Parent Conferences

I dread parent conferences.

When I was a new teacher, I dreaded parent conferences for different reasons. I was never quite sure how to judge their child's ability, then articulate this in a way that makes sense for the parent. I was afraid they'd look at me, and immediately want their child moved to another classroom, as I obviously was so young, and couldn't possibly know anything. Especially those parents who scheduled the conference because of the language arts grade.

I didn't really know how to tell them about their child's classroom behaviors, or what to tell them when they asked me how they can help their child improve. Essentially, it just made me really uncomfortable.

Now I'm not so uncomfortable meeting the parents, and I feel pretty confident about what I want to say and how to phrase it. I am not frightened of talking to them, as I used to be, and I am just chock full of the educational jargon that tells me exactly how to say what I need to without being overcritical and harsh.

Instead, I dread them because you simply never know how a parent is going to react.

This year, we have had a ridiculous amount of parent conferences, made even more ridiculous because we have had some with the same parents three times.

Sometimes, the parents come in with a massive attitude, mostly because they are embarrassed they have to be there in the first place. Somehow, in their mind, their child's misbehavior shows the entire world that they are terrible parents, and they have failed.

This is not true, parents. We do not view your child and say that you are a horrible parent. Since they are out of your site, and they are only children, you are not judged by their behavior, especially initially.

After we have met, or after we have communicated in some way about the trouble your child is having adjusting to the confines of the classroom, it does change a bit. When a parent promises that we will not see any of the negative behaviors anymore, and that they will be checking up on their child's homework and study time, but then does not follow through, we then start to wonder about what's really going on.

We still don't assume you're a bad parent! So parents don't need to come to their conferences so freaked out that they behave badly.

I can promise that you will be viewed negatively if you scream at me because your child got in trouble or about their grades. As the oft-repeated, annoying to hear, but ultimately very true expression says, "I do not give any child a grade... they earn them."

Sometimes parents come in obviously nervous, like they're afraid we are going to attack. Once they see how nice we are, the tend to relax, but they still look relieved when they are finally allowed to leave.

Other parents enter and are angry, but not at us. They are furious that their child has made them take time off of work to come and talk to all of their child's teachers. This is always intensified by the fact that it's generally because of unacceptable behavior or a total lack of effort on their child's parent, instead of a genuine lack of ability.

Sometimes the parents just sit there and get angrier and angrier, and you honestly feel bad for the child when they go home. This is especially true if they find out their child has been lying to his teachers and also to them.

Sometimes the parents start interrogating their child right there, and the kids starts crying. Sometimes the parents tell the kid right there what is going to be taken away when they get home that day. The kids tend to cry then, too.

Sometimes they reach over and smack them. Sometimes it's a little disturbing (not abusive at all, just a bit awkward), and other times it's hilarious. Like they bop them on their arm in frustration. Since we often feel like doing that, or shaking them when we don't understand their behavior, it's nice to see.

I guess the whole point of this is parent conferences are rarely something we look forward to, unless we have a large issue and are desperate to talk to a particular parent.

We have four next week, and I'm sure the only reason we don't have five is that they are not allowed to schedule ones on Tuesdays, because those are the days that we are supposed to be have meetings, if we need to have them.

We just had a fairly good one, where the parent seems to understand everything you say, and they promise to help the kid. Of course, the very next day the child was right back to his old behaviors, and didn't have his homework.

Another mother cried, and her son was horrified. He was good for just one full week... but he was perfect that week. Still, he didn't do any homework during that perfect behavior week.

Another recent one was... interesting. The parents were talking about how their child has all these problems, and needs lots of extra help, and we really need to be aware of the limitations of what we can expect in the way of classroom. However, until they meet with us, we had not known there was anything wrong or unusual with her. She was a little silly, but no more than any other 12-year-old. So we are watching her, but her difficulties all arise from her need to constantly talk.

And finally, we had a great conference, with a super-mom, who told us what she's now doing at home to help her son, and it was just great. After we leave conferences like that, we are always so much happier than when we get there.

So I guess that all conferences aren't the same. I guess I should change my mind about the idea of conferences.

I should, but I won't.

It's too easy to remember the ones who tell us horrible stories that just hurts my soul, or the ones who scream at us, or the ones who make things awkward by yelling at their child.

Ah, well. At least there are ones that work out nicely.

Thank goodness!

Wow... Just Wow.

This is a little different from my normal postings. I normally stick to just what goes on in the classroom, but it's relevant to my blog, and also highly annoying (at least to me) so I had to mention it.

I was wandering around the Internet today, and I noticed something very interesting... Someone was sending traffic to my blog! Wow, I thought, how kind. The nice person saw something in my blog and linked to me.

Then I noticed how they were describing me. They linked to one of my posts about Open House, where I was mentioning I was working really hard to get my desk cleaned off. I tossed out the overused, but still humorous (in my opinion), phrase about a clean desk being a sign of a diseased mind.

