Parenting #6: Leveled Reading

some things that look good might be entirely bad

In February I met with four people who work at Olive’s school and dragged Olive’s dad along (I know, that’s good, he should be there, etc…but why? Because institutions don’t take women’s concerns seriously? Because we need a man there to say we mean business? Because men need to take more responsibility in the well-being of their kid’s day to day? I know all that’s true but still I resent the extra effort and all it implies.) The people at the meeting were all educators and they were mostly mothers and two of them had noted to me personally, one in person and another in writing, that Olive’s self-esteem seemed to be low in a way that they couldn’t explain.

I was crushed when her teacher first told me and we were standing in the classroom with all of the kid's artwork and their projects and the sign-posts of learning around the whole room. I feel blindsided, I said, which was the right word, but then I told her that maybe that word was too strong. It implies that someone had pulled the wool over my eyes, and in this case there was no big bad wolf. The whole organism of school is set up to deny agency and we were just no exception. 

The Student Support Team meeting was scheduled for a few weeks later and had been initiated by Olive’s teacher after she expressed her concern. As we sat around the small round table, and I recounted details of Olive’s history - her birth, her past schools, her time in LA - I felt as if we were missing the point. 

I’ve done some research, I said, at one point. 

Can you just feel the eyes of the participants start to get tense? Can you sense the chill in the room? Can you see how the tide might have immediately turned?

I certainly could. 

I know, I’m a tiger mom, I said, and then I launched into a thing about how the curriculum for reading actually seems like it’s on national review and it’s no surprise that a kid who came into first grade without knowing how to read would have bad self esteem because the premise of leveled reading puts kids in the position of comparing themselves to others. 

Is this a topic everyone’s in agreement about? I asked, trying to understand whether everyone felt stuck with this bad curriculum or if they legitimately had some stake in the game. I got some blank stares. Later I told a friend that it seemed as if there was some aggression in their silence, like I was out of place – as a woman, as a mother – to be asking for more. Didn’t I know how dangerous that was? Didn’t I know how useless an effort it was to confront? I pushed on regardless.

Before I came up to the meeting, I had a sense it would go badly. I had made calls to a few fellow moms and they coached me on what to say. One told me to be sure I had action items I wanted to see as a result of the meeting. Another told me I should say that the school was failing our family. I knew that addressing something political, like curriculum, probably wasn’t the most effective route. But I think, deep down inside, I agreed with the group; that as a mom I was not deserving of support and attention. So I turned the topics of politics, parenting, the well-being of kids, things I can speak more concretely about.

Finally after I kept going on about the curriculum changes someone interrupted and said the principle could probably speak more directly about that.

I agreed and said that I would be super curious about her opinion, since she clearly cares about the kids at her school. Truthfully I love this school. I love Olive’s teacher who welcomes all the kids each morning with a full on smile and bright open face at 7:50am everyday. I love the reading support teacher who is also a mom of more than one kid and who has gone back to work after having a baby. I love the principal who is at the door every single morning and every single afternoon and will chat without an appointment about important issues concerning your kid. I love the special education teacher, who’s not in the room during this particular meeting, but who sits in the hallway and gives the kids stickers after she’s made her own handwritten jokes on cards that promote reading. Just like me they are all doing way too much without a whole lot of credit and a whole lot of pay. Just like me they were women doing so much more than should be expected of a person. I was so conflicted, as I sat there in the meeting, with so much respect for everyone there and also so much anger about how Olive, no matter what I did, would not get up for school every morning. It started in the Fall and had gotten worse and worse and even worse still. By the time I got to the meeting trying to force her to go to school had broken our relationship down completely. 

When the principal came into the room the whole conversation changed. The literacy program, it turned out, was already on its way out and there was already a pilot program in the works for next year. She asked about what we could tactically do to support Olive arriving to school on time but I still wanted recognition that there was something amiss and that maybe forcing a smart social kid who should technically like school but did not like school to go to school anyway was not a healthy approach for her.

