I nailed my colours to the mast during the first parents night for our eldest. Her English teacher was very negative about her very poor spelling to an almost aggressive level. I agreed with him that she indeed couldn’t spell for toffee, which rather floored him as I believe he was about to produce evidence to support of his claim. My next statement completely derailed him though. I asked him what strategies he would be implementing to address this failing. It’s probably worth pointing out that Alice had achieved an 8 in her year six SATs and all here other teachers had been very complementary about here work ethic and capability. I also went straight to the Head teacher to express my concerns that this teacher was fixated on a single aspect of Ali’s English. Ali remained a favourite of the Head’s right up until she turned her back on Oxbridge in favour of following Art and Drama.
We also had a policy of letting the (high) school know when the boy was brewing to something. He has a very strong sense of justice and had a history of defending this very strongly. He was often in trouble, but it was usually for defending someone else. But sometimes we’d get the vibe that something was brewing and on such occasions we would warn then school of this.
Conversely the girls were paragons of virtue. At least, while they were at school. We were never, however, of the opinion that they could do no wrong.
