Curriculum nights are important for parents

How suburban is it when the biggest social event of your week is curriculum night at your kids' school?

Curriculum night -- the night you follow your kid's schedule and hear a little spiel from each of his or her breathless, time-crunched teachers before the bell rings, sending you back into the hallways.

The night that, if you dare miss it, you have no clue all year who Miss Crazy or Mr. Awesome is when your child talks about that class.

Curriculum nights, otherwise known to parents of younger kids as the "it's an impossible night to get a baby-sitter" nights, can grow on you.

Last week, as I enjoyed my 15th year of attending curriculum nights at various south Naperville schools, I ran into not only half the people I've ever known here, but two people from the ends of the spectrum.

One of my daughter's teachers noted that though he'd presented at curriculum nights for years, it wasn't until this year, as a parent of a first-grader, he realized how important they are.

"Without that night," he rightly noted, "you have no idea who your child is spending the day with."

On the flip side, I ran into an old friend who I now seem to see mostly at yearly curriculum nights, who sadly told me, "I only have one more of these to go to for the rest of my life!"

"I'm not far behind you," I commiserated with her. (We are both sadly lacking in some trendy emotional psycho-babble, I'm sure.)

Yes, a life without curriculum nights is simply impossible to contemplate at this point.

What I'd rather consider is some way to get the same people who come to curriculum night together all in one spot sometime when we don't have to race down impossibly crowded hallways to get to a hidden room before the bell rings.

The ultimate in irony: everyone you'd love to visit with is there, but no one, including yourself, has time to talk. A true exercise in frustration.

Could the schools possibly hold a "relax and chat with parents you haven't seen except for at the last few curriculum nights running past each other in the hall" nights? Alas, most likely no one would have time to come.

Instead, we have the September gamut of curriculum nights. Some of us have just one (for the first time in a very long time that is me this year), while others have as many as four during the next couple of weeks. Good luck finding the time, the attention span and the baby-sitters.

Meanwhile, a few thoughts after my third-to-last curriculum night last week:

• Are my friend, a self-professed "curriculum night nerd," and I the only parents who take notes during curriculum night?

• Trying to meet the teachers of two high schoolers on the same night is very, very difficult -- so glad I only had to do that once.

• My lingering memory of curriculum nights will always be a sea of familiar faces rushing blindly to the next classroom while waving across the crowd -- not unlike high school itself!

• Favorite tip of the night from a newer teacher: the alphabetically labeled hallways at Neuqua can be remembered for which side they begin on this way: they go from the auditorium (A) to the cafeteria, where you eat (E) -- if there were an E hallway, but it does go to D right next to the cafeteria, so you get the idea.

• Undeniable fact: Traffic and parking is impossible, both getting there and getting out. One year we were stuck in Neuqua's parking lot for nearly an hour before the Gold Campus (the freshman campus) moved curriculum night to a different night. Bottom line: Park elsewhere and walk.

But don't miss it. As my friend noted, someday they will end.

Though, perhaps then, we "alumni" can go anyway, gather in the cafeteria and talk.