Bad school memory- from light to heavy

Lafalum84
Sat, 15 Nov 2008 12:25:20 +0000

Actually, lje62, we were lucky. Neither of my kids had the evil 5th grade teacher. She was in the room next to D, though, and D said they could hear her yelling thru the wall. D had a wonderful teacher - young, energetic and positive. The year after D had her, she was diagnosed with leukemia, 6 weeks after her wedding. She died 2 years later. So sad…

Not that “young” teachers are always the best. The best teacher either of my kids ever had in elementary school was my son’s 4th grade teacher, who retired 2 years after she taught him. She had raised 6 children and KNEW kids, she understood how to motivate them to achieve more than they ever thought they could. My son would get assignments back with comments like, “This is good. What about x? What would happen if y?” She always had interesting projects going, and talked about what “we” were working on - not what “the students” or “they” were working on - she joined in as part of the learning experience. What a wonderful teacher.

But the next year, he had a very demanding 5th grade teacher who didn’t balance her high standards with the reality of the age she was teaching. He was STRESSED out all year. The kids had a book report “project” due every month, the grade did a major architecture project, and there was a grade-wide science fair. The architecture project rotated between classes, but the science fair was the same day for the whole grade. It turned out that S had a book report project, the architecture project, and the science fair all within 2 weeks. When I commented to the teacher that it seemed like an awful lot of work all at once, she said, “That’s how life is, they need to learn to deal with it.” I thought - but they’re only 10! I didn’t say it out loud though. I should have. One other teacher cancelled the book report for that month, and another postponed the due date for a week. Meanwhile, the architecture project was one of those inappropriate elementary assignments that requires parental help for the kid to to a decent job on it (foam core or wood, exact-o knife, hot glue gun, etc). And my D was making her First Communion that month - plus our family going to Disney over the vacation week with D’s dance studio. I don’t know who was more stressed - DS or me!