Boy Magic

Apparently Ben has “boy magic”. See this post about Ben’s reference to “women magic.” We went to planet middle school today to meet with Ben’s math teacher. Chris’s first impression of Ms. J way back in August was that she was serious and meant business! Ummmm well she is a math teacher. Anyway we went to see her with Ben to discuss his current math performance. We started by explaining that we were concerned that Ben was not doing his best and was getting by with minimal effort. We were hoping that his serious math teacher would agree completely with us, which she did to a point. She did say that Ben could improve and that he understood the material but is careless with his class work. This is where Ben’s boy magic starts to kick in. As she is telling us this she moved closer to Ben as if to protect him from his crazy parents and then adds what a great kid he is, that he has lots of friends even though he did not attend the same elementary school as his classmates, that he is polite and an enjoyable student. Ok….we will agree with most of that, but he is still slacking off and not giving his best effort, and his teacher seems to be dazzled by Ben’s “boy magic”. I was laughing as we left the building; it was a ridiculous conference and it had minimal impact on Ben. We wanted Ben to take more ownership of his learning and buckle down; instead we were all blinded by his boy magic!!