Homework time with Ivy

Ivy is doing great in school. i promise you i never had the kind of parent teacher conferences Ivy gets now, when I was a kid. She got her first less that perfect daily report last week. Apparently she was talking during writing group time. That was her first transgression that i heard of all year. We go and talk to the teacher and the teacher smiles and says we have no problems! And I look at her wondering what does that actually mean? Well continues teacher, she has lots of friends, she is polite and well behaved, she does what she is supposed to and she is on or ahead of expectations in all subjects. Oh OK, says the me,  soooo nothing negative? No strange behaviors? Nothing that keeps you awake at night worried sick about how she will possible grow up to fit into the world? No? OK then. Leaning back in chair wondering what to talk about for the next 25 minutes. Soooooo nice stickers on that wall over there! Yea I think they are grrrrreat!

When I was a kid I always went to parent teacher conference (I do believe that we always had to be there) with my head hung low because I knew that all my teachers would be in the room and how they would take turns telling me that I just had to start paying attention and maybe I would not have such a hard time doing my homework if I actually listened during class so I had the faintest clue what in the world they are talking about. Oh , I did not relish those parent teacher conferences one bit. Then one fine day when i knew they could not possibly have anything different to say than they did every 4 months a beam of light descended on one of my teachers and then angels sang and she opened her mouth and said something that sounded so strange and liberating that I can still feel how it changed My hole body and made my spine straighten! Suddenly I was energised, confident and ambitious. I walked out of that room and was quite literally on a path I had not walked before. I came in a daydreamer who just never payed attention and I walked out a person full of ideas and thoughts and an Imagination that just can't be stopped. It felt like magic. Is it a wonder that this was the first time I tried to live up to anything other than failure in school? The best part is just how well i did once i started using my resources. Did I become less of a daydreamer? No. Am I any better at staying focused? No. But I did figure out that there are to ways to if you want to get to the other side of the round-about. You can try to fight your way against traffic or you can turn around and go with the flow. I learned that if I apply myself I can get high grades in all my classes and so I did! I'm so grateful for a teacher who saw something more and every time I go to Ian's parent teacher conferences I hope to meet another one. I can relate to what I hear when ever I meet with his teachers, in many ways that little boy is just like me. I just do not want him to ever thing that he is not good enough for school.