Hajja Salesjana April-June 2020

16 H AJJA S ALESJANA Top Photo: Santi Vedri at www.unsplash.com Three times a year — in autumn, in spring, and at the end of the school year — a large, sealed manila envelope comes home in each of my kids’ backpacks: report cards. It is the only time I remember to look through their backpack. In fact, I rip that sucker open as fast as I can, ignoring the paper cuts I get in the process. I skim the first two pages, tossing them aside until I get to the information I want. On the back page, there is a comment section where the teacher provides a personal assessment of the child. This is the information I want. I read these paragraphs slowly and deliberately, combing through it for information about how my sons behave in class, how they treat their classmates, whether they are respectful to their teachers. I don’t care about the letter grades my kids have earned. I care about the people they are becoming. My oldest son is in fourth grade now, and my husband and I have spent many hours sitting on tiny chairs at parent-teacher conferences discussing our sons’ progress, academic and otherwise, and each time I want to skip through the academic discussion and cut to the chase. You see, I’m far less concerned about how many words per minute my first-grader can read and whether my older son can do long division than I am about whether they are kind and respectful. Are they a good friend? Do they invite new kids to join their games at recess? Do they congratulate classmates on their successes? Do they help others? Of course, I want to make sure my kids are on the right track academically. I want to know if they are struggling, and if they need extra support. I want them to appreciate the value of hard work. I want them to learn about math, language, science, and the world, but knowledge isn’t necessarily equivalent to good grades or acing a test. Assessments, grades, and test scores are bench-markers, but they do not tell the whole story. Even if they did, I’m not sure that I would care that much because I’m far more concerned about whether my kids are kind, I Don’t Care About Honour Roll Or Straight A’s by Christine Organ