School has been in session for 5 weeks already, which means that school report cards come out next week for all the public school kids in this area. We do 6 week grading periods, and the first reports are supposed to be parent teacher conferences. I’m not sure they still do that in every school, but I sure used to hate the 6th week of school when I was a kid. My parents would go to the school and sit on these tiny chairs and listen to the teacher complain about me for 30 minutes, then they would come home and beat my butt for whatever holy sin I had been committing in class, like “not paying attention.”
Then the next 6 weeks would be hades, because I’d have lost all my privileges and was not allowed to watch TV or play outside with friends or do anything except homework or read library books. OMG! I hated my teacher AND my parents for those second 6 weeks.
But then, strangely, my next report card would always “show improvement”” and I would be not grounded any more and life would go back to normal. I don’t recall doing anything different during those 6 weeks except suffering – but I managed to get through it and my parents felt better about themselves for being “responsible parents” and my teacher would get her panties out of a knot and accept the fact that not every student is going to be a perfect student.