Archives: Parents evening

So then – how do Eve & Jude’s teachers perceive that they are dong at school?

Well, Eve’s teacher: she likes Eve; confident, able considerate & all that sort of thing; lovely girl, “Another bright one there”. Louise brought up her lack of confidence at the moment & teacher was a little surprised. Two edged… Eve is uncountably seems more confident at school, so it’s not odd that she’s a little surprised by this. She’s also the same teacher that didn’t spot Jack’s confidence crumble while he was in her class… So… we either are worrying unduly or not worrying unduly… but it’s too early to tell. Eve may just have had a couple of ‘off’ weeks, or as is more usual has different responses to different situations. She has quite noble ethics, does Eve & the hurly burly of our family life does take it’s toll on her sense of justice now & then (thus the ‘not fair’ weekend when there was little that could be declared unfair).

So then Jude… Jude is with a teacher Jack just didn’t get one with… for one reason or another. Jude seems to get on with her fine though, so this is good. She says that Jude is a bit of a dark horse. He (like Eve) is in the ‘top ability’ group & he can do anything that she gives him. He also seems to be canny enough not to do too much; it seems he can pace himself so that although he gets everything done, he doesn’t do it too quickly & thus be given extra to do. She doesn’t seem to indicate that he’s not pushing himself, it sounds like she’s indicating that he’s figured how to ‘work the system’ that she operates; ‘dark horse’, indeed. Jude does have ’11+ type’ books at home for maths & verbal reasoning & Louise does set these & he does enjoy dong them. He’s not by any means scared of school work. I was being jumped on by Esme yesterday evening (Esme did a lot of jumping on me yesterday) & he asked if he could read me his reading book. He ended up reading it to Louise, but it was pleasant to have been offered.

Jack had a homework overload a little bit again last night. Bad day at school was foolish enough to try to catch a bus up the road to catch the school bus, but caught the wrong bus leaving him having to dash back to where he wants to catch the school bus. The school bus could be more… civilised. Being ‘Year 7’ (youngest in the school) they are lower in the packing order & therefore find it harder to get seats on the bus. Therefore Leila, Cleo Thomas & he have been travelling further up the bus run to catch the bus where seats are less sparse. Jack is presently walking quite a way to catch the bus at an early stop at the moment. So yesterday as he has a bus pass he tried catching a bus to get further ‘ahead’ & failed miserably because he didn’t think things through properly. He’s been chastised at home for even trying because he does run the risk of missing the bus altogether if he keeps takes this approach. Next bungle involved rushing from Food Tech without first ensuring his bag was well done up & his school bags spilling into a muddy puddle. He has some seriously damp books & he was not allowed to go out of German to go back & retrieve a couple of books he (somehow) missed – including his German, which (…hmm – this all sounds so less likely as I type) included his German book which meant that he could not hand in the German homework that he was supposed to have done. Hmm… anyway – he did get a merit in German because he only got one wrong in his spelling & that was because he wrote ‘s’ rather than ‘z’. Homework next lesson. Jack seems to miss noting down all the homework he’s has due sometimes. Stressful day for him though.

I wonder why he was up in the night & left the hall light on & left a chair from his room in the middle of the hall? The lights on is nothing new – he does that when he get up to go to the toilet – it’s just part of who he is that he doesn’t manage to turn the lights off, but the chair was odd.

