First term is almost over. It’s time for parent-teacher interviews. Twice a year, I meet the brave souls who have the task of educating my children. I wonder if teachers enjoy meeting us. It must give them great insight into the personalities of the little ones who occupy their days.
Last week the Carpenter and I attended a parent-teacher session to help parents learn new approaches to teach primary level math. I was relieved to know other parents had no idea how to do math homework either. The Carpenter and I sat side by side in the primary desks, giggling like school kids, nervously awaiting our task. Our son warned us there would be a test. Sure enough, the teacher handed out an assignment to be done in pairs. Her goal was to show us the new methods for teaching math encourage students to explore alternatives, to try creative solutions with different methods to get the answer. Think outside the box. At least, I think that was the point.
Let me say this: life partners in marriage do not make good math lab partners. To be fair, the teacher did warn us of that. But I read the question on the board. I understood the words, but when numbers got in there, it went from being logical to “blah, blah, 483, blah, blah, 26.” My math dyslexia kicked in. The question was about building an ice rink with a target for square footage using specified amounts of materials. Our task was to determine a functional shape in a dimension that would make best use of the materials creatively for our rink design. Brilliant. I had the Carpenter on my team. He makes a living building stuff out of wood. This was too good to be true.
I could sit back and daydream while he did all the work. Fabulous.
Did I mention we were being timed? Minutes passed. The Carpenter, at first eager with his sharpened pencil and ruler, seemed to be turning the paper around a lot, erasing furiously, redoing the lines, erasing again. He was mumbling to himself. This was harder than he thought; harder than I thought.
I am the outside-of-the-box thinker. This was my time to shine. I reread the question. Eureka. Maybe the point was this didn’t have to be a traditional hockey rink, rectangular in shape. What if it was just round? Or maybe it had to have several sides like an octagon, which made better use of the wood things. Maybe we had to think unconventional to get the footage down.
The Carpenter rolled his eyes at me, but then I saw his pencil start to work some numbers and I knew I was on to something. He wasn’t going to admit it. More erasing. Mumble, mumble, mumble.
“Time’s up,” the teacher called.
The Carpenter, defeated, left his unfinished rink plan on the desk.
When nobody was looking, I grabbed the pencil and in the margin of the test sheet, under “Solutions to the problem” I wrote, “Hire a contractor.” The next day, our third grader discovered Mommy and Daddy’s test in his desk. He shared our results with his teacher.
Needless to say, that weekend the Carpenter started the construction of our first-ever backyard rink. Pride is a good thing, particularly when questioning it gets things done.