First Grade Terror Alert

I recently found a calendar in the pocket of Laylee’s school folder. It’s the folder that we use to send communications back and forth from home to the classroom. Her young, fun and perky teacher is always coming up with new exciting ways to motivate and reward the kids and I assumed the calendar was part of this rah-rah go-team-ishness.

Every day Laylee’s calendar came home marked with an orange stamp that said, “GREAT WORK!” I assumed all was well. Each day I’d check the folder and each day the orange stamp would appear… for the first couple of weeks. Then all of a sudden on one day she came home with a black stamp that said “good job.”

“What!?” I asked Dan. “I don’t want to be one of those parents who’s overly involved in her kids’ schooling or who freaks out when she gets a ‘good’ instead of a ‘great’ on her report card but I want to know why she’s fallen from her pedestal on the stamp scale. She’s not even getting orange anymore. Today’s stamp was black and I want to know why. I think I’ll email the teacher and get to the bottom of this.”

Dan offered some sage words of wisdom in regards to, “Do NOT do that. If you do that then you ARE one of those parents. So she got a lower level of stamp one day. It’s really not a big deal.”

“Well, at the very least I want to know what the different stamps mean. If a teacher’s going to use a complex rating system for our kids, represented by random stamps, I at least want to know what the different levels mean.

“It’s like if the government came up with a new terror alert system but didn’t tell anyone what the different colors meant. Like if they just came on TV one day and said, ‘The terror alert level is purple,’ but no one in America knew what the ‘Purple Alert’ meant.”

“You should just ask Laylee what they mean,” Dan responded.

“That’s all well and good,” I replied, “But if I want to know what a ‘Purple Alert’ is, I’m sure as heck gonna want to hear it from the administration, not from the crazy old guy waving a shotgun outside the gates of the White House.”

“So, who exactly is Laylee in this analogy?”

“The terrorist.”

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6 Responses to First Grade Terror Alert

  1. Carrie says:

    I saw that you were going to be on the Today show today- but then it was time for Dinosaur Train, and nothing stops Dinosaur Train from being shown in our household 🙂

  2. Heather says:

    Beanie gets stars for perfect work, and smileys for good work. I always get just a tiny big stressed when I see the smiley, and not the star. She explained the system to me… but I suppose I could call her teacher to verify… 🙂

  3. Maybe her teacher just pulled a different stamp out of the drawer?

  4. FarmWife says:

    My mother always said I’d grow up to be president, my brother would be head of the military, and our sister, a terrorist. It’s all been passed down. BabyGirl is the dictator, #1 Son is the brains, B.B. is the brawn, and Bitsy is the darling (think Marissa Tomei in Oscar). I think at any given time B.B. could be lured over to the Dark Side.

  5. Hilarious! I can so relate to, well, pretty much every part of this. Trying to get my son to fess up to why he got a certain teacher-comment is like trying to get a politician to tell the truth.

    p.s. then again, perhaps her teacher really just misplaced the orange stamp pad along with the great stamp 🙂 Being a parent is enough to drive you crazy!

  6. Carolee says:

    I’ve been subbing for a kindergarten teacher for a few days and the kids in her class all have a calendar to reflect their behavior cards in the classroom. They start each day with green. If they make a “bad choice” they turn their card to yellow, next step is to orange, and then if they go to red it’s time to go to the principal. At the end of the day in their take-home folder, they color the square for the day the color they ended up with. Most kids are green — it’s a nice class — but orange would not be a good thing! The kids had to explain the system to me, and they all know what the levels mean — maybe Laylee does as well (though she may not want to let you in on the code). But I’m glad I don’t do this full time, because I’m not young or perky! And I think I’ve picked up some bug…

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