great start for a holiday week

I have to write.  My first real parent teacher conferences merit a journal entry of some sort. I haven’t been very great at keeping a diary during my first year of teaching, but this has to go in.

I must say I was very proud of myself.  Our conferences were scheduled from 4:30pm to 9:00pm (yeah, sucks big time!) and I got done with my group by 8:45.  I was whippin’ those parents through my classroom faster than they could probably think their own names.  Administration said "keep ’em to 10 minutes" and by golly I tried my very darndest to do so.  I only had three parents from my group not show up. AMAZING!  I do have a "behavior problem" appointment with a very upset mother on Monday.  She went to Sonia’s conference so I didn’t experience first hand the mother, but Sonia, the principal, the recess duty teacher, the school counselor and I all get to confront mom on Monday after school. YAY! Looking forward to that (as I wipe the drips from the sarcasm away)!  Other than that, all of my parents were pleasant and nice.  I had one set of parents who were worried about their daughter’s reading level.  Honestly, it’s probably my fault.  But they went on for about 5 good minutes about how her daughter brings home the books I give her and reads them then tosses them aside and says they’re boring or too easy.  They did kind of hint that maybe I wasn’t teaching her well enough.  Maybe I’m not; many days I feel like I am not teaching these kids one single thing and it makes me question what the heck I was thinking when I wanted to become a teacher.  Really, I think my kids should have made more progress by now, which makes me feel like junk.  BOO!

I want to go to bed.  I’ll be praying all weekend that Monday goes well. What a great start for a holiday week, yeah? UGH!

Love,
jerseycorazon