Parents Day 2011

Last year for Parent's Day, I was freaking out a little bit. I had never had conferences with real parents before and I was only a first year teacher! What was also intimidating is that the parents of our students put their full trust in us to not only educate their children but to basically raise them too since we are a boarding school. I thought I was going to get yelled at when I told a parent their child was failing and I didn't know how to act around them!

This year, I was much more relaxed about parent's day at our school. If it was going to be anything like last year, it was going to be very easy. Thank god it lived up to my expectations! For two hours in the morning and another hour after lunch I sat in my room while parents filtered in with their kids. I told them exactly what was happening in class for their child and they normally said "Ok, thank you." No further questioning, no accusations like what I hear of some conferences in the States, just a simple check in on how their son/daughter is doing in math class.

On top of having easy conferences, the parents of my students this year came with gifts! One of my 9th grade students gave me chocolate and another student from that class came with a beautifully painted Taiwanese clay god to hang on my door for good luck. I also made one mom cry not because she was so upset, but because she was so happy: I apparently gave her daughter more confidence. How? I don't know, but then they took a family picture with me.

All in all it was a very good parent's day, but it has left me exhausted for the start of this week. It was an all day Sunday affair and if you read my frantic blog post from Saturday morning, you know that I was getting sick. Well luckily I think the Taoist god responded to my plea because I do not have strep. However, it is still your average common cold which means I'm just run-down a little.

Lack of energy from the cold and spending all weekend at work with students and parents have left me with little energy on this Monday. Luckily my lesson plans are all easy today so as long as no student is too loud, we shouldn't have any problems. Then it's bedtime for me at 8:45 tonight (I wish I was joking about that!).