She seems introverted, the principle reflected and Olive’s dad nodded, but I wasn't so sure I agreed. I don’t say it aloud but this was exactly what I was deep down worried about. I have watched how, from the moment we entered formal education, when Olive was 2.5 and only going part-time and I was still with her in the room, that her self-esteem had gone from great to good to now definitely suffering. I have my eye on these articles of late - about teenage girls doing badly and how their mental health issues are very much on the rise. I’m here to say it’s starting at 3. I had asked the most sensitive adult in Olive’s school circle whether she thought Olive’s response to school was gendered, and she said without hesitation that she thought that it was. She knows the answer, she said to me privately, but she’s just not saying it. Whether she doesn’t want to be wrong or doesn’t want to be seen is something that’s harder to say.

Back in the support meeting, I turned toward the teacher, who was calling in from her house and I asked her what she thought, noting that she saw Olive the most during the day and had more familiarity with her other teachers. 

And she said it point blank. I want you to know that we do not separate kids into groups based on their level of reading in a way that the kids could observe where they are in relation to others. But I agree with you 100%. They know what it means when they’re not doing as well as other kids and it matters to them.

Maybe it was her physical distance from the room that enabled her to say what she thought. Maybe it was that I deferred, rightly, to her, and that she, of all people, would know exactly what was going on. Maybe she just needed to be asked, so that she had the space to respond with the truth. But whatever it was, I was so glad to know that I was not insane and that the issue was not an Olive issue and so could not be handled in a tactical, personal, domestic sphere manner. This was a systemic issue and as such needed a systemic solution. There was no manner of morning charts that would resolve our school woes. 

Which does not mean that the topic didn’t come up. 

So, what you need is a morning chart, the social worker offered, when it was just her and us in the room, and she genuinely wanted to help. Little did she know that suggestion would put me over the edge. 

I’m sorry, I said, beginning to show that I was breaking down completely. I can’t…that won’t work. I think if we don’t have some other support then I don’t see how we’re going to make it back here to school on Monday.

Did I mention it was Friday? Friday at 3:30pm, by this time. By this point the principal had left and the reading specialist had left and I think even Olive’s teacher had bowed out after over an hour. I think, at this point, it was only myself and my partner and the social worker who in the slowest, most intentional way I’ve ever seen, she asked whether we’d like it if she checked in with Olive during her day. 

Yes, I said, emphatically, I would love that, yes please.

It was clear though, by the way that she took out her sticky note, that the capacity to support Olive in any meaningful way was probably really low. Not the desire, but just the sheer number of hours any one person has to do what they need to do, and the increasingly burdened way that adding anything to that list at this point feels almost impossible. Or maybe that the change that needed to come, again, could not come from a private conversation no matter how well intentioned it was. Has it not also become so heavy for you, her pen seemed to say, as she made a note that I couldn’t read from where I sat in the room. 

I asked for clarity about the schedule and whether Olive could count on seeing her and if so what day. She told me that it doesn’t really work that way but then said absolutely it does but then said that maybe the issue was that Olive was the kind of kid that needed to know. I pushed back on this and asked whether that wasn’t true for most people! And especially kids. 

At some point she said, with so much love and grace, It’s hard when you’re stuck and your kids are stuck. Remembering her words now makes a tear catch in my throat. Really, after an hour and a half and four educators and two parents and a baby on zoom, that’s all there was left to say.

Outside the whole school gathered for the Lunar Year Festival, and kids were running around the play area in a circle, encouraged by some attending parents, to keep up the pace.

I finally let out my tears at a little picnic bench as I waited for pick-up time to officially come. The principal, because she is a great principal, came over to me and I told her how I felt so humiliated and I told her I was sorry for fixating on the writing curriculum and told her I really just didn’t know what to do. She did not see it that way. She had been, during the mad dash of the parade, wondering what she could offer us in terms of support. She offered more literacy support, she offered more guidance support from her office directly, she offered her reflection of Olive as a kid that was smart.

You know what I think? she asked, noting her twenty+ years of experience in education. And I nodded yes. Kids will learn to read when they’re ready, she said. I realized then that there was nothing to be done about this at all. I would just have to find a way to get Olive through.