Back to School Day

8th grade maths.

I embarrassed my 13 y.o. son in front of his classmates today. Not too hard to do for a teenager!

He was in maths and it was an open class, so there were a whole lot of parents there. The teacher was struggling to get responses out of the kids (who were all embarrassed to even have their parents in the room). So when she asked a question that no one answered, she opened it out to the parents and I put my hand up (or maybe I put my hand up earlier than that, I can't remember). Anyway, she then asked my son if it was okay to ask his mum for the answer and he shook his head. She asked him if he knew the answer and he shook his head, so I got to answer it anyway. I got it right too!

Today was Back to School Day at CAJ. Sounds a bit strange, 3 1/2 weeks after they actually went back to school. But, as I explained here last year, it is a day when the parents go "back to school". We meet teachers, learn about what our kids will be doing this year, and get an opportunity to walk in the footsteps of our kids a little bit too.

This year they structured it differently, one of the big changes was actually some time of "open classroom" time. Where the kids had class, and the parents were allowed to be in the classroom.

This was kind-of fun (especially when I answered that question about scatter graphs). It was interesting to see the kids that our kids are with every day and some of the interaction. Watching the eighth grade boys do PE wasn't quite so fun. It was hot (they were smelly) and then it started to rain!

I did enjoy year 8 maths and English. I especially enjoyed the opportunity I had to embarrass my son.

Elementary was pretty good too. Especially the fact that my husband could help me out. Otherwise I would have been shuffling between two classes and would have missed 50% of what was going on. Usually my husband is working at the same time as any school day event for parents, so I'm the sole representative of of our family, but today he got to go to 2nd grade and I did 4th grade. That made for a calmer experience!

I'm glad I didn't have to stay for the 2-4pm high school segment, I'm exhausted! I got to come home at 2 with my younger boys. Next year I get to do both elementary and high school, but skip middle school. Two years after that I get to do all three! What fun!

I think the reason I find it so exhausting is that there is a lot of people around and I have so many different "hats" that  it is challenging every time I meet a new person to remember how I know them and come up with appropriate conversation! I think some must wonder why I look permanently spacey! I also had to stand up a lot through the day and now my knee is aching. Thankfully I put the slow cooker on this morning!