AM I a terrible person for saying I no longer derive joy from volunteering in my daughter’s first grade class?
I realized this last week as I was helping, for the 10th or 12th time, with a weekly enterprise known as “math games.’’ The class is divided into groups of six, who sit at tables helmed by parents, taking part in some math-y activity. Every 15 minutes, a bell goes off and the kids rotate to the next table. Sometimes, a parent gets an actual game — bingo or somesuch — and things go reasonably well. Last week, I was handed a stack of worksheets and told to make the kids write equations, sorted along such lines as whether they added up to 10.
“Hi, guys,’’ I said cheerily. “Today we’ve got a worksheet and Fact Triangles!’’ It wasn’t long before one seven-year-old looked up at me morosely and said, “I am not having fun.’’
Well, that makes two of us, I thought.
(Read the rest from the Boston Globe here.)
