Megan Banks: What really goes on in your kid’s classroom?

Megan Banks asks: How much do I really tell my kids about how the teachers think they’re doing? Image / NZME

Opinion

It’s parent interview time at many schools around the region. A time I absolutely used to dread as a child, and now I’ve come full circle, dreading it again.

Growing up at a very small country school with a roll of around 30 children, I was a small fish in a small pond during Primer 1, and then by Standard 4 I was a big fish in a small pond.

And that’s because the intelligence pond wasn’t that big. That meant that I was usually okay. I was nailing my school readers, flying through The Sweet Porridge and my personal favourite, The Hungry Lambs!

Although I was good at spelling, I would conveniently have a sore tummy on spelling test day, but all in all, it was usually a pretty good report when Mum and Dad came home. They said I enjoyed a sing-along on the mat and was for most parts, “a pleasure to teach”.

But your parents rarely went further than that in the ‘80s - they used to like to make you work for any compliments, so I never really knew how well I was doing.

And I’m finding the same now as a parent. How much do I really tell my kids about how the teachers think they’re doing?

You know the drill - you gingerly walk into the classroom and plonk your too-large bottom on a too-small chair and wait nervously. There’s usually some lovely small talk that you hope lasts for the whole 15 minutes so you run out of time to actually talk about your child, and then the teacher gets into it.

They quite often ask how we think our child is doing. That’s always tricky. How they’re doing can depend on so many things - did they like their lunch that day, or did their friend kick them in the shins, resulting in them having a falling out? And if my sons are anything to go by, that happens a lot. But also, they tell me absolutely nothing about what actually goes on in the classroom!

So, inevitably I am left with no other option other than to say “good”, and that’s exactly what I plan to say to my kids after the interview when they ask how it went. “Good”, I’ll reply, and hope they get distracted and run off and do something else, which is just like what they do in class, apparently.