They said that this was just a sign of someone who doesn't "want to bother with coming up with a system for taking control of their environment."

As I mentioned above... Wow... just wow. That someone could read just that sentence and decide they know everything about me... They obviously didn't read the rest of my post, because I go on to say how I am going to really strive to keep it clean, and how I, strangely, put more emphasis on working with my students rather than being a neat freak.

They obviously didn't know about my library, (in which I have over 1,000 books that I have purchased with my own money to allow the kids to check them out, since I think reading is really important) which has a great system to allow them to check it out without me having to drop what I'm doing and go over to get a library sheet. It's super-organized, and countless teachers have come in my room just to see the library and have copied my idea.

And something else that really got me... the next thing they wrote was, "I notice that those people who have cluttered desks often end up being the ones who are late to submit their grades or who don’t respond to ARD input forms or whatever."

That really burns me up! I have never, not even once submitted my grades late, even though in our county we had a horrible gradebook program which routinely lost grades and would not work so we couldn't input grades. I also am not late in submitting any of the thousands of paperwork that needs submitting.

(I do miss meetings, but that's a different story. I can't, for some reason, remember to attend meetings. I have alarms set on my computer now, to remind me, so I will not miss them. See? I am working on improving myself.)

Now, you might be thinking I am annoyed because it's true. I have carefully thought about it, too, to make sure that's not it... but it's not! I am annoyed that this person linked to me in a negative way, using me as a negative example, when I am pretty sure they did not look at any of my other posts to see if I am an effective teacher. Because honestly, still in my own opinion, of course, I think what matters most is that I am an effective teacher.

Besides, my desk drawers are currently very clean and organized. I have what I need within reach of when I'm sitting. The top of my desk is not pristine right now, but grades are due this week, and I am currently in the process of inputting grades, so all of that is all over my desk. Before I started putting in grades, it was still clean!

I don't spend a lot of time at my desk. I am up, or in my chair in the front of the room, working individually with the kids. When my desk is cluttered, it's not a nice, calm place to work, but I don't really do work there, even when it is cleaned off. I do most of my actual grading of papers at home, not at school, because I don't find the time to do it at school. During the day, there are a million other things to do, like attend meetings (which I have not even missed one this year... yet...) and do lesson plans, and all those endless things that must happen right then, or dire consequences will befall us all.

Suffice to say, this really disturbed me. Oh, well. I can't really hold a grudge, I guess. I need to move on. I guess I should say at least people are coming to my blog because of it.

But it still wasn't very nice.

Pre-Planning Week

Teacher pre-planning starts next week, and just like that, my summer is over. It's an exciting time, yes, but still rather sad when I think that it's over.

Pre-planning is really a strange time, at least in my experience.

My first year as a teacher, I was supposed to start the glorious fun of pre-planning just like all the other teachers at my school. I had attended the new teacher training (2 days long, mostly telling us of things that weren't helpful and more confusing than anything else, but I did get some free stuff, so that was good) and the pre-employment fingerprinting, background check, and drug-testing (I passed, if you were wondering :o). Now I was going to start at my school and learn all about how it works. Like the rules! How we felt about dress code! Even the school lunch menu!

I was supposed to.

But didn't.

I wasn't "cleared to be on campus yet." My background check wasn't complete yet. I was not allowed to be around the children. But there aren't any children there during pre-planning! But this bit of wisdom was apparently ignored by the school system. Yes, I did pass it; everything was fine.

But the paperwork wasn't filed on time or with the right people, so I wasn't allowed to be there on the day when they have the dumb-but-ever-so-helpful getting to know one another games and information.

Now, I could understand if it was because I was a new hire, one of the people hired right as the kids arrive.

But I had been hired June 24th. Plenty of time.

So I missed that first day, and missed out on lots of important things AND free stuff (like a mug with the school logo and a desk calendar. AND LUNCH).

I was sad.

Last year, I opened at a new school, so our pre-planning lasted 2 weeks. It was a nice, but crazy, time.

We have a good, wonderful, supportive principal.... who just so happens to also be "cutesy." She likes having themes at our meetings and for the entire week of pre-planning.

Last year, we had a lot of games where we had to walk as a team (feet tied to a bit of canvas), untie each of our team members (as we were all tangled), design a perfect school, etc, etc, etc.

It's fun, but silly. It's nice to see everyone again, and it's a WONDERFUL chance to hear what's going on, what new paperwork we have to complete, what new laws affect us, and so on.

I am looking forward to it... but I have to go and think about what to wear. We have to dress within our theme, and it was rumored that we'd be rewarded for our efforts, so I want to win.

I have as much chance as the next person, right?

Wrong. I will likely completely forget and just wear my school shirt. Oh, well. I probably wouldn't like the prize anyway.

Or so I'll keep on telling myself.