Back To School - Teacher's opinions always matter

My mom has said that, even now, 35 years after she was last in school, she still has the nightmare that she didn’t study for the test she’s about to take. Or that she didn’t do her homework. Or that she was otherwise unprepared for school.

I don’t have nightmares, but I do have school memories that still make me blush with embarrassment: my first-grade teacher finding a never-completed worksheet in my desk during the end-of-the-year desk cleanout. My ballet teacher pulling me aside during class to tell me that I needed to calm down and behave better, and that I needed to set a better example for the younger students. The detention I received for forgetting my homework at home, after our teacher had warned that anyone who came to class without his or her homework would receive a detention. The time I ate a classmate’s snack, mistakenly thinking he’d given it to me, only to have the teacher ask the class if we’d seen my friend’s missing food.

You’re probably rolling your eyes at the things that affect my mom and I on such a deep emotional level that we’re still haunted by them long after they happened, but wait — there’s more: I’ve recently come to realize that I really care what my children’s teachers think about me! I really want them to think I’m a good mom!

For example, one day last winter when I picked Thomas up from school, I noticed that he seemed a little quieter than usual. “Did you have a good day at school?” I asked as we walked past the cubbies toward the door, noticing his sweaty hair matted down under his winter hat and his cheeks pink and damp from playing outside in the snow (they’d come in from the playground right at the end of school, so he was still all bundled up in his snow pants and coat, hat and mittens and scarf). He seemed hot and tired and sighed, “It’s hard going to school.”

“It’s hard?” I said. “Why?”

Thomas sighed again and said, “I just want to rest on the couch and watch a show and have some juice and a snack.”

Ah, of course — the hard life of a three-year-old. It was a cute story, to be sure, and one I couldn’t wait to tell our family members … but at the same time, I kept thinking, “Oh no! Now Thomas’ teachers are going to think I let him watch too much TV!”

On another school day, Thomas confessed a bit of school misbehavior once we were home. He was under the table, which he’d covered with blankets to make a “dark Tommy cave,” as he called it, when he poked his head out and told me that his teacher had told him that day that she was sad. “Why was she sad?” I asked, and he said, “Because I didn’t want to clean up.”

Oh dear. I was sure that Thomas’ teacher had gleaned from his resistance to cleaning up that I’m a terrible housekeeper (I admit I could be a lot better) and that I’m cultivating laziness in my children by not asking them to clean up after themselves (we’re working on that!). I immediately resolved to make “learning how to clean up after ourselves” our family springtime project.

I wondered why I should be so concerned about what my children’s teachers think of me, and concluded that there must just be something about teachers — perhaps it’s that something that causes little ones to sometimes call their teachers “Mom” or “Dad” by accident? Perhaps a parental-like mix of teaching and nurturing, challenges and praise, rules and discipline, and an appreciation for the unique individual each student is? At least, that sounds like a recipe for a really great teacher (and, for that matter, a recipe for a really great parent).

I was blessed to have had several such teachers and, though it’s funny to remember embarrassing times from my youth or laugh at a grown woman’s desire to impress her son’s teachers, it’s more telling that some of my most treasured items are assignments on which those teachers wrote positive, enthusiastic comments — comments that, even now, make me glow with pride.

Kate Towne Sherwin is a stay-at-home mom (SAHM) living in Saratoga Springs with her husband, Steve, and sons Thomas (almost 4), Gabriel (2), and John Dominic (born June 28, 2008!). She can be reached at sksherwin@
hotmail.com.