Thanks Parents!

Yesterday was extremely looooong. On top of our typical school day we held conferences at the high school. It was so nice to visit with several of my students and their parents. Conferences aren't always bad you know. Many of our parents are so supportive of their student and me as a teacher. Our school is one of the lucky ones. We are truly blessed with wonderful parents.

However, there are those that I called numerous times to schedule conferences, speaking with the parent or leaving a voice mail, and they either did not return my call or completely ignored me. For instance, with one phone call I placed it was connected and rang twice, but then I received a message on my phone that said the call was ended. Just like that. I thought I had done something wrong so I dialed again. I was connected, the phone rang twice, and the call was ended. No one ever picked it up. The line just went dead. Is that what happens when I hit ignore on my cell phone? Wouldn't the call at least go to voicemail? I hope I haven't been hanging up on people when I hit my ignore button. How awful if I have.

This year being on the freshmen team we decided to have team conferences where the parents can meet with all four core teachers at one time rather than schedule separate appointments for each. I believe this is much more effective than one on one. As a teacher it's good to hear that my concerns for a student are similar to the other teachers on my team.

The parents seem to like it as well. If their child is struggling in classes they do not have to hear it over and over for an hour. Instead it's like a shot in the arm, all at once. But once we get the concerns out of the way, we can work with the parent, and sometimes the child too when they come along, to devise a plan of attack to help the child to do better in the classroom.

Thanks parents for taking time out of your evening to attend conferences last night.  It means so much to me as a teacher.