher's classroom, and introduced ourselves. Mrs. Teacher said, 'Oh, yeah, Mr 18, no problems there, we don't have much to talk about." Smile, grin...
"Oh," says I, "but his current posted grade is not anywhere near what I expect from him. "
"Hmmm," says Mrs. Teacher, "let me pull it up and look at it."
Which she does, and we discuss, and I point out the problems. Well he's behind because he was gone for this and that. I'm not worried says Mrs. Teacher.
Well, I am!
Does it really not matter what his mother thinks? I ask why he is behind, how can he make up for it, does he participate in class, is he working hard, etc. You know, all the relevant parenting questions you ask when your child's grades are not where they should be. Her answers were not professional, were not helpful and were mostly just annoying. To me, it sounded like a burned out end of the school year teacher just waiting for summer. I was and am very annoyed. Mr 18 has never, ever had a grade this low in English, and yet Mrs. Teacher shows no concern. Argh! Instead she just tells me to make sure he turns in his assignments each day until the end of the year because they are worth 10 points apiece. Not much of a solution, is it?

In other teacher news we had awesome conferences for the rest of the afternoon. Miss 14's teachers are all thrilled with her grades and amazed at her progress. Many of them had questions regarding her heart, as apparently the 504 is still not in place with all of them. Another frustrating thing... it is April... perhaps having teachers aware of a heart problem would be a good thing to do at the beginning of the year. But we are lucky in the fact that it is a small enough school that teacher's are able to keep each other informed, without the beaurocratic rigamorole being handed over.

Mr 18's other teacher's all had good things to say as well. Most of them were anxious to discuss what a "neat" kid he is. I think they like that he is opinionated and willing to discuss things in class and that he will take a leadership role in projects and activities. We were able to visit most teachers, a few were not in their classrooms and I didn't feel like it was my job to go on a search for them. Instead I will email, tell them we were there when they weren't there, and hopefully they will realize we tried.

So I think the moral of the story is that not only do Seniors get Senioritis... but teachers get Senioritis, too.