My Daughter’s Name Wasn’t on the Teacher’s List

The Chinese teacher sent the dictation list while I was in the kitchen cutting potatoes.

My phone buzzed on the coffee table, then buzzed again. I wiped my hands and went to look. The class group already had a dozen “received” replies. The teacher had listed the students who got every word right, followed by: “For those who did not get everything right, I have sent the incorrect characters to each parent privately. Please supervise your child and have them write the characters again.”

I started from the first name and scrolled to the last. Then I scrolled back and checked again.

No Dabao.

I put the phone face down on the coffee table and went back to the kitchen. The knife hit the cutting board a little harder than before. When I finished, I turned on the tap and rinsed my hands. The water was cold. I let it run longer than usual. Then I picked up my phone and texted my husband: “Dabao didn’t get everything right in dictation this time. Did the teacher send you the characters she got wrong?”

He replied: “No. Is her name not in the group?”

I said: “You didn’t look?”

He said: “Your older daughter always gets them right. I didn’t pay much attention.”

I went back to the group and read the message from beginning to end again. It wasn’t there. I put the phone down, went to the balcony, took in the school uniform hanging there, folded it, and put it in Dabao’s closet. When the closet door closed, it made a click, and only then did I realize I had been holding my breath.

I stood with the phone in my hand. What I wanted to know was which character she got wrong.

She is not that kind of child

Dabao is slow to warm up. Quiet, kind. She doesn’t raise her hand in class. When the teacher asks a question, she looks down at her textbook. The corner of the page gets curled and flattened, curled and flattened. By the end of the semester, that page is softer than the others. Before third grade, very few teachers praised her schoolwork on their own.

Every day the parent group has a praise list. Neat homework, active classroom participation, exam improvement. When I scroll through my phone, I pause and look for her name. If I don’t find it, I keep scrolling. After enough scrolling, I got used to it. Getting used to it doesn’t mean I don’t care. It means I know caring alone doesn’t change anything. She is not the kind of child who shoots her hand up high in class.

In third grade, she got a new math teacher. One day the group chat had a photo of a student’s class notes and said it was a model example. I opened it and zoomed in. The handwriting looked like Dabao’s: horizontal and vertical strokes straight, the number 3 with a small curve at the start. But I didn’t dare assume. That evening when I picked her up, before she even put down her backpack, she said: “Mom, my math notes were posted in the group as a model.”

I said: “So that handwriting that looked like yours really was yours.”

She said: “Of course it was mine.” She tossed her backpack onto the sofa and went to the fridge for yogurt. She poked the straw in three times before it went through.

That night I went back to the photo in the group and looked again. She had boxed the conversions between centimeters and meters in red pen. The boxes were a little crooked, but each box had only one unit written inside. I remembered how in second grade she couldn’t even keep her textbooks organized, and there was always a missing eraser in her pencil case. Now her notes had been photographed by the teacher and sent to a group of more than forty people. It wasn’t a big deal, but I knew what those three pokes at the straw meant.

Open class day

Last week was the English open class. Before class, the teacher stood at the front and said: “Since your moms and dads are all here, let’s see who gets points deducted in this word dictation.”

The teacher went from student to student to correct the dictation. When she got to Dabao, I was sitting diagonally behind her, holding my phone. The screen had already gone dark. I didn’t light it up. Last semester she had been muddled with her spelling words. Every dictation meant lost points. The word list at the back of her textbook was frayed at the edges. Next to a few words she had written “hard” in pencil, erased it, written it again, erased it again, until the paper almost tore.

The teacher looked down at her notebook and said: “Dabao is not bad. No points deducted, no points added.”

I turned my phone over. The screen lit up. There was a takeout notification on the lock screen. I turned it off and put the phone back in my pocket. Dabao turned around and looked at me. She didn’t smile. Then she turned back. The tips of her ears were a little red.

On the weekend I told her to review the words. She said the teacher hadn’t assigned any. I said, then write the three you got wrong last week one more time. She lay on the desk and wrote. When she finished, she showed me. After each word she had drawn a small square, and inside each square was a check mark. I asked who taught her the squares. She said she made them up herself. “A check means I remembered it.”

What I’m looking for when I scroll

The parent group has messages every day. Lists of students who got dictation fully right, lists of excellent homework, lists of good classroom performance. When I scroll for Dabao’s name, my finger moves quickly across the screen. When I find it, my finger pauses. When I don’t find it, my finger keeps moving, as if nothing happened.

But I know what I’m looking for.

Once I was chatting with my neighbor. She said she screenshots every praise list in the group and saves them in a special album to show her child. I said I don’t do that. She said, so you don’t care? I said I care, but I don’t screenshot. She asked why. I said if I screenshot it, my child will know I care about this. Once she knows, the next time she isn’t praised, she’ll think, “Mom is going to screenshot again.” I don’t want her carrying that.

My neighbor didn’t say anything for a moment. Then she said: “But you still care.”

I said yes, I care. But what I care about is whether she is moving forward, not whether she appears on that list. The list is a sample the teacher takes. If she’s in it, good. If she’s not, it doesn’t mean she isn’t moving.

How to help a child be praised

If parents care about whether their child gets praised in the class group, then they have to help the child. They can’t just stare at the list.

Praise her yourself first. The day Dabao’s notes were posted as a model, I didn’t say “You’re amazing.” I said, “Your red boxes are quite clear. Each box has only one unit inside, so anyone can understand it at a glance.” The next day, when she drew the boxes, she was more careful. She used a ruler. Praise has to point to something specific, so the child knows where to put in effort.

Don’t interrogate. When her name isn’t on the list, I don’t ask, “Why isn’t it you?” I ask, “Which character did you get wrong this time?” She said, “The ba in pulling weeds. I wrote the right side as fa.” I said, “Then write it three more times.” She finished and showed me. Three ba characters, all with the correct right side. I asked if she remembered. She said yes. I said okay, dinner.

This took the longest to learn. At first, when I saw her name missing from a list, I wanted to text her dad right away. Now I put the phone down, go to the kitchen, pour a glass of water, and only decide whether to text after I finish drinking. Most of the time, after the water, I don’t text.

A small ending

The day the teacher sent the dictation list, Dabao came home and said on her own: “Mom, I got the ba in pulling weeds wrong today.”

I said: “I know. The teacher sent the list.”

She said: “Did you see my name wasn’t there?”

I said: “I saw.”

She said: “Then I’ll get it right next time.”

I said: “Okay.”

She opened her backpack and took out her homework notebook. There was a sticker on the corner, the reward from last week when her math notes were used as a model. The sticker was a little cat. One corner had already peeled up. She pressed it with her fingernail, couldn’t flatten it, and left it curling while she did her homework.

I sat beside her and watched her write. When she wrote ba, she wrote the right side first, then the left-hand radical. She got it right.

The group chat buzzed again. I didn’t look.