Today was the last day of the school year. Were it a normal year, we would have had three more half days. They’re useless for instruction: we’ve already completed grades, and what can you do with half days? Students clean out their lockers, sign each other’s yearbooks, have field day (or in eighth grade’s case, eighth-grade day, which differs from field day only insofar as the PTSA feeds the kids at the end of it all), and sundry end-of-the-year things. I use that time usually to pack up my room: I have lots of kids, empty boxes, and books — they make short work of what would take me a couple of hours. Were it a normal year — but it wasn’t, and three half-days of online instruction when a normal day of online instruction means thirty minutes of work per class — well, it just doesn’t make sense, and much to my surprise, the district realized that and basically thought like teachers for a change.
The Boy’s teachers had an awards day Google Meet — a very sweet thing for them to do. They recognized academic achievements like the A/B honor roll. When they began talking about it, I asked E if he thought he as on it.
“I don’t know.”
Indeed, I didn’t either. I knew he’d struggled mightily with a few things, and he was able to finish tests only because the teachers allowed him extra time. “I have to pay for it with less time on the playground, because that’s when I finish,” he once explained, “but that’s okay.”
But there was his name on the list, and there was a big smile on his face. High fives from everyone.
Is it a bad thing that I honestly had no idea whether or not he’d made the honor roll? I don’t think so: in second grade, grades appear for the first time. Everyone’s getting used to them. They’re not meaningless, but they’re not all that important, so I never really worried about his grades. I don’t quite think it was the same for K, but she never made a B (or 4 in the Polish system) even in her worst nightmares, so she put a little more weight on the grades. And to be fair, aiming high is always a good habit to develop. It’s not that I wanted him to settle. It’s just — well, it was second grade. I don’t remember a thing from second grade.
At the end of the program, they gave every single student a special award: most likely to — superlatives, in other words. E won “Most likely to win an episode of Survivor.” The other day during a Google Meet, E showed everyone his survival kit and told them a little about our adventures. That was what stuck in the teachers’ minds, and it was a cute award that just made E’s day.
What superlative would I give him? Sometimes, with his sensitive nature and keen sense of right and wrong, I think he’s most likely to have his heart broken in as many ways as one can imagine. He sometimes gets so frustrated with others’ unwillingness to follow basic rules. “That’s just not nice!” he concluded many stories about some tragedy that befell him in school. This is not to say that I assume he’s always an angel: many of our conversations involved me trying to help him see how he could have been nicer. Still, he’s a very by-the-book fellow, and it upsets him that others aren’t.
Maybe “Most likely to brighten someone’s day.” He can sure do that, but that requires a bit of familiarity. He’s not entirely comfortable approaching, say, a lonely kid on the playground that he doesn’t know but who might need someone to play with. The unknown — he’s not keen on that.
Maybe “Most likely to be an engineer.” He does love building things.
Or just “Most likely to make his family proud.”
As for the Girl, she got the good news that she definitely made it into geometry and English I Honors. That means she’ll be taking the course that I will teach exclusively next year. Were she a student at our school, that might cause problems: I wouldn’t want to stress of grading my own daughter.
For me, what’s more impressive is the geometry. I didn’t take geometry until tenth grade. She’s two years ahead of me.
She was worried about the possibility of not making one or both of those classes. Being a teacher and knowing how things often work behind the scenes, I knew it was unlikely. But I also knew that no “behind the scenes” would be necessary: she’s worked very hard this year, and she’s make sure that her grades are not just good grades but reflections of her actual understanding. She and K spent many an hour going over this or that algebra trick, and it all paid off.
So congratulations to both our kids!