The Girl and The Parent Teacher Meeting, Grade 2

This title sounds a bit ominous, maybe.

Actually, The Girl wasn’t really involved in this episode of MatGtGaM. This was mostly about me and the Girl’s Mum meeting with her teacher, Mrs, Segers. I’ve actually met her very briefly when the school held an assembly cum meet the teacher cum take a tour of your kid’s classroom – which we did.

This year, The Girl is in the same room for Grade 2 as she was for Grade 1, which I guess lends some continuity for her. But last year, she had two teachers who switched off days; Mrs. Samra had the first part of the week and Ms. Van Ouen had the latter. For grade 2, it’s all Mrs. Segers, plus a teachers aide who we also met, Donna.

In addition to regular class time, The Girl is a part of a smaller group within her class around the areas of reading and writing. It’s actually a great thing, since I think she loves having a bit more one on one time in that particular area, which is really what she’s used to at home.

But, one of the many things that impressed me about Mrs. Segers is that she seems to have a good handle on our daughter, personality-wise, and learning style-wise, too. She clearly has put in a lot of effort to figure out the finer points of how our child learns. It’s understood that every brain’s different.

Source: behance.net via Annabel on Pinterest

This is a very big deal, when you consider that teachers in the era in which I’m writing this have been through the wringer when it comes to support; big classrooms, long hours spent before class and after, and with not a great pay-scale for their work province wide. The disputes between teachers and our provincial government earlier this year, and the public outcry about how greedy and selfish they are to go on strike was a shocking display of how little we value educators in our society. In a year when NHL players have gone on strike  because they aren’t, apparently, being paid enough, and with no backlash saying how much they’re “hurting the kids by going on strike”, this is a particularly striking truth.

But, I digress.

The main thing is that Mrs. Segers does great work, acknowledging that even if The Girl isn’t much for sitting down and writing long narratives, she is still able to create them verbally. This is enough to make it understood that the Girl knows how to do it, and that she is not behind in gaining this important skill.

It’s been agreed that as soon as she gains enough confidence, the writing aspects will definitely evolve with it. Thinking back to my own early primary school career, and being told how badly I am at math (The Girl is a whiz in that area, which she gets from her Mum, no doubt …), that if I’d only been given the space to figure out that all I needed was confidence, and to be encouraged, maybe I wouldn’t balk so much at numbers even today (to be fair, I also had a teacher’s aide to help me – Mrs. Horkoff. Wherever you are, thank you …)

In any case, we were very encouraged that everyone seems to be on the same page where the Girl’s path to success is concerned. It seems to me that teachers and students is something of an unstable formula. We have great inspirational teachers, and we have ones who just don’t get us. And the results often bear it out. We’re in very good shape this year, it seems.

One thing we’ve resolved to do is to be involved as much as possible, to be encouraging to our daughter, and be grateful for the work that her teachers do to help our daughter along in her school career. The Girl’s progress is important, and it’s important that she hit the right targets as far as picking up the concepts she needs to pick up. But, there’s more to it than that.

She’s a pleaser, like her father. And she likes that sense of making someone else happy by achieving what she’s told she needs to achieve. But, what I’d like to communicate to her is that her education, her work, no matter if it’s grade 2 or her PHD, belongs to her. It represents a key avenue to her personal freedom, her own sense of fulfillment. It represents a fuller understanding of the world, and by extension is a key tool to self-discovery, self-expression, and an insight into the experiences of others, too. That’s what education is for.

The A’s and B’s, and even the jobs that come out of it, are just the frosting.

The Girl and Grade 1

Even though the ritual of walking the Girl to school isn’t exactly new to me, given that we performed that ritual with her Mum when she first went to Kindergarten, Grade 1 seemed to be a whole new thing. Well, it was for me, anyway.

Last Friday, I took the morning and walked her to school. She stayed with me the night before, and when I gave her a bath, we got to talking about Grade 1. I’ve got some feedback from other parents that indicated that going into full-time school is kind of stressful. Some kids pick up on the subtle differences between kindergarten and The Big Show of the numbered grades. I can’t remember thinking that myself at that age, but maybe I did. I can certainly understand it.

So, when I asked the Girl about the thing she liked best about Grade 1 so far, she answered “Math”.

I was astounded. And pleased. Math was my personal bugbear in school. And I was glad to hear that she wasn’t as cowed as I had been.

