Tag - teachers

When Avery was diagnosed near the end of my maternity leave, I gave up teaching in order to stay home with her. It was the right choice, but some days when I walk down the school corridor, as a parent, no longer a teacher, I feel a twinge of regret. I miss my grade two classroom with its brightly coloured bulletin boards and pet Hermit Crabs. Wait, scratch that. I don’t miss the crabs. They were smelly. But I do miss my students and the funny things they’d say. Like the girl who went home after the first day of school and excitedly announced to her parents, “Mrs. Thornbury is nice and she has crabs.”   In retrospect, fish probably would have made a better class pet. When my son entered grade two last fall, I felt oddly possessive. This was MY grade. What if I didn’t like the teacher? What if she wasn’t doing it right?? I feared I wouldn’t be able to stop myself from making comparisons. I imagined myself going all “Incredible Hulk”, turning green and shredding my pants out of anger and frustration, until I morphed into “that parent.” The know-it-all-in-your-face-pain-in-the-ass-parent. For the first few weeks of[…]