Curriculum Night

Just back from curriculum night with a couple of do's and please do nots from a parent's perspective:

Please have enough chairs in the cafeteria, auditorium, library, etc. If you do not have enough chairs for the parents, when they arrive late and stand out in the hall chatting with their friends, they will never come on time again, ever. Chatting with friends is so much more fun than listening to statistics on MCAS. I wish that were not so but the folks on the outside were in a much better humor than the folks on the inside. You see, standardized testing is deeply flawed and talking about it, a lot, at these events does not remove the bitter taste of it. You can cook liver anyway you want and you can drone on and on about your recipe, but it is still liver and it is hard to stomach.

Please do not make us sit in tiny desks for longer than 20 minutes. We are big people with big body parts that fall asleep when squeezed into tiny spaces.

Please do not ask parents to write to their children to prove that they attended. The thing is, the kid whose parents are working a night shift or the single mom/dad who could not get a babysitter, that kids is going to feel lousy the next day when all the other kids have notes and they do not. I know that it takes a village and I know how important it is for parents to be involved and present....but some are not for reasons we can't fathom and the student should not carry the burden of that.

Finally, this note of thanks goes directly to my son's teacher who assured me when I read this line in my son's biopoem:

The Dutch like heron. I am Dutch and I'm going to try heron someday....


that he really meant to write "herring." We parents never for one minute forget that you are doing god's work.....so curriculum night is really, despite all the grumbling, a night to feel blessed that such spiritual people are teaching our kids.