Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Let’s do this together
Parents’ evening for The Dark Lord this week was a bit of a disaster in a long line of many school meeting failures over the years.
Although at least the reason I didn’t turn up to school for this one was because it was by Zoom at home, unlike some of the meetings that I’ve missed in the past.
Jesse’s never let me forget the first time I was supposed to be at her Reception year meet-up – and went to the pub instead. In my defence, I was new to the parenting game and I had just recently been into school to deal with the ear biting incident.
Sitting in her little classroom with her concerned teacher, I asked the five-year-old Jesse: “OK, so what you’re saying is Peter put his ear in your mouth and you accidentally chomped down on it very hard?”
“Yeth, Mummy, he’th a bad boy,” she nodded, her little dark curls dancing and making her look totally innocent – except for the smear of Peter’s blood on her chin.
This time at least we didn’t have any violent incidents to deal with and I had five teachers lined up for five-minute chats in the space of an hour.
First up was her science teacher who complained about her lack of organisation and tendency to file things in the bin.
Geography was uneventful, and I still have no idea what they learn in that class. And when she was described by her English teacher as “a very serious student”, I wondered if we were actually talking about the same person. Then the maths teacher was three minutes late, and when she did appear, her sound wasn’t working. After a few minutes of waving at each other, she gave up, scribbled on a piece of paper and held it up saying: “She’s great”, and I gave a thumbs up, which in the end is all you need from a parent’s meeting.
But the DT bloke who teaches technology didn’t turn up at all, and I sat watching my laptop until the very last second, when he suddenly appeared, shouting: “Sorry my computer crash…!” before the screen went dead. Hopefully he’ll fix it by next term.
Thank you to all of you who take the time to get in touch. Email me at siobhan.mcnally@ mirror.co.uk or write to Community Corner, PO
Box 791, Winchester SO23 3RP.