So last night I went to the open house at T's middle school. Man, that place is depressing. It reminded me of my Junior High School - narrow hallways, orange lockers, confusing layout, not enough/small windows... But this is almost twenty years later. The building, the posters, the chairs, the little models of cells and planets, they're all straight out of the 1960s. (In fact the cell models looked like something I'd buy at a flea market - they were nicely mounted, made of plster probably, with little metal nameplates.) I was looking forward to going to this, but almost immediately after I entered I started feeling the old familiar anxiety, feeling trapped and bored, like I was back in school again. P has been distant lately so I was kind of on my own. We had to sit in a crowded auditorium, feeling like strangers from another planet, hiding in plain sight amid all of these "regular" people: They were about our age but seemed much older, and much more square, yet more in-the-know and relaxed than we were. The principal was introducing some of the teachers there, and kept saying things like "and I'm sure you all know Mr. X" and "Mrs. Z is familiar to all of you." Also things like "band C has two new teachers" and "your kids might be mentioning that 'specials' are different this year." Huh? I'd look at P and he'd just shrug I dunno.

Then it was time to find T's classroom. We found a familiar-sounding teacher's name on the map and headed over. We had to walk the length of the building to an area that was all open classrooms with "temporary" walls, with signs everywhere telling people to be quiet, since the walls were literally made of fabric and cardboard. After we stood in line to sign-in we took our seats. A bunch of parents had brought their kids, which seemed odd. The teachers introduced themselves and each gave a little speech about the curriculum for the year. Each of them ended their speech with some variation of this: We try to make it as easy as possible, but ultimately it's the student's responsibility to write down their homework assignment, and please, please make sure they do their homework, as it's very important for learning, and please please don't take them out of class all the time. All of which seems damn obvious to me. I was beginning to realize why T hates this school. The teachers here spend all of their time trying to bring up the rear and don't do anything to move the top students forward. They are incredibly under-funded, but it's more of a mindset than anything. Who knows, maybe all of the kids there are stupid, or their parents are, but I doubt it. We spoke to her Language Arts teacher afterwards (me: "Hi, I'm T's stepmom.") and she was glowing about T. She said "Oh we love Thea. She will excell." Well okay. So you already know that everything you'll ask her to do for the rest of the year will be too easy for her? We actually like this teacher, she seems to be no-bullshit and yet creative. I just wish there was some gifted-and-talented things going on, like there was at my school. Of course our G-n-T program was really just an excuse to get out of class and goof off with our hippy/flaky G-n-T teacher. But still.

I guess we should just be grateful that we don't have to yell at T to do her half-hour of reading every night, or to actually do her homework, or to ask us for help when she needs it. She does these things without being asked, because that's just what you should do. We are blessed that way, for sure. I just hope she can catch up when she transfers to the better high school in the next town over, or goes to the charter school, because the kids here are being groomed only for the local HS or the regional vocational school.