Story of the Day 8/30/2011

Last night was Back-to-school night. Back –to-school-night is when the parents of the kids who are passing show up, so that they can find out what the rules are in their kids’ classes and what is going on, get a copy of the teacher hand outs and the teacher’s email address; and the parents whose kids are on the honor roll can introduce themselves to the teachers by saying” I am so-an-so’s mother/father” and it is usually both parents and the forst one says, “I am so-and-so’s father” and the second one says “ I am so-and-so’s mother” although, on rare occasion the order is reversed, and then they stand there and glare at the teacher with over-amplified smiles waiting to be told how wonderful their kid is; and the parents of the kids who are having some self-esteem issues or struggling a bit show up and hope the teacher says one nice thing or that they can figure out which evil parent has the son or daughter who is bullying their child or maybe even find the parent of the one kid who is being very friendly to theirs; and the parents of the kids who are in special ed can show up and try to figure out why their kids are having trouble with a specific class; and the parents of the kids with heavy duty special needs come in to try to figure out what their kids have been telling them about school, or to thank a teacher for making an extra effort, or even just to visualize what the class would look like with their child sitting in it.


On occasion, you see nice things- things that inspire, like the parents who have been divorced who are going from class to class and sitting together so they can talk about what their kid needs, or a parent who obviously came straight from a hard day at work and who is taking copious notes about what their kid can do for extra credit and what class their kid needs so that their kid can go to college, and be the first person in their family to do so. Or when there are two parents and a student (when students are not really supposed to be there) and maybe a little brother or sister, and the student is going with the parents from class to class and patiently interpreting everything, so that the parents will know what the teacher has said- and the parents are not only not discouraged by the language barrier, but the kid is not ashamed.

And I fall into a couple of the categories, if you want to know.

I am the parent who really wanted to see who in the heck was the Jdahmr wanna be’s parent(s), and also wanted to tell a teacher that Sarah was really happy he hadn’t excused her for a project, yesterday, that had to do with sound- rather, he set it up so that she could actually do it. And, I wanted to see where Sarah sat, in a couple of classes, and what some of these teachers were like, from her funky descriptions.

Of course, when Aaron was in school there, I had to pray his teachers found him amusing and didn’t want to have us string him from the chandelier by his thumbs for constantly disrupting the class with comments he thought were funny…. Going around as Sarah’s mother is infinitely easier.

Sorry, Aaron.

And I learned a few things, too. Which is what parents are supposed to do, at Back-to-school-night.

I learned that the Lesbian was a thespian.

I have no idea if she is also a lesbian or not, and if she is corrupt, corrupted or corrupting or not , but I did learn the vocabulary word that Sarah missed learning. “Thespian”. Okay.
But I still have no idea how that ties in with cybersex, or with Hamas in Detroit.

I also found out that Sarah can’t read Hebrew.
This was news to me, since Sarah has been able to read Hebrew for a while.
The teacher, however, carefully explained that he had transliterations just for Sarah, in his class. Just for her because she can’t read the Hebrew.

Of course, why a transliteration ( phonetics) would help a deaf kid who cannot hear or speak, or why he thinks it could….
No, Sarah can read the Hebrew. She needs the transliterations because of Megan.

When Megan was the interpreter, more than a year ago, she was given a paper to study over the summer .
She had all summer to learn the Hebrew alphabet.
Actually, she didn’t even need to learn it, she just had to learn the Israeli Sign Language fingerspelling handshapes. And, since 80% of them match up to the ASL handshapes for the alphabet, and make the same sounds, it would have been very easy.
This would have also meant that Megan wouldn’t’ need to understand any of the Hebrew being used in the classroom, she could just sound out what Sarah spelled to her on the occasion that he teacher wanted a “verbal response from Sarah..
Except that Megan immediately lost the paper, and didn’t bother to ask for another copy.

Of course, it was summer- but she was at school every day of both summer sessions, that summer, since she was interpreting for Sarah, so she could have easily asked for another copy.
But she didn’t.
And the first day of Hebrew class, there was a problem, because Sarah was all set and ready to read the Hebrew off to her , and Megan hadn’t prepared. So Megan told the teacher that Sarah needed it all transliterated- written out in “English” phonetics, so she – Sarah, the deaf kid, could read the Hebrew.

Now, after she left, which was into the second quarter, there was a string of sub interpreters who were not going to be able to walk in that day and use the Hebrew fingerspelling, but Megan had set it up so that the teacher thought Sarah couldn’t read the Hebrew without it- not that it was to help the interpreter- and he has persisted in that belief , ever since.

And he has made a point of telling her classmates that she needs it, a couple of times a week, ever since then.

And he made a point of telling the parents this at Back-to-school-night.
It is an accommodation he is making for the poor-dumb-deaf-kid who can’t read Hebrew. When, in reality, he is making it for the unprofessional, dumb ex-interpreter who was simply covering up the fact that she was lazy.

Megan- the gift that keeps on giving.

And as for the Jdahmr wanna be’s parents? They didn’t come. Which was okay, because I am not sure if I would feel sorry for them or if they would spook me as he has spooked Sarah , and I am not sure I really want to find out.