Friday, January 04, 2008

Critical Need

A forum to discuss our child's school/teachers!
It all started with going to the movies. We went to watch late night showing of "Taare Zameen Par" (wonderful movie by the way, review in my next post) I was horrified when the art teacher throws a chalk right at the day-dreaming utterly cute and vulnerable 9 year old protagonist of the story.
"I don't think teachers do such things any more... My own history teacher would target any yawning child and it sounded so painful to me I never dared to feel sleepy in class!" I reminisced.
My lil one quipped "My teacher does it to X".
I was shell shocked! I had hoped to leave my child in the arms of someone a lot more gentle than me for the better part of the day. I was debating whether to take it up with the teacher or the parent when my husband raised 2 valid points: Most Indian parents think nothing of it, in fact they may even expect/encourage corporal punishment as a means of enforcing discipline. The boy in question, is an utter brat, to put it mildly and his parents may not have the stamina to regulate his behaviour.
I thought I would prefer taking this to his mom and letting her decide how to deal with it.
Big Picture: There is bound to be a lot of fracas in school between the kids themselves and between the kids and their teachers. Not every kid is willing to pour out everything that happened in school into his parent(s) eager, attentive ear. Those who are in the know, need to share info with those who are not in a civic manner. i.e. No bragging, no showing off, no naming -shaming-blaming, just diligent sharing to ensure a happy schooling experience.
I guess what I would like is a moderated discussion board for every class in each school. I would also like to ensure some anonymity in the board - we dont want to end up with some child being targeted by the teacher/other parents.
Now the question is where and when?

As time goes by....

I am acutely aware of how much time I waste! It would start with my Salon/NYT daily email or with some confusion about a work related project. 1 hour later I would have surfed some 10 different websites and my To_Do list would have moved from Normal_pending to Critical_pending!

Granted my forays into the time-sucking web would have yielded at least 1 eye-opening gem , but what is it sufficient ROI for my time?

The Need of the hour is a SufersClock - it tracks how long I surf and beeps increaingly annoyingly as I spend longer and longer inside the Matrix. Um, I meant web.

I will stop now instead of checking whether such a clock exists ;)

Happy New Year everyone!