Pile of Grading

I’m not sure how many teachers enjoy parent teacher conferences, yet they make me do them all the same.  I have always felt unsure of how to approach different issues with parents.  What I’d like to tell them is “Little Susie can’t stop talking in class, even if I assign her time after school, so she misses the concepts being taught in the lesson.”  However, because I’m not 100% sure how a parent will react, I say something like “Oh Susie is doing okay in class, talks a bit, but I think she can do better.”  I think it waters down my message and makes the parent feel all warm in fuzzy inside that Little Susie is doing just fine, when really Little Susie has no idea what has been going on in class for two weeks and is probably going to fail the test next week.  I think I need to talk to some more experienced teachers and see how they deal with this issue, because I’m sure they’ve dealt with their fair share of less than angelic students.  

On the plus side, even though I’ll be at work until 9 p.m. I will get a chance to get caught up on some grading and lesson planning.  This way it won’t have to come home with my on my three-day weekend.  (Ha…that sounded almost serious, of course some of it will always come home with me…do you think I have a magic lesson planning fairy?)