A Side of Clyde
The chair I was told to sit in was too low, the room too warm, and they gave me a Dixie Cup of white grape juice to drink. It was called "Parents Back To School Night," and I was thinking how lucky my granddaughter was being in a nice school like this.
While visiting my son's family in Connecticut last week, I was encouraged to go along and see my granddaughter's public school room, say hello to her fifth-grade teacher and compare it to the school I attended years ago. What a privilege. I looked around the room at the glossy books, posters and news clippings on wall boards, a bottle of white-out on a side table, a French dictionary and black notebooks.
When I looked down at the desktop I saw several cubes with numbers on them alongside a plastic laminated sheet of paper with an equal sign printed in the center.
My granddaughter's teacher wanted us to try some mathematics. She wanted us to understand what her students were being taught.
I immediately recalled the thrill of knowing the answer to a teacher's question, raising my hand and waving it until the teacher called on me.
I can also remember when the test papers were returned with the words "good work" written in the teacher's handwriting in the margin.
When you return to school as a grandparent, you're hit by the reality of what it's like to be in school in today's world.
No matter how peaceful your 12 to 18 years in school may have been, no one gets out without a few psychic scars or pleasant memories.
My granddaughter said the woman sitting at the front desk is the strictest teacher in the entire school, and all at once you feel the teacher's eyes cross you like a searchlight.
She draws your attention to the algebra materials she laid out for you and points to a problem she has written on the blackboard. She actually wants parents to work out this equation, because they completed this question in class.
A mother sitting next to me skips through it and immediately comes up with X= 5. That's not fair, because she must have completed it for her child at home. Yet she had to be good enough in math to get through her daughter's schooling.
If they had given a test on vocabulary, I think I could have done my granddaughter proud.
You try the second problem, and the teacher asks who has an answer. You raise your hand, give your answer, and the teacher says, "good work."
I realize it's been more than 40 years since I've been in school, but it still feels good to arrive at the correct answer.
I believe teaching is just as good today as it was when I was in school. I was least impressed with attendance by the parents.
There are 22 children in my granddaughter's fifth grade and only 10 parents attended parents' night at the school.
If only more men would take an interest in their children's progress, they, too, could get a psychological high over white grape juice in a Dixie Cup when the teacher says "good work" to them.
I was one of the few men present, and a grandparent at that, but I was highly pleased
Clyde Noel is a longtime contributor to the Town Crier.