An Interview with Squeakers

Baby Girl & Squeakers

It was that time where we meet with the kids teachers for parent teacher interviews.  Leading up to the interviews, Mr. Man was causing me to worry. You see Mr. Man has not been bringing home a stitch of homework all year, nor his school agenda where normally he is supposed to write his homework, notes from the teacher and so on.  Last year this time after similar circumstances, his dad and I received his report card with a failing grade and the rest a good 6% drop in grade, enough for me to yank all of his extra-curricular activities.  Of course I was outnumbered and with a mediated decision we decided to try one more year of hockey with the promise of bringing up his marks and proving that he could handle his school workload AND sports.

I received Mr. Man`s report card a couple of days prior to the interview with his teacher and I was very impressed.  Mr. Man bring up his marks in almost every subject.  He did however drop a couple of marks in 2 subjects so I didn`t want to praise him too much, now that we know he is capable of these marks without bringing any homework home or studying at home.  We discussed this with Mr. Man`s teacher and the suggestion was that because we all know he is capable of these marks without putting in much effort we want him to challenge himself to do that little bit extra.  If he puts his mind to it, he could be on the high honor roll by the end of the year.  Mr. Man seemed receptive to this idea and I think he might just try this challenge.

Miss Priss` interview went much like expected.  Neither her teacher, her dad or I have any complaints or worries about her; she does very well in school and we never have to worry that she won`t get her homework done or study for an exam.  She is a perfectionist so she is very hard on herself when she does not need to be; we discussed ways she could do her best but be less critical of herself.  We also discussed her social skills group that her and some other girls are taking with the school behavior assistant; this is going well and Miss Priss enjoys taking part in this group.

Now onto the reason for this post…we stepped into Squeakers class and soon after a normally quiet, sometimes shy and easily embarrassed child turned into an outgoing, nonstop talking, one woman show.  Squeakers is in a grades 3/4 split class (she is in grade 3) and has a reading comprehension above the grade 4 level.  A previously dependant and unsure child has now turned into an independent and decision making confident girl.  Wow, how she has grown over this year!  There were matching t-shirts hanging in her class for all students and it was found out that these were to be used in an upcoming anti-bullying performance.  Apparently their class has come up with a rap that they will sing and perform to on video camera with the hopes it will be used across the country in other schools.  Squeakers ran to her desk, grabbed her sheet of rap music and started performing for our little interview.  Shortly after the rap, she broke out into an air band show where she ended up break dancing on the floor while playing her air guitar.  I looked at the teacher and asked if she ever sees her act like this in class; she said `Never, but I hope she does that for the video!`….again, a once shy and easily embarrassed child has blossomed into a performer.

The last thing we discussed was Squeakers daily journal.  She read us a story she had written a couple days prior; it went something like this:

“I have a baby sister; she is SOOOO CUTE!(she yelled here).  Oh, so sorry about that!(in reference to the yelling)  My baby sister crawls all over the place, she gets into everything, she touches everything, she chews on cords, she is like Godzilla but she is SOOOOO CUTE!(she yelled here)  Oh, so sorry about that! (in reference to her yelling again)”

Meanwhile, the minute I hear “she chews on cords” and nearly choked on my gum, I said “Wow, that sounds really good!”.  Her teacher laughed and said “Don`t worry I won`t call social services on you.”  Thank god was all I could think.  I can only imagine what Squeakers bio-dad was thinking. LOL!

Please note that although Baby Girl does try to chew on everything, I do not let her chew on cords, stick her fingers in plugs or anything else dangerous that could harm her…..