A grand time

It was Grandparents' day at school on Friday. I'd have to say that for the couple of hours that they were around that they completely dominated the goings on.

I had the pleasure of the company of around 10 of these people in my class on Friday. It's an interesting scene. More grandparents than students. Honestly, I was just relieved that for one more year, I was not (or at least I don't think I was) older than the grandparents.

Given the audience, I thought it best to present what you might called a metalessson, where I spent almost as much time talking about what we doing and why we were doing as we spent actually doing anything. This was fine with the kids, as they got to show off what they know and how easily they mastered new things. And it gave the grandparents a chance to get involved in the proceedings.

One of the grandparents was a mathematician, which I, of course, am not. There's nothing wrong with mathematicians, of course, but put one in a middle school math class is putting a cat among the pigeons. They simply can't help but show off. Some of the students came to the board to work problems and he went up with his granddaughter and helped her. He also felt the urge to amplify things from time to time. I hadn't really noticed, but it became evident that this was beginning to grate on the other grandparents. Had I been paying attention, I would have tried to spur this on, of course, because what could be more fun than a little grandspat action? See 'em mix it up a bit? But all we got were some longwinded explanations of things followed by clipped rejoinders saying the same thing in a short, clear phrase.

All in all, a grandparent visit looks like fun. I look forward to having the opportunity to disrupt my grandkids' class some day.