Ask:
I just need to vent. I don't want to offend any of the teachers reading this, but I am reaching the end of my rope. I know that there are some very fine educators out there, but this year they are teaching somewhere other than my son's school. I emailed my son's math teacher yesterday for some more information following a conference I had with her earlier in the day. Her reply to me was that my son should be able to provide the information from a log sheet that they complete in class with point totals for all assignments. The problem I have is that when I add up the points from the class I do not come up with the same total that the teacher provided on the log sheet. I am checking to see what is missing. I know I am a control freak, but I am trying to help this boy so that he doesn't complete flub up by the time he is in high school. Sorry, just need to vent.
Answer:
The whole system sounds way too complicated to keep up with from afar. When my teenaged nephew spent a year with us, we ran into the same thing-- "logs" being kept in school that we really didn't understand- how they worked or what was expected. Try getting info from a teenager- or worse, a defensive teacher. It was very frustrating, the whole school system, which is one thing that attracted me to homeschooling: at least at home there is no confusion about what the teacher wants or what did/didn't happen. I found it very difficult to try to piece things together from my nephew and what the teacher said.