A competition and the results..

The busy schedules finally ended, with that came a laziness that was just so overwhelming. May be I am just a bit exhausted with all the things that were going on and on with kid and his activities, band, play, competitions etc..We have decided earlier that we will not let the kid participate in all the programs and end up having no breathing time. It was okay until last year, but this year he decided to join a few activities. When I saw how interested he was, I gave in. 7 am play practices, music practices for shows, national history day competitions and other works at school including doing his work as the newspaper editor, sometimes staying in school up to 9pm or even more. Being a lazy person it was too much for me, living my life in the parking lot waiting for him to come. Anyway, it all came to an end and I am glad.

Everything else went okay except the NHD competition. .
The whole competition thing was a mess. He was doing this competition for the past 2 years under the old teacher and everything went so smoothly. The good teacher retired this year and a teacher who was teaching 6th grade got this position. However, within days of starting the works for this competition, issues started. One evening I got a call from kid, saying, I can’t do this anymore, I am quitting. That’s something new coming from him, he is an easygoing kid and enjoys doing his works. So when I got this call and heared how stressed out he sounded, I said, okay, stay there, I will come and pick you up right away. Once I reached there, I saw the librarian, a very sweet lady who is involved in this program and helps them sometimes. I talked to her about what my son just said. She said we can try to solve it and told my son- I absolutely won't give you permission to quit. She was joking but also told him that we will find a way to solve whatever the issue was. She told me she will talk to this teacher and told me to have a meeting with her. So I emailed the teacher and asked for a meeting.
Meanwhile, I asked the kid what the problem was and he said, he couldn’t do a thing without her trying to change everything. Moreover, when he tried to explain to her why he was doing it this way, she takes it as being argumentative. Anyway, I told him, to wait for a couple of days and see .I know how much he wanted to do this project, so I decided to help him if I could.
The next morning when I saw the teacher, she told me she was going to send me an email regarding this issue. She told me, how he doesn’t do things the way she tells him to do etc etc. I told her, what was happening in the past couple of years. The teacher let the kids do their job and helped them with directions and technical helps when they needed help. This is supposed to be a 100% kid’s project and that’s how they did it in the past years. The kids were making the documentary in the way the previous teacher taught them to do. The new teacher had no experience with it at all. Anyways, after a lengthy talk, she told me she would step back and give the kids some breathing space. I told her to let the kids come to her when they needed help. If they don’t need help, let them screw things up and suffer the results. Since I knew her for the past two years, we could talk to each other in an easy way. She was very understanding and I thought the issue was solved.
It was supposed to be the work of 3 and my son ended up doing 90 % of the works, even letting his grades go down because he wasn’t able to do his homeworks,but he had no complains about that . Other two helped with some research and recorded interviews. The kids were having fun, that’s what we wanted too. Let them have fun doing what they liked to do, without too much pressure on them.
She kept on bringing this accusation almost at every conference they had ,that the kid didn’t seek any help from others! Which is wrong. After asking for help and after not getting any in time, he decided to do the work himself as he felt its no use begging others to help when it’s supposed to be a group project. Kids had no complains and was happy with whatever they did. They are friends and enjoy being with each other. She kept emailing me about how he refused to change one line, or one scene and telling me that he doesn’t want others to make the changes etc etc etc!! In the end I just send an email saying, he just happened to have a completed DVD and that’s all. Others could have done the same thing, if they wanted to, as they all had computers at home and knew what they were supposed to be doing. I also said, everything is in the past now, and kids are happy. That’s what matters. After that the emails stopped.
Anyway, they went from district to state level. On the day of the state competition, after the first level was over, she told my son, to tell the judges that the two other kids did a set of works that they didn’t do. She clearly told him, just lie and tell the judges this! I said there is no need to lie about this, he can say we all did this and had fun doing this together, that’s all. I couldn’t believe the teacher saying this to a student, to lie, it sounded like a silly thing, but I don’t think its right. Teachers are looked up on like role models..
Coming from a place where we take everything the teachers says, even if its wrong, to a place where teachers joke around with kids and walk with their hands on their shoulder, it was so hard to deal with this issue.
It was so much stress , trying my best to keep the respect level intact and the same time, making her see that kids has to be left alone to do their works.
We were so blessed to have the best teachers all these years. It never stops surprising me to see how dedicated and helpful they are. There was this one elementary teacher , we ended up going out for coffee occasionally along with two other friends/ parents, until she moved out of this school area:(

Anyway, all is over and they got 4th place state level out of 21 teams. That’s not a bad thing, considering the fact that they did it all by themselves. Son wasn’t too unhappy either, as he got his favorite game and a visit to the KFC, which we dont visit often. I heared him tell a friend -we celebrated our failure:)