I forgot to post about parents evening!
So last night we had to go to the school for parents evening....I DESPISE parents evening......maybe its to do with my belief in homeschooling - or just my knowledge that school is NOT the best way for a child to get an education - and I do NOT believe teachers know everything or know my child better than me or are any better at teaching my child than I am.....ok off soap box!
Most schools in Canada make parents evening a looooong drawn out evening...you have to do littler experiments in the classroom, go through worksheets with your child.....join in with little activities.....go through all their work...as WELL as seeing the teachers. You have to take your child with you!
Parents evening in the UK is usually the parents going to the school to meet the teacher for 10 minutes and thats it!
I was very grateful to find that this school is not the norm for Canada. Maybe some parents love to do all the little activities with their child but to be honest we do things like that all the time at home so why do I need to 'perform' for the teacher?????
WE did take Susie with us but our meeting with the teacher lasted ten minutes and that was that....basically she told us that Susie is a great student, a leader in the class and that she had nothing to discuss with us! She said Susie was the ONLY child in the class that she did not have an 'issue' to discuss with us about! So that was great!
Oh, by the way, Chris was helping to run the babysitting service in the cafeteria so we dropped Abigail and Sam in there to play! They watched a Veggietales movie and played board games and party games like musical chairs....
We went to the book fair and had a look around and then found Laurie and headed into the hall to see his Science teacher who is also Chris's homeroom/ form teacher.
Mr Mac seemed so nice - he lived in the UK for a few years and his Father In Law is from Blackburn!!!! He mainly chatted to us about his love of Rugby and his love of teasing the boys about the fact that it was the British who introduced Dandelions to Canada :)
He said that Laurie is doing great in school and seems to have fitted into the class perfectly...he says his only 'issue' is that he is one of the last to notice that class has started (ie one of the last to turn around and stop talking!) He said Laurie is a social butterfly (lol!) but that he is doing great (apart from a couple of assignments he handed in late because he was sick and didn't find out about the homework)...so he needs to remember things like that!
After that, laurie headed off to the cake stall in the foyer...and we discussed Chris...Mr Mac says he doesn't think Chris will have any problems doing anything he wants or fitting in anywhere...that he is just one of those people who things come easy to...work, friends, life etc...and he's right..but he also said that Chris ahs a habit of not putting the effort in but assuming that because he's clever he will get by...(we know this about him too) but he said that he thinks he will learn this lesson well and will soon come to realise he needs to put in effort...he did say that grade 9 is known for lower grades and less effort and I laughed and said yes we kind of assumed that with girls and his new social life that school would go on the back burner....he did reassure us though that in grade 10 most kids get back into the swing of getting the grades they need for their chosen grade, and thats what we kind of think too.....when I was Chris's age, boys and my friends were FAR more important than grades at school! When I WAS at school lol!
So all in all it was a good parents evening - actually fun really.....we took laurie and Sam home but Abigail and Susie were having so much fun in the babysitting room that they asked if they could stay until the end, so we left them there and went home and Lloyd picked them up at the end of the evening.
I won't dread the next parents evening quite so much!
