2-8-11 5:40 pm Perspective

She cried every morning before first grade school days: "Mom, tell me what I have to look forward to today!"

It broke my heart. This from the former kindergartener who at the time attested that school days made her dessert, and the weekends compared to spinach, in her cullinary analogy. I, the educator, me, the homeroom-parent, hung on her every word.

Never mind that school now took six rather than three hours to complete. Never mind that her word completely overshadowed her teacher's account. Regardless of her potential misperceptions, I took her word at face value, and then ran with it.

We made phone calls to our own classroom-teacher relatives, sent emails to our principal, arranged before and after-school meetings, even enlisted the help of our pastor. And then the truth came out: "I think I'm just having a hard time adjusting to first grade."

Up to that point though, I felt ready to yank her out of that classroom fast enough to make your head spin. I felt my child possessed the right to feel important, enriched, and experience smooth sailing all the school-days of her life. And, in some small place inside, I suspected in my reaction lay some over-board quality.

What to do? Talk to her teacher again. Give it time. Assume positive intent. Assume her teacher loved her. And she did. On our last meeting, (the one in which we planned to insisto on a class transfer) poor Jill sitting across the table feeling accused of treating our daughter indifferently, declaired: "I love Anne. She's one of my best students."

And in that moment, we connected. Mama Bear retreated a step or two. I realized, listening to the nervous waver in Jill's voice that a forest owl watched over our precious child every day, and decided that that seemed good enough for me. I knew it felt best for Anne. She needed socialization, especially comming from an only-child house-hold. She needed the model of her teacher, a successful woman who did things slightly differently than her parents. She needed to know that she possessed the capability to make it through her day, all on her own.

It's just that they're so small. Later that same year Anne fell from an eight-foot rung on the playground jungle-gym, breaking her tailbone. The fall knocked the air out of her lungs. She got sand in places neither of us knew she had. She looked so tiny lying there, helpless in the sand. And yet she weighed too much for me to carry.

After a few minutes, she managed to get up and walk to the nurse, on her own two feet. Sure I took her to urgent care. Yes, I came to school every two hours for the following six weeks to stuff an ice pack down between her underpants and jeans, a routine she to this day sutters to remember. And yes, she made it through first grade. Jill and I continued to connect and began to embrace the joint-custody relationship we shared over Anne's education.

It feels like joint custody to me. The relationship betwen parent and teacher, to varying levels, determines the degree of academic and social development afforded the child. The trick? Parents, trust your teachers. Teachers, listen closely to your parents. You both love the child. Find your common ground, and build upon it.

Joint custody in a divorce situation presents challenges when it comes to assuming positive intent of the other party. And in my experience, similar challenges sometimes present themselves in the parent-teacher connection. The parent feels committed to doing absolutely whatever it takes to see his or her child experience fulfilling school days. All the teacher wants is safe, caring, effective education for all students. Funny, they seem so similar, but these can look very different, depending on which side of the door you stand: behind the home front door, or the school house one.

In the end, Anne, a fifth-grader, loves school. During times of illness, she begs to go to school. I think she maybe missed three days in the last three years of her education, due to illness. The other two were a trip, and we had to fight with her for that.

"Water under the bridge." "It all comes out in the wash." "You'll get over it." More than those cliches, parents love their children, and teachers genuinely care for their students. We did better than move on. We built trust, with teachers, with Anne, and with ourselves. And I dearly hope that next time my Mama Bear emerges in the face of an educator, that I wait a bit. That I listen. That I assume positive intent. I say "hope", because I know from personal experience just how hard that wait feels, and what a leap of faith it requires to shift perspective.