I thought it was some kind of crazy joke.  I received a note from my son’s kindergarten teacher that he had bit a little girl on the behind.  Seriously.  I wasn’t even sure how to respond.  So I sat my five year old down and asked him how school was that day.  No mention of the butt biting incident.  So, I became more direct and he responded with something like, “oh yeah.  She took the toy away I was playing with and when she crawled away I bit her”.  Well, shoot, that made a whole lot more sense then!  My oldest was a biter.  Even as a toddler in Sunday school, we would get called down because he had bit someone again.  Such began my journey into my children’s education.

Going through some papers the other day, I came upon folders full of report cards for my boys.   Knowing what I know now as both their mother and an educator, I’ve come to some conclusions about how we evaluate kids and question whether it is really addressing their strengths or is it forcing them to conform to what society/education considers successful?

My oldest started well.  He was very verbal and as the oldest, he would tend to hang around adults which made it easy for him to participate in conversations with just about anyone.  When he began school, reading and spelling were difficult for him and after testing, we found he had a learning disability.  He also had difficulty focusing and paying attention so we felt pushed into medication.  After about a year of him not being able to sleep or eat, we took him off the meds, which caused some consternation among the SPED group.  “Parents refuse to medicate” was written on the IEPs.  But my son could eat and sleep again.  The truth was, he could focus on what he WANTED to.  He was an amazing percussionist.  He had difficulty reading the music, but once he learned it, he could play anything.  He had a gift for managing people of all ages as we found out hosting festivals where I would watch this 14 year old calm irate band directors with his trouble shooting skills.  And that gift for talking to people comes in handy now in his job where he installs and sells items that go along with satellite dishes.  You should see him talk people into buying things, all with genuine care and a smile.  His talking in class apparently paid off!  Oh, and he makes more than his father does who happens to have a Master’s degree and 35 years experience.

Our middle son is a genius in the true sense of the word.  He can have conversations with just about anyone on any subject at any level.  He too struggled in school, but as we found out much later, it was social anxiety in association with his Aspergers, which is on the high end of the autism spectrum.  The fact that he was so intelligent and yet didn’t do well in school frustrated his teachers.  His report cards said things like “David, you’ve got to become more serious and focused” or “you’re not working to your potential”.  The truth was, he worked well with teachers who instinctively understood his anxiety and saw his strengths but would literally or figuratively hide from those who were not patient with him.  Success for David now is being able to get himself on a bus and get to his job where he takes pride in his cooking.  He’s sharing studio space with some friends and creates art, another one his true talents.  For a kid who was told he was not reading at grade level in elementary school, he has one of the most impressive libraries of books I’ve ever seen and he’s read them all.

My youngest was just stubborn and too logical for his own good.  In elementary school, he did very well because it was easy and fun.  Then he got into middle school and high school and things changed.  He couldn’t understand why he couldn’t just ace the tests and pass the classes.  After all, the other stuff was just busy work and if he was getting A+ on his tests, why did he have to do that?  If he saw his teacher as being unprepared or uninformed, he completely dismissed them.  He came home one day and announced that his new English teacher mispronounced the word epitome and he was finished with her.  Trying to convince him to “play the game” to get through school successfully didn’t work, so while he did graduate, he couldn’t get into college.  But like the stubborn kid he is, when he decided to go to college, he made up deficiencies, put himself through financially and finished his degree.  He works in a job where he can make up his own job title, travels the world, owns his own house and makes more than his dad does.

All three of them have grown to be contributors to society in their own ways.  One finished college, one has some college and one has no college.  They are kind, caring people who work hard at what they do, two of them taking care of families now as well.  No report card is able to assess a child’s real potential to be a good  human being.  It takes a teacher and parents who KNOW their child and encourage them to be who they were meant to be, despite what the report card may say.  My sons were more than their test scores.  How about you?