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 Dear Parents (and guardians, I suppose),
I am Mrs. Humorless, your child's language arts teacher. Thank you for
entrusting me with your child for this school year. I know you didn't
have a choice, but thanks anyway. I look forward to a wonderful year of
diagramming sentences and trying to instill in your child a deep love
of gerunds. Somehow, I find the strength to return to this job, year
after year.
Please read through this handout so you are aware of the rules of the
class. I understand you thought you were finished with the hell that is
middle school, but that is not the case. It's expected that you will
hover over your child continuously throughout the year.
At the end of this form, to ensure me that you have read and understand
the rules I have outlined below, there is an area for you to sign,
along with your child, as well as any extended family members, the dog,
the mail carrier, the grocery store checkout kid, and anyone else who
has ever had any contact with your child. Learning is a community
affair, and we must support our children. THEY are the future. (Please
note the area for the notary's stamp. Do not sign this without a notary
present as a witness. This is for your own protection.)
The main aspects of this class will be writing, spelling, vocabulary,
reading and grammar. A separate 3-ring binder is required for each.
Your child will be expected to bring all of these binders to class
every day, which of course will mean buying a much bigger backpack, as
well as chiropractic care for your child he or she starts listing
backwards in a worrisome and painful way from the backpack's weight.
Failure to bring these materials to class will earn your child an
"unprepared" mark for the day. If your child accumulates six (6) of
these, a note will be sent home to you, demanding you take a day off
from work to come in and speak with me (at an inconvenient time) about
this non-issue. If your child misplaces the note, which he or she
undoubtedly will, and a conference is not scheduled because you are
blissfully unaware of the situation, understand that your child will
earn an F for this marking period.
The writing portion of the class will consist of a weekly essay on a
subject of your child's choice (excepting any topic that involves the
discussion of "Guitar Hero" or Chuck Norris), and will follow my
standard essay outline guidelines (found on handout 13-B, which your
child has already lost). You will be expected to act as your child's
editor, creative consultant, research assistant and general muse.
You will need to purchase a special notebook for writing, which is
different from the 3-ring binders already mentioned. I will describe
the properties of this mysterious notebook to the children in class,
but they will forget to tell you. By the time they do, it will likely
be sold out at Wal-Mart anyway.
Learning good writing skills is essential for every child, so you
should model good writing habits and share them with your child. Even
if they only watch you write checks to pay for their therapy and for
PTA fundraisers, it's better than nothing.
Every Monday I will hand out a list of twenty spelling words. Your
child will have to copy them onto a specially folded piece of origami
paper in his or her notebook for Tuesday. For Wednesday, your child
must write them on the paper again, but in some other sort of
arrangement, which I will describe in a whisper, with my back turned to
the class. For Thursday, your child will need to show me that he or she
has written the words twenty times, backwards, so they read correctly
when held up to a mirror. Every Friday we will have our spelling
quizzes. You will be expected to drill your child in spelling for at
least thirty minutes a day, excluding Sundays, Shrove Tuesday and Arbor
Day.
I will be using Vocabulary, Shmocabulary! this year,
which is a new teaching tool that makes vocabulary learning part of
everyday conversation. Every week we roll out a new list of vocabulary
words, and you will be expected to use these in your daily
conversations at home to support the lesson in school. This week's
words are perfunctory, subterfuge, tribulation, clandestine, lugubrious
and execrable. Use these words often, in your nightly lighthearted
dinnertime conversation, for example.
My goal for the reading portion of the curriculum is to completely
crush whatever joy of reading happens to remain in your child after
years of having to keep track of minutes read, summer reading clubs,
and other well-meaning but heavy-handed programs that turned reading
into a chore. Your child will be expected to turn in a book report on
each novel or short story that we read this year. It's up to you to
hound your young scholar constantly about how far he or she is in the
book and what exactly he or she needs to complete the book report.
Despite your interrogation, the details will remain sketchy right up
until the night before the report is due.
There will be books available for your child's use within the
classroom, but some can be signed out and taken home. Since these books
will undoubtedly be lost and you will have to pay for them, you might
as well write me a blank check now and I will fill in the total at the
end of the school year.
Additionally, each student is required to turn in four (4) research
papers this school year, the topic of which I will assign, and which
will likely be way too complicated for seventh graders to research on
their own. This will force you to take over the management of the
project. As parents, you will be expected to do this while making the
end product look like you didn't help at all.
We will be emphasizing grammar this year. If your child is unable to
distinguish between a direct and an indirect object at the end of the
school year, you will be held personally responsible for this appalling
lapse of parental support.
In addition to academics, I emphasize proper behavior in my classroom.
By signing this paper you will acknowledge your understanding that the
rules of common courtesy, good grooming and decent social behavior will
be the norm in my classroom, regardless of the kind of barbarism you
allow in your own home. Clearly some of you parents are not doing your
jobs if I've got to make you sign a paper like this. The following
behaviors are prohibited in my class:
- Nose picking
- Giving someone a "flat"
- "Cutting" in line
- Armpit farts (and all other forms of genuine or mimicked flatulence)
-
Other disgusting bodily functions, including but not limited to:
annoying coughing fits that last a little too long and make the class
start snickering, any sneezes louder and wetter than the smallest
little girly sneeze, halitosis, and itchy scalp/dandruff.
- Giggling at classic geography double entendres like Lake Titicaca and Intercourse, Pennsylvania.
These rules are my own arbitrary regulations. By signing this paper you
acknowledge that other teachers will have other, often completely
different expectations for academic work and classroom behavior, and
there is no way you will be able to keep track of all the various
deadlines and special assignments, especially if you have other
children in school also, and/or any semblance of a life of your own.
It is also understood that the amount of parental involvement required
is way out of hand and completely different from your middle school
days, so it's a waste of time complaining that your own parents never
had to sign these needless, stress-inducing learning contracts.
Thank you for your prompt attention to this memo. If you sign it and
get it notarized tonight and your child remembers to return it
tomorrow, his or her name will be entered in a drawing. The winner
receives the chance to have lunch with me, in the cafeteria, in full
view of his or her friends.
But if you sign it after giving it only a perfunctory (vocabulary
word!) reading, don't blame me if your child has a miserable school
year, has his or her spirit crushed, goes on to become a failure at all
he or she does, and winds up living in your basement with a lot of cats.
Let's get this school year off to a great start! Learning is FUN, dammit. You'd best remember that.
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