Please indulge me in a moment of shameless bragging. I’m practically bursting with pride.
I got a call from Tristan’s teacher this week. (I swear, getting a call from the school elicits the exact same physical response in me now that getting called to the principal’s office did when I was a schoolchild myself. That wincing anticipation of unpleasantness ahead.)
In fact, she was calling to tell me how delighted she was with a piece of work Tristan handed in. Can we take a moment and admire the kind of teacher who calls a parent after school hours to offer random praise? And can we find a cloning machine, please? They’d been working on descriptive paragraphs and given a sentence upon which to expand. Tristan took a sentence about a tree and apparently turned it into a very vivid description of a boy sitting in a tree reading a book, and his teacher was blown away by the thought behind it, the style, and the way he evoked the moment.
I laughed out loud when she started describing it, because right away I knew from where Tristan had taken his inspiration. Remember this picture from my 365 project last autumn?
Apparently, so does Tristan!
She went on to say through the year Tristan has proven himself a bright boy who has little difficulty with his school work, but that she’s had trouble encouraging him to fulfill his potential. While he is able to meet the standards expected of him with relatively little effort, despite her encouragement he has shown little interest in excelling beyond the standard. Until, it seems, this particular exercise. She wondered aloud if he should be put into the gifted stream in the next year or so, and while I was delighted to hear she was pleased, I am not going to even bother thinking about those things right now.
For today, I’m happy to hear that the same boy who has in the last few years shown an amazing aptitude for drawing inherited from his father has also inherited a certain grace when it comes to stringing words together. I think I might know where that one comes from, too.
That is quite the high praise indeed, and a wonderful teacher you have there! Yay!!
Three cheers for Tristan and pats on the back for his wonderful mum and dad!
Wishing you the very best in 2010!
Awesome!
So cool! It’s so strange when we stumble upon what appear to be small events that stick out in our minds with such detail. This should show Tristan to just keep trying and he will know that it is in there, he just has to dig it up. Good job, buddy!
Love it! Love that picture, too – well done, Dani.
He sounds like a great kid. I know when the teacher called me about loving having him in her class and how great he was… that I beamed for a good week.
Don’t you wish they could just follow these teachers around from grade to grade…
This is so awesome. You have every right to be bursting with pride, and definitely get bragging rights in this case.
BTW: that is a really great photo.
What a wonderful thing to happen – I LOVE phone calls from teachers like that!! Congrats to you on raising such a bright little guy 🙂
Way to go Tristan! (and mom and dad too!) Love that the teacher took the time to call you 🙂
Side note – three more sleeps until this baby girl arrives – weeeeeeee! 🙂 I’m a wicked huge hormonal pack of nerves, LOL