Last week, I had my first parent teacher interview for my youngest DD Hayley who is in Grade 3. This is the first time I have ever met her teacher and I have to say that I was totally unimpressed! We went over her report and she pointed out the area that Hayley was below standard, which is Maths, apparently, I need to make more of an effort to catch her up in this area. I need to be working with her on her tables and other things and then she went on to tell me how to teach her properly....well, sorry that doesn't fly with me! If she hasn't learnt it from their way of teaching her, then perhaps their way isn't right for my child, which I politely pointed out and maybe I should try something different. She was insistent that I teach her their way! Whatever!!!
Next we moved onto reading. Hayley is well above where she should be in reading, but apparently she isn't reading the books that they want her to. She should have read 12 books by this stage and has only read 5 and her comprehension wasn't at the required 85%, she was only at 84%, she was worrying about 1 damn %, seriously??? I told her that it was only 1% and I wasn't worried about it at all. I agreed to make sure that Hayley read the correct books from now on!
She then tells me that at the start of term Hayley and her best friend got in a lot of trouble, spent a lot of time in the principals office for being naughty. Things like throwing wet toilet paper in the toilets, and throwing wet sand at flyscreens, and blocking sinks with mud! I am totally shocked as I haven't heard anything about this at all! She tells me that they realise that Hayley was just the follower not the instigator and that they dealt with it at school, the other girls parents were called in and spoken to, and that the girls are no longer allowed to play together at all! I haven't heard anything at all about this, and if I had known this, Hayley would not have gone over to this girls place for a sleepover a couple of weeks ago! She said I really need to discourage this friendship! Well, perhaps the school need to keep me informed so that I know about these things!

She then tells me that even though I work, I need to spend more time with my child. I need to help her more with her homework and make sure that she is getting everything done that she needs to! I need to give her more one on one time, especially to help her with her maths!

So, anyway, I walked out of there, feeling like I was a total failure as a mother and I had let my DD down. It wasn't until I had sat down at home with a coffee that I realised that this teacher had not said one positive thing about DD, not a single thing. Everything was negative and I have never had an interview like that before, ever! Surely there is something good that my DD does? I know there is! She has improved in so much according to her report, and she is reading 2 years ahead of where she should be, but that wasn't even mentioned!

I am really upset that there is such a lack of communication from the school to me, we have a communication book that she could use at any time but she is choosing not to use it! I would have assumed if there were problems she would have written a note in it for me but there has been nothing!

So now I just have to work really hard with DD on all this stuff! Even though this teacher made it seem like I am an absent parent all the time! I work mostly school hours so that I am home for DD!