Last week or so (the days all blend), Henry's 5th grade teacher held a Meet the Teacher parents' night at which he reviewed his background, his teaching approach, the class expectations, etc. All was good until it came to the parents' turn to ask questions. This upper-middle-class professional achiever crowd is tough.
(Cute kid aside: the other day someone asked Henry whether he liked his new teacher and Henry replied: "Yeah! He's got a lot of energy!" Highest praise indeed.)
This teacher is an experienced, smart, personable, dedicated guy and he uses a well-honed system to get the most from his students. Plus he's funny and popular with the kids. And has a lot of energy. What's not to love? However, the tone of the parents' questioning kinda surprised me. They all seemed to come with a dull ax to grind. For example:
"How do you plan to prepare my student to enter the Advanced International Baccalaureate program [in a local high school]?" (Did I mention this is fifth grade?)
"Why is the school using Macs when 90% of business uses PCs? Do you plan to teach them both systems?"
"What is this CNN.com student news channel they're being exposed to?" "How do we know it's appropriate?" "What's its bias?"
"How are you going to teach the students to not trust what the news media tells them?" (this last from a staunch neo-conservative tea-party type)
"When you say 'we assess our students' progress and help them achieve from their starting level' who is that "we"? Is that you? How do you plan to assign their levels?"
"If the kids choose their own reading, how do you know my kid is not slacking and reading something too elementary for her level?"
And so on. I think Mr. G was taken aback, and finally asked a bit plaintively:
"Doesn't anyone want to talk about birthday parties?"
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