Friday, November 16, 2012

Parents

When I was student teaching we had to submit weekly reflections. Part of that reflection included describing the week in one word. My word of choice for this week: parents.

I was gone last Friday to turn in my papers at the police station. That was the first time my students ever had a sub, and sadly, I think it ruined them! They were doing so great, especially with all the time off we've had. But Monday and Tuesday were not good days. I saw those same old behaviors...until I pointed out that Wednesday was parent teacher conference day and I would be talking to each and every parent about how their child behaves. Things were a little bit better after that, for about 5 minutes!

Wednesday was another day off for the students, but for the teachers it was a day full of parents! I was nervous going into the day all day. There is no way to know how a conference will go or what will happen. Fortunately, I do have good students- even though they don't always show it! I was able to brag about how great each kid is and what progress I've seen. Even with my more troublesome students their parents were not surprised and very understanding. We were able to discuss the behaviors or difficulties and what could be done to modify or help them.

The other nerve-wracking part was the language barrier. My French is embarrassingly awful and really not helpful at this point. And Arabic...yea.  Each teacher was assigned a translator to help, but mine was sick and didn't come to school. I had another one "on-call" but, thankfully, most of my parents were okay with English. I felt that all the conferences went well, but I do wonder if some things were lost in translation.

On a sidenote: I also walked away from conferences with total shoe envy! The women here have gorgeous shoes!!! Boots, to be more specific!

Wednesday night, we had to wait until 9:30 to find out if we would have school the next day. Islamic holidays are determined by a lunar calendar. So the date can be predicted, but not known for sure until right before! We were scheduled to have Thursday off in honor of the holiday, but since the holiday was moved to Friday we had school on Thursday and now have a three-day weekend! I guess the anticipation of waiting for the decree was something like checking to see if school is canceled for a snow day!

A few of my students were absent on Thursday. For the first time in quite a while I had to count heads when we went places because I couldn't believe how small my class looked; I thought for sure someone (or a few) got left behind! The highlight though was receiving a package from MY Parents!!! These packages have just been chilling at the post office for one or two Months. I never got a notice about them, and even if I had, picking them up is a challenge because the post office is on the other side of town and closes shortly after school lets out. I passed the tracking info on in hopes the mail courier could get them for me. And He Did!!! It was full of all the essentials: warm mittens, fuzzy socks, yummy food seasonings, a fantastic candle, books for my kiddos, laminated leaves (that they will totally love!), and of course some shoes! essentials.  ;)

So my lesson of the week, parents are pretty great. No matter what language they speak or how far away they are! Love you Mom and Dad!  

1 comment:

  1. So glad you got them, a lot of love was packed into both boxes. Have I told you lately how proud I am of you? well I am!

    Mom

    ReplyDelete

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