On parent conference day, two parents told me they’d both graduated from my building when it was still a high school. Their son, I’d just told them, while not always on the ball, is bright, fun, and a good writer.
“Does it feel the same or different?” I asked the dad.
“The same,” he said. “It still sucks.”
A while later into my room popped two women, one nondescriptly obese and the other grey-haired and wearing a red shirt declaring “It’s bucking fun.” They looked dreary and rundown.
“What’s this with M– getting all these demerits,” the older lady demanded after telling me they were M’s mother and grandmother.
“She is a cheerful and smart student,” I said, and then explained her disruptive talking and noise making.
“Things is changed,” the grandmother continued. “We used to just get in trouble. Now they get demerits and demerits. It’s stupid. M hates school because of the demerits. She doesn’t want to come because of you and the demerits.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said. “I hope her year improves. She has said that to me, too, that she really likes working with you around the farm.”
“She loves animals. We had a pig we just butchered; she’d whistle to it like a dog and it’d bark at her. Now we have five little pigs, and she’s got them to where they’ll put their front feet up on a ball, like this.”
I reached into the shelf tray where I’d just stashed M’s late, most recent essay about a virtue she wanted to gain, and said, “Here is an essay she wrote for me the other week; she wrote that she wants to be kinder.”
They looked the essay over and handed it back.
“And math is stupid,” the grandma said. “It used to be taught just math, but now they teach it so it’s stupid, and you can’t understand it. It don’t make no sense. You can’t help kids with it cause they explain it so different it’s stupid.”
“I think the math teacher is in his classroom now, too, if you want to ask him about it,” I said. They mumble grumbled and moseyed out.