Low key weekend… he kids played & we got the shopping… or did we play & the kids get the shopping? When did Louise & I last get to ‘play’? That’s silly. The kids did go shopping though – both on Saturday & Sunday Jack, Eve & Jude set out to to Morrisons on their bikes. On Saturday I cramped their style & turned up as well (as they only had a portion of the shopping to do. Caught up with them (on my bike) just as they got to the shop, so they couldn’t nip into the cafe to get themselves some toast. On the Sunday they tried to get toast, but they were refused by the very fickle staff there as they were supposed to be 15 or over to be able to have toast. Not that I haven’t seen younger kids being served there – they’re just fickle. Things went a little wrong then because they’d already done their shopping & thus headed back. Stopped off at Heals to get some drinks & Eve was supposed to stay outside (as Jude had the day before when they stopped by the newsagents) to look after the bikes, but Eve though this grossly unfair & said that they would get her the wrong kind of drink, had huff & headed home on her own (they are supposed to stick together). Jack mutters that he probably won’t take Eve again, but it’s been more her general attitude this weekend. Very ‘half empty glass’ & apt to shout about things being unfair (when they aren’t really) & that we don’t understand (possibly all too well) & generally being rude & wailing. We put iyt partially down to being tired still from being so late to bed on Friday….

Friday we went to the Parents Evening up at school. It was not so much a .. hmmm – well – I knew it wasn’t a parent’s evening like ‘meeting the teacher to see how your child is doing’ but more an ‘open evening’ affair. I’m not sure what I envisaged, but parents got to sit at large tables & even buy a beer or wine while the kids went off to one of the halls to be entertained by some sixth formers. We were given a similar lesson to one Jack will have had toward the beginning of term in his ‘learning to learn’ lessons. A little self assessing quiz to see what type of learning strategy would work best for us? I turn out quite high on kinaesthetic; which I guess kind of figures. I discussed with Louise that she would be higher on the aural/verbal learning were some of the questions not skewed to assume you had huge self confidence, but both Jack & Louise scored highest on … oh the ones about being able to take stuff in just reading it. Discussion on all these types of learning & it was interesting enough to stop me doodling & sketching – so that was something. It was also supposed to be an evening where we could socialise with other parents, but .. well we didn’t – we stuck to our table & didn’t attempt to try. We enjoyed it though. Got a brief chat with Jack’s teacher so she can put adults to the child. All went as well as we could have wanted. Must have just missed a bus home because we had to wait a while & Jack & Eve got bored. Eve looked the part – she had her new blouse on, her calotts, her glasses & her hair in bunches. She brought along her colouring books in a small shoulder bag that also added to making a good impression. Jack’s teacher had noticed her. Eve enjoyed herself & likes the school a lot. We need to try to capitalise on this & try to get her to apply herself instead of digging her heels in & telling herself something is hard when she just need to calm down, look at something & get on with things evenly.

The train has been more crowded of recent. I have been told why now – the ‘turn around’ from Tod to Southport has been removed from service. This does not bode well as that was my ‘stand by’ train in case there were any problems with this one. This means I have a much higher chance of being late for work. Bah. Not happy about this. Especially not happy about the ‘little things’ like having to start typing as soon as the train starts, rather than wallow in the paper for a while my by brain solidifies from the liquid state induced by sleep & waking. Again, BAH!
<Tries to tune brain in to thinking> ummmmmmm
Duh yeah – went to school last night. One of those ‘parents meet the teachers to discuss schooling’ things. Just 10 minutes. It seems Jack is happy, confident & social at school. Such things are happily reassuring. He is also willing to answer questions & be involved. He did have & still does to a lesser extent, it seems, have a tendency to be a perfectionist. He wants to get things right. He is less worried about this now though. Whereas last year this impeded him – slowing him up to the extent that he was not getting things done; he now completes tasks in the given time. I think he’s less afraid of mistakes – which is a good thing. Having said that…. Louise & I have noticed a tendency to be worried more about making a ‘social’ mistake. He seems to be worried more at the moment about doing something wrong. It’s a little odd, as he can get himself quite upset if you reprimand him for some minor misdemeanour. It’s like suddenly we have this aura of ‘they must be obeyed of you suffer the consequences’ – which can be quite disconcerting.
Jude still has no teeth. He has very very lumpy gums at the moment though. He was throwing himself about as I was holding him the other day – jumping up & down in my arms to the extent that I thought he was going to hurt himself on my shoulder. He didn’t seem to – but still – you think – that surely can’t be good for him.