Teachers are our kids’ second parents. From the time our little ones set foot on their first school, they’ll be spending more time in these learning buildings than at home. Some kids even believe their teachers more than they do their mommies and daddies! Admit it, there were times when your bundle of joy – the one who you can’t seem to get away from, the one who seems to hang on to your every word and believe just about anything you say – told you something along this lines: “But teacher said it should be done this way!” or “[Insert teacher’s name] does it better”.
Anyway, as kids spend more time in school than they do at home, we, parents, don’t know what they’re up to when they’re in the four corners of the classroom except for the stories, their version, they tell us come home time. So, one primary school teacher decided to enlighten the grown-ups of what the kids do when in class using cartoon strips he himself drew.
Colm Cuffe of Galway, Ireland is a primary school teacher by day and a cartoonist by night [his words] who tries to capture the joys and misfortunes of teaching kids and being with them through most of the day. His cartoon strips, published weekly in his social media pages, are informative to parents who wonder what they’re kids do beyond the costumary answer of “Nothing” when asked what they did in school that day and very, very, very funny.
And while they’re drawn in a teacher’s point of view, I can’t help but connect with some of the cartoon strips. After all, before we sent them to school, we were our kids’ first teachers, right?
Here are some of the few we, parents, can relate to:
When you ask, “what did you do in school?” and you get the “Nothing” answer, think this.
Summer’s approaching and you think you get to rest from buying school supplies for a little while . . .
When kids try to outdo each other much to the embarrassment of the parents:
Guilty of this? Well, it seems like you’re not the only one:
This should give you the idea the next time you buy your kids’ teachers gifts come Christmas or Teacher’s Appreciation Day.
Familiar? It seems parents are not the only victims, er, receiving ends of this selective short-sight problems that makes you just want to pull your hair out one by one!
The at home version of this one: when you lecture your child about the dangers and merits of something and at the end, he/she says something that’s so far from the topic it makes you think if the half-hour you spent in your “lecture” would have been better spent watching that Game of Throne rerun . . .
This is my daughter’s problem every school day — she can’t do her homeworks because she’s too sleepy but she spent the rest of her afternoon waiting for the “dark to set in so she can FINALLY do her assignments”.
I love my children to death but summers are just dreadful with three rambunctious kids at home all vying for your attention with their never-ending questions and propensity for trouble and mischief. School season is just heaven-sent to me as I can have a few hours of peace and quiet in between the rushes of going to school/work and coming home.
That is why I’ll always look up to teachers like Colm Cuffe with gratitude as they have to deal with kids most of the day. Kudos to all of you!
[And if you haven’t seen enough of Colm’s funny cartoon strips, visit his site When’s It Hometime?]
