This past Monday I had the pleasure of taking the day off from work to attend a mandatory conference day at my youngest daughter’s school. It basically works like this: we have a set conference time for about 15 minutes where you talk to the Homeroom teacher, of whom at our small Catholic school we either talk to or e-mail everyday, we get our report card and then we leave and have the rest of the day off. Sweet and simple!

This year my youngest daughter has not been trying her hardest. I have noticed it and so has her teachers. She has a total of 6 different teachers now that she is in Junior High and her Social Studies teacher and her English teacher both made a comment on her report card about her lack of trying and how it didn’t seem to bother her as long as she was passing the class. Her Homeroom teacher and I talked to her about these comments. I told her that she needed to raise the bar on her standards and that she should try a little harder with her school work. Her Homeroom teacher made a comment about how she needed to try harder now so that when it came time to start looking at colleges she would be well prepared grade wise.

My youngest daughter looked her Homeroom teacher in the eye and said, “All I have to do is pass, I’m only going to go to a Junior College anyway!”

I didn’t know whether to laugh or go crawl into a hole!