The First Day of School

The First Day of School

Nothing says summer is over than my traditional last minute run to Target to scrape the bottom of the sales barrels trying to scrounge up a pink eraser that is not half chewed, pencils that actually have lead in them and paper that has lines on it…in a straight line. And every year I say, “Next year, I swear I’ll get my act together and shop earlier.”

Today was the official end of summer as Dave and I dressed, fed and got each blue and white dressed child with the most important first day of school accessory – the bribe. Yes, you heard correctly, I had to bribe my children to actually make it through their first day of school. “Don’t forget kids, when you get home, mommy left you 1^st day of school gifts if I get a GOOD report!” (aka, please don’t have the counselor call me on the first day of school – we’re already on a first name basis).

And thankfully, the bribes worked. Even Dave sent me an IM this morning with the following note, “Hey, did you get any calls from the teachers or counselors at school?” “Not yet, they’ve only been in school for 45 minutes, I’m sure we’ll get a call by lunch.” No calls, happy tired children – I call that success!

As I was going through the kids back packs, I came across CPS’s Student Code of Conduct handbook. While school started today (9/2), the book actually says, ‘Effective September 11, 2008’. Which just had me wondering if the first week of school was a free ride. Could the reason we received no phone calls and only glowing reports is because even if they did misbehave, the code of conduct does not go in to effect until next week?

There are six groups of inappropriate behavior categories in the Code of Conduct book. After reading the book, I’m happy to report that while the counselor has called us on three separate occasions (you can guess which kid, let’s just say if he was the first, he’d be an only), my children have for the most part avoided virtually all of the behaviors listed with exception to the following:

Running in the hall or building - Come on, seriously, we need a parent teacher conference for this? All of my kids have violated this rule.

Displaying behavior that is disruptive to the orderly process of classroom instruction – It’s true, Jack was affectionately referred to as the “Kissing Kindergarten Bandit” for excessive kissing of both the boys and girls in his class. Thanks to Jack’s over-affectionate personality, there was a no-kissing rule established in Kindergarten.

Fighting – two people, no injuries – O.K., Max is guilty of at least trying to slam his teachers fingers in a drawer, but it ended fairly when at the conclusion of the day, Max jumped on his lego tower puncturing his groin, a trip to the ER and just missing his testicle sidestepping the dreaded nickname, “One Nut Max”.

Gambling – I’m not really sure if this counts as gambling vs. just enterprising, but Delaney is guilty of trying to sell lined paper (bought from the Bargain bin at Target) for $0.05 per sheet. She was in first grade at the time, I just think she’s a chip off the old capitalist pig parents block.

And so after reading the Code of Conduct book, I am rest assured that at least for the next week, my kids can misbehave, act up, even plagiarize or bully without recrimination from the school. Of course, they’ll have to deal with terrors of mom and dad, which can likely be more frightening and minimally I’ll have to take back their 1^st day of school bribes.

After reading this evening’s post, for those of you that think my kids are really mean and naughty, they are. I mean, they aren’t. They’re actually good kids. Most of the time.