ptc

I survived my second Parent Teacher Conferences. I'm home now, on a Friday at 9:30am, just chilling on my "comp. day," and it feels super.

It was a grueling week on many levels. First, PTC adds to regular school challenges and, of course, then there's the whole staying at school until 8 thing. The first night of conferences, Tuesday, I was really smart: I brought down one of the laptops that is in my rooms and logged onto our grade program, so when parents came, I just pulled up their grades. The parents were able to see exactly what their student was missing. I had approximately 24 of my parents come on Tuesday. I didn't have too many "yellers," the parents who, when upon hearing about their student's grade/behavior, break out in a full on yelling spree towards their child. Embarassing. Tuesday night went by quite quickly because I had oodles of papers to grade and when I wasn't visiting with parents, I was grading.

The second night, Wednesday, went a little differently. First, I had a new teacher meeting right after school that lasted about one hour. I had a little time before conference started so I walked over the McDonalds to get some nuggets. I came back to my room and just took my sweet ol' time eating and when I looked up at the clock it was 4:15 (conferences started at 4:30), and I hadn't gotten anything ready...I hadn't charged the computer up!! So, I was in a mad dash to get stuff put together. I decided to print off the grade reports for each of my classes, and in the midst of my hurrying, I clicked some wrong button in the print menu so it only printed grades for 1st through 4th period. I had to go without anything for 5-7. I felt awful! I made it down to the gym, only to realize I had forgotten an important piece of paper, so I ran all the way back up. Wednesday went by lots slower because I didn't have much to do and, despite the fact that I had more parents, 30, it was not any quicker than Tuesday.

Since my last post, we finished up the Night/Holocaust unit (YAY!). The students took the test on Monday and did quite well. I did a few closure activities to finish up the short week: I had them make a pie chart (somehow the teaching of reading/making charts and graphs falls under the English curriculm and not math) representing 10 different groups of people/persons and determining what percentage of responsibilty they had for what happened during the Holocaust. One of the options was Hitler and, obviously, most all students placed most the blame on him. It was a nice activity that took two days so yesterday, after two nights of staying at the school late, didn't really require a lot of attention on my part. They worked very well and I was impressed with some of their rationalizations of why they gave the percentage that they did.

Monday I am starting a grammar/writing unit...mostly to prepare the little dears for the CRT--the end of year tests that help determing our AYP under No Child Left Behind. I have a nice breakdown of what I am supposed to teach...now the hard part comes in decided which order and HOW I will make it applicable and exciting.

I have yet another yearbook deadline on Monday which I need to send in 32 pages to be printed. Unfortunately, my staff have not quite completed that many pages...try 6. I brought a bunch of yearbook stuff home this weekend and will probaly spend my free time working on the pages. Bleh. Someone asked me the other day if I was sinking or swimming with all the responsiblities of a teacher. My reply: The water is just under my nose right now. I think after this yearbook deadline, I'll be back to enjoying a nice little swim around a luke warm, deep blue lake.

Happy weekend!