Ok, I'll admit it, I was wrong

I have, in the time that the girls have been in school, wondered why it is that my elementary teachers got by just fine without parents helping out in the classroom, but today's teachers seem to expect parental help. I figured they were getting parents to do stuff that they would otherwise have to do at home.

Now last year, the only times I helped out was for parties and field trips and such, because that was the only time the teacher ever asked for help. Of course, in the readiness class, they didn't have homework or anything to do at home.

This year, the kindy teacher told the parents that she needs help in the classroom, and I was mentally rolling my eyes. But, when she sent out an email last week asking for some help, I told her I could give her a few hours on Tue. So, I show up and sure enough she has me copying and paper clipping and tearing out and folding. Boring. Time consuming. But, I got an eye opening look at what goes on in a kindy class. And let me tell you, the woman needs help.

Granted, everything I did was stuff she could have done at home (other than the copying) but it took me two hours and I can understand why she doesn't want to be up until all hours doing it if she can get some help because there is no way she can do that kind of piddly paperwork at school.

There are 17 kids in her class (average for their school). Of those there is a kid with autism (he has an aide at least part time and is pulled out for therapy part of the time), a kid who while very smart, barely speaks English, a kid who has some sort of ADHD diagnosis and was off her meds yesterday (the girl told another teacher she was off her meds, so I just overheard) and three kids who it was recommended that they be placed in the readiness class (the one the girls did last year) and their parents refused (so they are very young and immature. All of them had tantrums and/or cried while I was there).

Those 6 kids could easily take up all of her attention, but the teacher does very well at making sure they don't. Still, they get much more attention individually than the easier kids do. In fact, while I was there, she barely interacted with my two girls at all, simply because they weren't constanly bugging her and calling "Mrssssssss. Staaaaaaaannnnnnllllllllleeeeeeyyyy! Looooook! Anna's doing that! He's touching me! Mrssssss. SStaaaaaaaaannnnnllllleeeeeyyyy!!"

I suppose my kids don't do that because if they did it at home I would simply kill them. I was ready to run away screaming and my name isn't Mrs. Stanley. Eek.

So yeah, even with an aide for one kid, an education assistant an hour or so a day, I think the teacher needs some help, at least with the piddly paperwork stuff.