School Burn-out

The last few school days have been really difficult for my thirteen year old.

He knows how crucial they are, and how he must try no matter what and maintain a positive attitude and make as good of grades as he possibly can.

But, some of his teachers are making things very difficult for him to stay positive and keep his chin up.

His A on his math test was overshadowed by another teacher's apparent bad day.

This one teacher asked the class who's birthday had yet to be celebrated as many fall on holidays and weekends and tend to get skipped over in turn.

Bregon raised his hand because his was skipped over back at Thanksgiving and teacher had never included him to date.

Instead of adding him to the list, teacher decided to tell him, in front of the class, that he must be lying just to get a piece of candy.

It's bad enough that he has been struggling all year in this class, but to be called a liar in front of the class is a bit much.

Especially when, even I remember the incident where he was sad because of the original skipping over of his birthday at Thanksgiving in this particular class.

It didn't help teacher's popularity then, and it has certainly put a damper on his attitude towards that class now, and those last few weeks of school are IMPORTANT!

He had been making A's on his last several papers and had managed to bring that grade up a whole letter.

As bummed as he is, he is still trying to stay positive, even after this last incident.

Then, I got to see his new point sheet. It looks much better than last weeks. His zero's have been replaced with the actual grades at least.

Teacher had managed to misplace several of his papers, including one of his tests, and had written a comment about how he isn't completing his work or turning it in again.

As it turns out, the papers were at the teacher's house, lost until this past weekend.

Every grade makes a huge difference, especially when a child was penalized for the misplacement.

At least this week, his grade reflects his actual work. It's super difficult to help a child who is doing the work, but is experiencing problems with teacher misplacing it and saying otherwise.

Next, he was met with another, usually chipper teacher, who decided to comment on one of the students who happened to say what a great day they were having.

This teacher decided to tell the class that there is no such thing as having a completely great day.

Yep, teacher told the class that perfect days just do not exist, something which perplexes me.

For, in theory, if perfection does not exist, then what do we have to look forward to or work towards?

I don't know, maybe it's just me. It is awfully close to the end of the year to have teachers giving their students these big downers.

You would think that they would all be looking forward to the summer along with the students.

I hope that they were just having a bad day overall and that things get better.

My child really needs these last few good grades to try and make up for the first few report cards.

I just keep trying to encourage my child and hope that the other teachers will stay cheery and chipper.