I went to my ninth-grader's open house last night with a heart full of expectation and joy. I wanted to see the enthusiasm in the faces of his teachers.
Okay, I'll tell the truth: My wife had to work last night and I pulled the meet-the-teachers job.
For those of you without children in school, this is an annual ritual in which parents are herded into a large factory-sized building and hauled around every ten minutes to meet another necktie or pearl necklace that informs you about "all the wonderful things your education dollar is buying." My wife has this advanced degree in education, so she is able to speak the same language as these people. Which is why I let her go and deal with them. Except last night.
By the way, I hated high school. I hated junior high school. I REALLY hated elementary school. So I'm not the best person to be sending into these places.
Anyway, I'll say the staff looked spiffy and seemed to know their stuff. What it must like there in the daytime with all the raging hormones is something I never care to experience. The "Tech Ed"(didn't this used to be called "shop"?) teacher even found my joke about cyborgs funny. I totally embarrassed myself in front of the Spanish teacher when I told him "good afternoon" en espanol at eight in the evening.
In vain I did search for a chemistry lab. I know one is there. They had to have been hiding it someplace. I was told the "chemistry classroom" was in fact mislabeled and was the domain of the biology teacher. But it's there; I felt the presence of it. And, by God, I'll locate that chemistry lab some day.
So I can't really say what the state of chemical education is like at the ninth grade level in the Commonwealth of PA. My son, whom I like to call XY Unit #2, isn't taking it this semester.
The geology class, oops, Earth Science, was nice and did have some rocks in it. The instructor and I even had a pleasant conversation about sundials.
I will say that I wasn't the only one having bad flashbacks there. You could see the look of horror on more than one parent when the PA system stared making the announcements. And I noted a lot of them giving the main office a wide berth.
None of us had to report for detention. That I know about.