Thursday, October 21, 2004

Teacher's pet

I had a sort of absurdly positive conference with my daughter's teachers yesterday, in which they were unanimous in their admiration for my girl and their happiness to have her in their class. Grade books revealed decent scores on tests and quizzes, and the closest we got to anything negative was one teacher's concern that she worries too much. A big point in her favor seems to be that she does all her homework, which leads me to believe that a great many middle-schoolers do not. Homework is something my daughter can do -- organization being her strong suit, so that the assignment is always written down and the materials needed are always brought home -- and since the teachers seem to give credit only on whether it's done, not how it's done, she excels. I told my daughter that her teachers love her and she should relax a little, and I'll tell her again every time she stresses about some new assignment or classroom project. If she could ever own that success, it might give her some much-needed confidence. We'll see whether the grades she gets in five more weeks will help that along, or whether today's encouragement was of the "she's doing so well for a kid with such obvious learning problems" variety.

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