Conferencially.

2004-10-27 at 10:02 p.m.

It's one of the paradoxes of teaching, really: the parents who need to come are the no shows; the parents whose kids are doing great and are a joy to have in class are the ones who do. While it's nice to be able to tell parents, "Josh is great, and I really like having him there," for the kids who--god, if I could just get you to do your homework!--those are the kids whose parents stay home.

There was one kid, though. Let's call him Toe. Toe's parents showed up, but not with Toe. Toe's not in the class I teach, but one I observe from time to time. He's in a place where he doesn't do anything. Take notes, ask questions, homework, anything. And it turns out, this is the class with his highest grade: 51%. Something's going on there. His parents sat at the table with Coach and me and just looked like they were being stretched on a rack. "What should we do?" they kept asking. Coach fielded the questions, saying Toe needed to come in before school, get caught up, stay caught up, he could do it, but it'd take some work.

I sat silent, but all I could think was this: did Toe have these same problems in middle school? Is this something new? Because something's going on here. Something's changed, something's happening. Does he have new friends? Does he have no friends? Is he using? Did he stop taking something he should be taking? Has anything happened at home? Did someone leave, or someone move in? Was his summer good? Was it really bad? It won't do any good to have four adults standing over him, "Go to math class! Go to English class!" if whatever's buzzing in the back of his mind is still taking up the processing time.

For the most part, though, it was good students and their cutie-pie parents. Ella and her parents and the translator, Sheck and his aunt, Kacie's sweetie mom (Coach said that Kacie should take two math classes next year so she could take calculus senior year, she's that good), kid after kid after kid. A steady flow. It was neat to see parents, families together.

Tomorrow night: more of the same.

This teacher thing is getting more and more real. How bizarre!

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