No writing today, unless you count my note-taking in the long talk with the child.
Yes, my friends, she came home with another yellow/red light. (we’ve been arguing over the interpretation of the note.) For those who don’t know the system, Gold Star is an awesome day. It’s not easy to earn. Green Lights are easy, you just don’t get in trouble. Yellow is if you keep screwing around after a couple warnings. Red is if you’re a major pain-in-the-buttocks.
In the month of October the child has had two green lights. Her poor teacher is fed up and so am I.  So Hope and I had a long talk.
First we wrote down every single action/speech that has gotten Hope in trouble this year. Then we grouped them. Not Listening goofs, Bossiness goofs, Talking Out of Turn, Tipping Her Chair, Not Completing Her Work…
We decided Not Listening and Bossiness were caused by Hope’s belief that she’s right and no one else knows as much as she does. We discussed her teacher’s experience as a teacher, added up how many kids she’s taught the Second Grade to, talked about her college education, and (hopefully) arrived at the conclusion that she is more qualified than Hope to teach the class.
On the Bossiness subject, we also discussed how many times kids changed their behavior after being ordered around by Hope (not very many) and compared that to how many times she’s been scolded for it, and came up with the idea it was more trouble than it’s worth.
As for Talking Out of Turn, apparently that is everyone’s fault but Hope’s. They talk to her, then she gets in trouble for talking to them. So we talked about how a real friend wouldn’t be trying to get her to talk when she shouldn’t. How a certain boy making annoying noises and hand signals at her is just trying to get her in trouble, and when she loses her temper and yells at him, that’s what he wants. We talked about how similar that is to a Harry Potter/Draco Malfoy interaction (then we talked about the difference between books and reality, no hexing allowed!) and decided a better choice would be to ignore him. Eventually he’ll probably get so loud in trying to get her attention, that the teacher will hear him and he’ll get in trouble. As Hope’s teacher is more equitable than Snape, we think it’s a good possibility.
She wrote notes to her usual teacher, her SFA teacher (she’s in a FOURTH GRADE reading class, mommy is so proud!!) and the frequent substitute asking that when she tips her chair, she be made to stand. It’s what we did at home, and she doesn’t tip her chair at home anymore. This was her idea, not mine, so I have great hopes for it.
Not completing her work, supposedly, is caused by all of the above. But Mommy remembered a time she refused to do her math simply because it was SIXTY PROBLEMS!! (drama added by Hope, only reported by me) So we talked about how to handle a large assignment. First, take a deep breath. Second, (in math) do all the easy ones. If it’s a big writing assignment, step one is to look up all the unknown words in the dictionary. (not sure how that works, but a solution imposed by me has less chance of success, so I let her go.)
At that point we’d been at it for hours, so I let her go. We’ll talk more through the weekend. *sigh*