OK, so no fear of the actual work seems to be a problem. Her second best thing of course was seeing her friends, many of whom she’d not seen since school let out in June.

September is a pretty magical time that way, it always seemed to me. It is in many ways a better month to me for the idea of a New Year than January would ever be. Even now, it remains so. And I’m certainly seeing something of a transformation in the Girl. There is more confidence there somehow. She is coming to terms with the idea that things are moving, and that they change, and doing so with a great deal of wisdom. She’s taking the best of it, and enjoying it.

I read her a story (Cyrus the Unsinkable Sea Serpant by Bill Peet), then she went right to sleep – no problem. By that time, she knew the drill I guess, the first day of school having been the Tuesday. But, for those days, it was mostly about orientation, and figuring out who’s class everyone was in. Friday was the day of getting down to it. It didn’t seem to faze her.

We woke up earliesh, just because I am driving across a bridge to get her to school. It’s the opposite direction from where the traffic from the ‘burbs and into Vancouver is going. But, I wanted to give it plenty of time, since driving over bridges in this area inexplicably complicates all matters. I parked in a little patch of green space in Sunshine Hills, where I used to take the Girl on walks to the park, well before the age school days.

We walked from there, careless. It was a glorious sunny day, which as you know reading this in the time it was written, has been all week. We made small talk, hand in hand down the hill. I’d told the Girl about my own Grade 1 teacher, Ms. Allen. I told her that Ms. Allen had been the one who had helped to teach me to read. You never forget the person who helped you learn to read.

The Girl as we walked to school, September 2011

When we got to the school, children, their parents, and lots of dogs on leashes awaited us. The Girl was shy, still confident, but a little on the introverted side when it came to meeting new people. She comes by that very honestly.

I told her another thing; that when I went to Grade 1, I walked to school with my friends, not driven by my Dad, or Mum. I told her that we always walked to school that way, and back home too (no parental chauffeur services then). Times have changed. I think many of the parents there were as nervous as some of the kids were, maybe remembering what going to school in a new year and new grade, wondering what awaited them there, had been like themselves.

She gave me a little squeeze, lined up, with her knapsack on her back, and filed into the school, aware or unaware of this ritual being something she would remember for the rest of her life being difficult to say.

But, perhaps that confidence she expressed the night before is the thing that counts most, not the minutiae. That to me is one of the missions of childhood – to gain confidence, build upon it, and maintain the momentum of that love of new experiences, new people in one’s life, and new lessons learned all around.

If one were to boil the value of school days down to a single focus, perhaps that’s it. Perhaps the same can be said of a great childhood in general. And we parents play our part, even if our kids will do most of the heavy lifting.

The Girl and Father’s Day Night At The School

Father’s Day was extended for us this year, as the two Kindergarten classes at the Girl’s school extended an invitation to Dads to come play, and have snacks at the school one evening. The Girl invited me personally, excited to have me in a little corner of her world where I am not a regular inhabitant.

That is part of what it is to be a kid; to have compartments of reality and experience, and then reveling in the feeling that is created when there is overlap between the worlds. I remember feeling that when I was a kid, showing my parents around my school, my class, my professional world at the time. It’s no different for the Girl.

So, we grabbed a quick dinner after I picked her up from her daycare, went to the supermarket to pick up our share of the refreshments for the evening, and then it was onto the school gym to play!

The gym was filled with colourful gym equipment; floor hockey sticks, day-glo jump ropes, balls, scoops, and of course HULA HOOPS! I got more exercise then I have for a long time.

Then, we had snacks.  And who could resist a cookie with bright red sprinkles? I mean I ask you!

Then, after some time in the schoolyard on the monkey bars, it was time to reconvene in the gym for a song or two, or three.

Understand, that the room was full of dads. So, when I got choked up during a rendition of “I Love the Mountains (Boom-Dee-Ah-Da)”, I had to hold it together, man.  I just about managed it.

Just before we left, The Girl’s teacher Ms. Townshend said something true; that these are the types of memories that a child will treasure. That although she sees her role as important, it is our role, our participation, that our children will hold in their hearts for the rest of their lives.

Of course, another side of that is that fathers too will do the same.

The Girl ran to me and told me how much she loves me. I told her how much I love her. Then, she yelled in my ear, and then giggled mischievously. Things just about balanced out then.

