Ah, parent-teacher conferences. The day on which you get together with the parents of your students to duke it out over whose fault it is that darling Johnny is failing. (Just kidding! Obviously it's yours.)If it helps any of you psych yourselves up for the event, maybe my own philosophy on the spring PTCs will help you; namely, that the spring PTCs are The Beginning of the End. The evening PTC day is one of the longest of the year for many of us, but once it's over, it's downhill from here.
My cynical start to this particular blog post notwithstanding, I have some pro tips for PTCs in this old post that you can click over to if you like. And my experiment in student-led conferences went well enough that I'm planning a similar approach this time.
I'll end this post, since, frankly, I'm pretty tired and need all the beauty sleep I can get before Share the Blame Fest 2011 tomorrow, with a funny story about PTCs.
STUDENT: Miss Eyre, you wanna meet my parents?
ME: Sure.
STUDENT: Well, you can't. They're not coming.
ME: Oh. That's too bad. I'd like to meet them.
STUDENT: Why, am I doing bad?
ME: No, in fact, I'd like to tell them how much I enjoy having you in class. [Not, actually, a lie.]
STUDENT: Oh. Well, I'm 19. I don't have parents anymore.
ME: [sensing that argument will be futile] Well, in that case, why don't you come to conferences, and I can have a conference with you about yourself?
STUDENT: Yeah. That'll be fun. Let's do that.
ME: Okay. I'll put you down for 7:30?
***
Happy PTCs, everyone!
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