Back to School

It’s been over a month since Linda and I attended back-to-school night at the junior high where our daughter Gretchen attends. I’m not horribly good at keeping track of time so in my mind it might have been last week as easily as three months ago. I know it’s the middle of October and I can do the math but this requires me to, well, do the math. I have a fine grasp of minutes and hours and even days but somehow my mind grew up neglecting to keep track of weeks and years. So there we were attending back to school night for our thirteen year-old, which left me wondering, “How did I end up with a thirteen year old?” And then I asked Linda, “Do we really have to attend back to school night for a thirteen year old? I mean is there anything they’re actually going to tell us that we don’t already know?”

“Of course we’re going. This is important so you’d better pay attention too,” Linda replied.

As it turns out it wasn’t really important and after the first presentation the next six were pretty much identical. It wasn’t until our fifth stop, math I think, that I perked up a bit. This teacher was lanky and reminded me of a stork as she paced back and forth between the projector and her desk and I swear her knees even bent the wrong way. For the fifth time I listened as she explained the process of checking our children’s grades via the online tool, then moved on with a fictitious example just as the other teachers before her had. These were perfect examples of students with perfect grades. “C’mon,” I whispered. “Where’s the example of a bad student? Someone more realistic.” And then I spent the next few minutes entertaining myself with the thought of the stork breaking tradition and giving the parents a demonstration of the online component using an ‘F’ student.


I tuned back in just in time to catch her add, “I’d like to talk about the type of calculator your children will need for this class.” Now I’m a bit of a gadget geek and decided I’d better listen on the off chance we’d need to buy a new calculator. “A regular one is fine but it might be nice for them to have one with some extra buttons,” she said.

It’s been years since I’ve been asked to calculate the sine or cosine of anything but I vaguely remember having a calculator that could handle such a task. I do not, however, remember my math teacher suggesting we pick up a calculator, “with some of those extra buttons,” and wonder what kind of instruction Gretchen will be getting. My mind wandered again imagining the P.E. coach suggesting, “Each of your students will need a lock for his or her locker. I’d suggest one with some of those line thingies around the edges.”