Too Cool to Care? Don’t You Believe It

My refrigerator door and the mantel above my fireplace have become showcases for my daughter’s second-grade classroom creations: colored-tissue collages, picture frames adorned with multicolored macaroni and dried beans, plaster-encased hand prints and crayon-illustrated stories.

Each week my husband and I are barraged with more school projects than we know what to do with. Our daughter takes such pride and joy in sharing her classroom accomplishments that we dare not throw away a single work (at least not until she has long forgotten about it). Yet despite the menagerie of pasted, painted and crayoned offerings threatening to overtake every available wall and counter space, I cherish these years of jubilant childhood treasures. As a high school teacher, I know how quickly children learn to underestimate the value of their work and how quickly they stop bringing it home to Mom and Dad.

Over the years I have had the pleasure of receiving many insightful essays, humorous tales, heart-rending stories, graceful poems and cleverly created projects crafted by my students. I’m continually impressed by the honesty, depth and creativity they bring to their work. Yet when I ask how many of them share their schoolwork with parents few raise their hands. When I ask why, a common response is that they feel their work is “too stupid to show anyone,” even their own parents. Sadly, for many of my students, the days of bringing home classroom treasures have long since passed.

Somewhere along a child’s academic experience, he or she stops believing in the value and worth of his or her school work. This lack of esteem in academic accomplishments usually begins in junior high and becomes increasingly pronounced in high school. Whether lack of interest stems from overly critical teachers, teenage angst, peer pressure, parental apathy or a combination of factors, it is a trend we as educators, parents and relatives of school-age children can help to ease.

One exercise I engage my students in each year is to compare their junior and senior course work with their academic abilities as incoming freshmen. Despite their constant chant that “school is a waste of time” and their well-practiced stance of indifference, they are forced to admit that they have, indeed, gained many measurable academic skills. Within the record of their own work they have tangible evidence that they have learned and achieved a great deal.

Although parents will always treasure those tin cans transformed into yarned pencil cups, they mustn’t fail to recognize the tremendous strides their teenage child makes every day. True, a typed 10-page history report is more difficult to display than a finger-painted self-portrait (there doesn’t seem to be a refrigerator magnet big enough to hold up all those weighty projects) but it is nevertheless as great or greater a work to display with pride.

Don’t be put off or fooled by a teenager’s feigned “I’m too cool to care” attitude. Inside that gangly boy with the stubble on his chin or awkward girl given to confused cosmetic attempts is the child who raced home with elation to show you his or her latest classroom creation.

The last few years of high school are among the most difficult for parents and children alike. It is not only the football and basketball teams that need cheerleaders; each child needs one too, and you may be the only one to cheer that child on toward the finish line.

With the end of the spring semester approaching, I encourage parents and relatives of high-school-age children to make the extra effort to help each one realize and appreciate accomplishments.

As our children prepare to take their place in adult society, these are the last few years we have to display with pride those trophies of childhood achievement.

These are the last few years to ask, “Hey, what did you learn in school today?”