this is drew and his teacher, mrs. kucinski. on thursday night we went for family fun night at drew's school. we got to hear the kindergarteners sing us a few songs and then they shared a poem about the weather. this was the first real "concert" he's had and they did a great job!
as we were there i thought back to when i was in elementary school and how things have changed. my first thought was REAL DEEP! ha ha. it was about how lucky we as parents are these days because we only have to listen to our kids. i remember back when i was in school and my parents had to sit through every grade's concert. now they give specific times for when the kids will be singing and you go and just hear their grade sing. although it would have been fun to watch the other kids for a while - i imagine it would've gotten REALLY long!
while i was there i also thought about something that as i spend time at the school i'm discovering more and more and it's kind of sad (whew! long sentence) --parents are so busy. i'm going to step on a ledge and say too busy. since september i have only met the parents of 3 kids in drew's class. and 2 of them have been while dropping drew off at bday parties. the other is a mom that has had lunch with her little boy a few of the same days that i have had lunch with drew. she has also helped with the classroom parties i have helped with. besides us, i don't know that mrs. kucinski gets much help. in fact, at conferences in october i told mrs. kucinski to call me if she needed help with anything and she seemed surprised and said i was the first person to offer. i don't say that to pat myself on the back. i say it more out of shock that out of the 40 other families she has noone else would have offered to help her before that! another example that kind of bothered me - the first week of school we had a meeting with the kindergarten teachers to go over expectations for the year and curriculum. about 11 parents showed up for mrs. kucinski's meeting. now figure she has 40 students between the A and B classes. of the 11 parents a few were couples. so that means MAYBE 8 of the kids were represented. that just seems crazy to me. i was so anxious to find out more about drew's school and what kindergarten would be like for him! i couldn't imagine missing the meeting that talked about what the rest of the year looked like for him! now, i don't want to overdo it and be "that mom" that is always at school. but i do want them to know that i support them 100% and i want to help them help my kids be excited about learning. teachers are placed in such tough situations these days with so many parents so removed. they are expected to take on so much more than i really think they should have to. in my opinion what ends up happening is the busyness of the parents just falls right back on to the already over worked teacher - and then we wonder why it's hard to find teachers and why so many kids are so messed up! *SIGH*
ANYWAY ...
it's been a fun year. drew's teacher is SUCH a sweetheart. she does an incredible job with the kids. everyday drew comes home excited about something new that they learned or did and she is a big reason for his excitement! i had NO idea what to expect this year going in -- but i can truly say that it's been more fun than i expected! i'm excited for all of the years to follow!
2 comments:
You've hit a hot button :) I think a big part of the parents not being involved/too busy is that most families have both parents working. Our society is so focused on "things" and people keep wanting more and more because so-and-so has more and more. Therefore, both parents have to work to afford the "necessities" of life.
In reality, we don't all need cable tv and internet, we don't need huge gas guzzling trucks, we don't need 60" tv sets, etc. But it's out there, so of course, we want it.
Until we, as a society, stop feeling peer pressure to always have the next best thing, the involvement in schools will continue to go down. People will continue to complain that schools aren't good enough, but they won't get involved. Teachers will have a higher burden on them to "raise" children and take care of all the social issues that are forced on kids. It's a never-ending negative cycle.
I'm sure Drew's teacher is very special,but please pat yourself on the back, because you and Stacey have developed in the boys an excitement for learning and life in general-there are no teachers that can offer what you have given to the boys!!!!
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