On the way back to her Mum’s in the car, we began to sing – not the cute song she sang in the gym, but some wacky pop song she knows that include the words “baby, baby, baby”. I felt it was the right time to teach her “I Got The Feelin’” by James Brown, the Godfather of Soul to show her where that sort of thing comes from. So, I sang it to her in the car as we drove back to her Mum’s. She loved it.

It was a good day.

The Girl and the Library

I’m a fan of libraries, and so is the Girl.

I actually wrote a piece about the New Westminster library last year on the hyper-local New West blog Tenth to the Fraser, wherein I talked about how libraries symbolize an essential aspect of a free society; the capacity to make information accessible to everyone in the community. That’s only a part of why libraries are great, and why they’re so important. The Girl, as I said, agrees.  She’s fascinated by books, and by the other services the library offers, including educational computer games, puzzles, puppets, and just as a place to go.

Anyway, this is part of what I wrote where the Girl and I are concerned:

I am lucky enough to live very close to New Westminster Public Library. I take my daughter there a lot. She’s four. And when we go, she bee-lines to the puppets, who then come alive to her, and to me. Because she gives them voices, breathed into them by her imagination.

Then, it’s the puzzles. And then, it’s the first eye-catching book she can find. She doesn’t just choose a book, she mines for one, focusing her eye on a bejeweled spine, drawing it forth. Then, we delve together – books about trains, about dinosaurs, about bees. We explore. We’re explorers, together. [Read the whole New Westminster library article I wrote]

Since starting school last September, the Girl has been introduced to her school’s library. Monday is ‘library day’ for her, and she brings books home to her Mum’s.

At the computer in the New West library, just before we chose some books about cats. She wanted to know why her cats Daisy and Teacup act the way they do. After story time that night, she knew. Thanks, library!

Before that, she’d received own library card, which we got her at my local branch one Saturday morning.  There’s something about owning your own library card, and being able to go into the library, and deciding for yourself what it is you want to learn about. One aspect of all this has something to do with self-direction, about self-education, and the seeds planted of the habit of setting one’s own agenda when it comes to expanding one’s possibilities.

One job I’ve got, it seems to me, is to try and set the Girl on a path to learning, beyond the path mapped out for her at school. Visits to the library help this along nicely. I think libraries make for better citizens, largely because of this. And I think The Girl’s love of learning, outside of school as well as in, will enrich how she experiences life in general; a reader, a social critic, one who’s habit of spinning stories has carried into adulthood, and with the capacity to enrich the lives of others as a result.

The Girl and Parent Night

Today, I attended what was called a student-led Parent night. This means that The Girl’s teacher, Mrs. Townsend, and the Girl herself, sat down and decided on what would be discussed/shown on the night itself. So, she’s in charge with her teacher overlooking the proceedings.

This is a big deal for me, given that every time I ask the Girl what she did at Kindergarten on any given day, the answer is invariably: “I don’t remember”.

I don’t hold this against her. What she did in kindergarten that day is so a-couple-of hours-ago. She is, as I’ve mentioned, a Creature of The Eternal Present.

So, the format of Parent night (actually, more like Parent Afternoon) was perfect in this respect. It put us in her world, scholastically speaking. She showed us the storybook she’s currently reading, the scientific experiments she’s working on (magnets!), math games using cards (the More or Less game!), her artwork, her favourite toys when she’s got all of her work done (farm animals, and dinosaurs!).

And of course, the big payoff is how proud she is of her own work, and showing it to us as it’s happening, sitting together around a low table in very tiny chairs that still have the same design as they did when I was in kindergarten. To me, that’s a vital, vital thing when it comes to school. Bored kids, kids that get into trouble, are those who have no sense of ownership or pride in what it is that they’re doing. Sometimes, it’s something to do with them. Sometimes, it’s what they’re given.

But, the point is that I hope the Girl always feels that her work is connected to her in some way, that she can be proud of it without it being just a burden of someone else’s expectations on her, even mine. That’s the difference between the love of learning and hating school, it seems to me.

And when it comes to this idea of loving learning and being proud of her work, this isn’t about me thinking about how school is going to prepare her for her future in the world of commerce. No. I mean that I hope she continues to be proud of her work for the rest of kindergarten.

Why wait for the future when you’re a Creature of the Eternal Present?