Parent Conferences: Day 3

Yesterday was the final day of my parent conferences.  I started at 7:30 a.m. and ended at 4:30 p.m., with fours hours of teaching in between.

After doing almost four hundred conferences over the years, I can pretty much guess the reasons for a child's difficulties in school.  Parent conferences usually confirm my suspicions.


Here is an overview of yesterday's meetings.

1. Summer (the little girl I blogged about earlier) is a daddy's girl that he admits to indulging because he works long hours.  She needs to be the center of attention at home and is the only girl.  She thinks she should be the center of attention in classroom as well.  Dad makes no apologies about his daughter's neurotic need for attention.  We'll see if he feels the same way come middle and high school.
   
2. Taneisha is a wild child who is the daughter of two teachers.  They have excused her behavior with psycho-babble, which sometimes happens with educated people.  Taneisha has spent a lot of time on a high school campus with students attending continuation classes because she helps her mother at work.
   
3. Markus is good kid who struggles with writing and has no major familial issues, except that Dad went back to school and has less time to give his son.  Markus is resentful.
   
4. Kristina is in outside tutoring and receives tutoring at school.  She is beginning to blossom and increased her test scores by 20 points since the beginning of the school year.  Her confidence is growing daily.  This is the little girl whose previous teacher had given up on. She said that Kristina was just "low."
   
5. Aysia struggled in 2nd grade, but had never struggled before. Dad thinks it was the teacher's fault.  She had a tremendous leap in her independent reading level since the beginning of the year; the highest in the class. She might make Honor Roll by the end of the trimester.
   
6. Duncan is copying his macho brother who thinks he doesn't have to listen.  This was Mom's revelation, not mine.  He missed Honor Roll because he didn't answer several questions on the end-of-trimester test.  He wasn't listening when I reminded students to do so.
   
7. Richard is a Jehovah's Witness.  Mom gave me a list of activities that are off limits for the holidays.  Richard's mother is a single parent, but Richard seems to be very well-adjusted.  It has been my experience that children raised in the Jehovah's Witness faith are very grounded.
   

There were still four teachers conferencing when I left at 4:45.  The office staff all left at 2:00 with the principal's blessings.  Several teachers asked to come on campus over the break to work in their rooms.  I'll probably be one of them...