Marlene Hellene on Homework, Hair-Pulling, and Back-to-School Night

Hi, loves, some stages of life we only survive with humor, and our own school days and our kids’ school days definitely belong on that list. Nobody writes funnier about it than Marlene Hellene, but the substance doesn’t get lost: our kids need much better buildings, a lot more individual attention, and completely different conditions to learn well. In her new book Elternabend (German for back-to-school night), she does both. Thank you for that, and happy book release today!

Dear Marlene, when you go to back-to-school night as a mom, do you still sit in the back row giggling with your friend over unfunny jokes? 

Of course! The second I walk into a school building, I turn back into teenage Marlene. I giggle, I pass notes, I hide from the math teacher in the bathroom, and I desperately (and unsuccessfully) look for my homework.

Be honest: Was writing a book about the absurdities of school life YOUR idea? Were you forced to deal with school stuff beyond real back-to-school nights, or was writing it a kind of therapy? 

It was completely my own idea, but it was also a necessary survival strategy. I never thought my kids would drag me back into school life this deep. Tests, homework, conjugating verbs – I was right back in it. Which is something I wanted even less than herpes. To get through it all somehow and not lose the last shred of my sanity, I had to write this book. It helped. At least on some days.

What would you say is the most absurd thing you’ve experienced so far as a mom in your kids’ school life? 

Ask me what wasn’t absurd. There’s practically no day when I’m not looking around for the hidden camera, like I’m on a prank show. Math alone sends me to Absurdistan every single day, and then in the evening the kids remember they have to give a twenty-page PowerPoint presentation tomorrow on salamanders, specifically the mole salamander family, and – poof, just like that – my head explodes.

Go ahead and copy and paste the funniest WhatsApp group chat for us…

I can’t, because of privacy laws and because orange is not my color. But I laughed out loud when another mom once asked me, in total desperation, whether I could explain her seventh-grade physics homework to her, because her two physics degrees weren’t helping much.

Which school craft project do you keep forever, and which one landed in the trash the fastest?

As I write this, several clay dinosaurs are staring at me. Some of them were maybe supposed to be horses, some cats, and at least one of them is me. I love them all. I love any kind of leaf art a lot less. Luckily, it molds its way into the afterlife all on its own.

Have you ever been a class parent or served on the PTA? What was that like? 

Yes, of course. That’s mainly because I’m terrible at handling silence. When there’s that awkward hush at back-to-school night after someone asks who’s going to volunteer, my hand eventually goes up all by itself.

Plus, I think doing something is better than sitting in your own little corner complaining. Unfortunately, in that role I was never allowed to fire anyone at the school board or use public money to completely renovate the school. I only got to buy holiday gifts for the teachers or bake muffins for events. Too bad!

Do you have a mom tribe of fellow sufferers where you can openly talk about sex ed in the curriculum? 

Thankfully, yes! And you need one. You only get through school as a pack.

Will it get awkward if your kids’ teachers read the book?

We’ll see (written while nervously chewing my nails). I honestly can’t imagine it, though, because my credo is: together, not against each other. I absolutely see the struggle teachers face in a crumbling system.

If anything were possible: What dream school would you design?

To be honest: It would be a school with a giant vault of money. Because that’s the whole problem: there’s no money. (As we say in German, that’s where the dog is buried. Or the schoolkid.) We need modern buildings where kids don’t sweat or freeze, where they aren’t grossed out about going to the bathroom, and where they don’t have to breathe asbestos.

Buildings that are friendly instead of concrete gray, that make learning, laughing, and taking breaks equally possible. We also need a lot more staff. That’s the only way small classes and individual support are even possible. All of that costs money. Money our government would rather spend on other things.