What I’ve Learned About the School System as a Parent and Teacher
Thursday evening, 6:15. My son was at the kitchen table with a math worksheet, his pencil tracing the same problem over and over while the eraser shavings piled up like snow. I asked if he needed help, and he said, “I’m stupid.” Not frustrated. Not angry. Just flat, like he was reporting weather.
He’s seven. He was not stupid. He was tired after six hours of school, two hours of aftercare, and a rushed dinner. But in that moment, all he knew was that the worksheet was hard, the other kids were probably done, and he felt behind.
That moment made me think about the school system differently. Not as a policy debate or a headline about test scores, but as the daily container that shapes how kids feel about themselves in ordinary, small moments.
I say this as someone who has sat on both sides of the desk. Before I became a stay-at-home parent, I taught third grade for six years. I know the school system as a machine of routines and checklists. I also know it as a place where individual children are often asked to fit into schedules and expectations that make no sense for them as human beings.
When I was teaching, I had thirty-two kids in my room. Every single one had a different reading level, a different attention span, a different home situation. But no matter how much I wanted to meet them where they were, there was always the pacing guide. The district said we needed to be on Unit 4, Lesson 12, by the second week of October. There was no room for the boy who came to school hungry or the girl who hadn’t slept because her parents were fighting. There was only the lesson.
I remember one student, Aaron. He was sharp, funny, and couldn’t sit still to save his life. The system had labeled him as a behavior problem by November. He was constantly being sent into the hallway. One day, I was walking out to get some water and saw him sitting on the bench with his folder on his lap, staring at the floor. He looked up and said, “Miss, why do I always get in trouble for being awake?”
That question stuck with me. He wasn’t defying me. He was bored, and his body was telling him to move. The school system’s answer was to make him sit still longer. It wasn’t his fault. It was the design.
When my own son hit that moment at the kitchen table, I caught myself almost saying the same things teachers often say. “Focus.” “You know this.” “Try hard.” But I’d been on the other side of that phrase, and I knew how useless it was. “Try hard” is a command, not a strategy. If a child doesn’t know what specific action to take, telling them to try harder just makes them feel like their basic effort is the problem.
So we stopped. I closed the worksheet and told him to go put his hands in cold water. That’s it. Just a physical reset. When he came back, we did the problem together out loud, with me reading the numbers and him saying the steps. It wasn’t a big breakthrough. It wasn’t a beautiful learning moment. It was just a way to lower the temperature.
He finished the worksheet, but I couldn’t shake the larger question. What is the school system actually doing well, and what is it just doing by default? I don’t think the answer is as simple as “schools are broken” or “teachers are heroic.” It’s more like the system is built for a specific kind of childhood that very few children actually have.
The school day is long. It starts early, packs in as much academic instruction as possible, then sends kids home with more work. For a kid who has a calm home, regular meals, and parents who can help, that might work okay. For everyone else, it creates a constant feeling of never catching up.
I’ve said a lot of times, as both a parent and a former teacher, that the system asks kids to learn at a speed that matches the calendar, not the child. One day a child is ready to add fractions, and the next day, because it’s Tuesday, they need to be ready for a quiz on fractions. If they miss Tuesday, they move on anyway. The teacher can’t wait. There are thirty other kids.
This isn’t a call to somehow dismantle the whole structure. There are good teachers doing thoughtful work. There are classrooms where kids are seen, where learning is messy and real and kind. But those classrooms exist despite the system, not because of it.
What I’ve started to figure out, both as a parent and through my teaching years, is that the school system is there, but it doesn’t have to be the final word. Parents and caregivers still have more influence than the school schedule ever will. We just have to use it in small, concrete ways.
One thing that has helped is asking teachers better questions at conferences. Instead of, “How is he doing?” I ask, “What’s one thing he does when he’s stuck?” and “Is he willing to make mistakes out loud?” Those questions get specific answers. It’s less about a grade and more about what my child actually does when no one is standing right there telling them what to do.
At home, I stopped saying “Do your homework” as a phrase and started saying “Let’s look at the first problem together.” It’s a small change, but it means I’m not leaving a seven-year-old to interpret vague instructions. It gives us a shared place to start.
I also learned to pay attention to the time of day. We used to do schoolwork right after dinner. That was a disaster. Now we do it right after school, while he still has a little gas in the tank. I leave a snack on the table, and I sit nearby doing something quiet, like sorting mail or reading. He doesn’t need me hovering. He just needs to know I’m not going to disappear into my phone.
These aren’t magic solutions. They don’t fix the pacing guide or the test prep or the fact that his class has twenty-eight kids. But they help him feel less alone in the experience.
I’m still bothered by what happened at the kitchen table. Not because my son was frustrated—that’s normal. It’s the way he concluded something painful so quickly. One hard worksheet, and he decided he was stupid. That’s the part of the system I can’t accept. It’s not the academics or the rigor. It’s the way children start to believe that being slower than a classmate means something is wrong with them.
I don’t have a neat vision for what schools should look like. I know the system isn’t going to transform overnight. But I do know that the small moments matter. A child who is treated like a problem becomes one. A child who is allowed to reset and try again learns that struggle isn’t permanent.
We didn’t finish that worksheet with my son feeling proud. He just finished it. But later that night, after his bath, he told me about a joke someone told at lunch, and he laughed all over again. That reminded me he is not his homework. He’s not a reading level. He’s not an assignment number in a log.
The school system will keep going the way it is going. I can’t control that. But I can control what happens at the kitchen table, what I ask his teacher, and what my son believes about himself when the eraser shavings pile up. Some days that’s enough. Some days I’m not sure. I’m still learning.
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