A couple of weeks back, my daughter told me of a situation that had happened to her earlier that day at school which upset her. Based on her comments, I wrote the following email to her teacher.
(Note: Names have been changed to protect her teacher. I actually have been impressed with her teacher and think she’s doing a great job.)
Hi Ms. Smith,
I wanted to address a concern K brought up to me today regarding the signing of her homework page. According to her, she said that you told her that you didn’t think she had done her work and that she had initialed for me on last Thursday’s homework page in her spiral notebook. She was pretty upset about it also to think that you were disappointed with her and didn’t trust her. She also was concerned that she lost some Jo Jo points for this. I wanted to let you know that she did in fact do her Thursday homework. She completed the activity to make a memory game but left the cards on our kitchen table, so had no showing of her work. We actually played together at the table. I also verified the initials today just to double check that I had remembered to sign it and to see if maybe she had in fact written something in. It is my handwriting, even though it’s sloppy. I don’t know if you remember me talking to you at back to school night, but both my husband and I are blind. I have some usable vision and can read print with magnifiers. Sometimes I read and write on a screen that I often use to read lots of text and fill out forms. When I use this, my handwriting is legible because I can see what I’m writing. So, you may have seen some times when my writing is clearer. Sometimes however, I just sign a form without taking it down to my office and can’t read my writing. I often just have K show me where to sign on her logs and I initial because I know she’s already done the work. . In these instances, my handwriting is not as clear because I cannot see what I’m writing. I’ll admit sheepishly too that on Thursday night, I scribbled in haste because I was in the middle of making dinner. Anyway, I wanted to make sure you knew that she was in fact telling the truth and did not lie to you about doing her assignment. She did the memory game and we can send in her flash cards too if you would like to see them.
If there are concerns in the future about K’s telling of the truth or concerns about our signatures, please feel free to call or email me so that we can verify the situation. I would appreciate it so that we can minimize misunderstandings between you and K.
Thanks so much for your help with this.
*****
Okay, I was a little embarrassed, but I know her teacher was even more so than me. She replied to me and told me that some of the students have in fact been dishonest about the signing of their homework lately, so she worried that this was the case. She also was very apologetic about the whole situation. I am embarrassed that my handwriting got mistaken for a first graders. Guess I need to work on my penmanship.
Making it on the Playground 