Terry's 3M's

I was going to be sarcastic when writing that Friday was a fun day. But, the day, while it wasn't all great, well, it wasn't all bad either.

Friday should have been a fun day. My mood, however, was considerably dampened when I got my bike out to ride it to the school. It had a flat. And my arthritic knees are just bad enough to ache while walking when the distance is greater than a hundred yards or so. I hope I didn't wreck my rim by riding it with the flat. But, it was getting late and we don't have a hand pump. There's a pump that works off the car engine, but, the car wasn't here. And I don't have a spare. I had also sent the kids on ahead of me, saying that I would catch up.

I pumped that bike down the street, listening to the glump, glump sounds it was making while inwardly screaming at Bryan. I just knew that I should have locked my bike up at the park last week so that Bryan couldn't ride it. Bryan is the flat tire king around here. I've never known him to go more than 2 or 3 weeks without getting a flat tire. I've seen him fix a flat, go off on a merry ride and come home with another flat. And he rode my bike when we were at the park and took the bike home and back before we came home from that visit.

I arrive at the school, hot and sweaty. While I'm locking the bike up, I reflect that it's probably a pretty stupid idea to lock the bike. After all, who's going to take it? It has a heavy frame, one speed, and a flat tire.

Inside the school, the frigid air conditioning cools me quickly and seems heavenly after the oppressive heat outside.

We find the locations of the teachers we will visit.

Youngest to oldest is the order in which we visit them.

John's teacher is young, has a toddler daughter, and has only been teaching for three years. As we visit and listen in on some of the conversations with the parents of other students, I realize that she is going to have a class with a lot of poor readers (John among them.) But, she is enthusiastic and full of interesting ideas on how to make learning easier, fun and exciting. I think he will enjoy his school year.

Next, we visit Stephanie's teacher. She is coming to this school after teaching in a tiny school with the third, fourth, and fifth grades all in one room (I didn't know that there were still any schools out there that were that small!) I explained that Stephanie is a poor reader. She will have somebody read something to her and then pretend to read it back when she actually is repeating what she heard read to her. Her teacher said that that was very good to know and that she now knows that Stephanie has great audio learning capabilities. She was glad that Stephanie's in her class. The ratio of boys to girls in this year's classroom is roughly 3:1. She was very effervensant and she may be the most fun teacher of the ones we met this year. I explained that I co-parent Stephanie and that a lot of the papers (such as weekly reports, etc.) will be returning to school with my signature instead of her parents.

Carrie's teacher was more serious than the other teachers. She is also the prettiest. We had a brief talk and she seems nice enough. I explained that I co-parent Carrie and I showed a sample of my illegible signature to her, saying that when she saw that, I was the one who signed the paper. She said that she loved signatures like that because it was harder for the kids to forge them and she knew that an adult had actually seen the note or paper.

Then we went to see John's resource (special ed) teacher. I told her that I promised John that when he could read and spell better, I would allow him to work on his webpage by himself. Then I was hit with a bombshell. She said that she had noticed that John was intimidated by me when it came to reading. That he was so eager for my approval that he was afraid to make a mistake for fear of disappointing me that he froze up. She also made me realize that what I perceived as a reward, John sees as another obstacle to overcome and it makes him feel overwhelmed. Well, at least now I know that this problem exist and I hope that I can figure out a way to overcome it. It hurt to hear it, but, I'm glad that she spoke up about it. Later, I asked him if he was scared to read to me and he said yes. He also said that I always want him to read and he hates reading. I try to explain that he will need reading later in life--like if he wanted to an art major in college. But, that might have been a mistake...I don't know...