"my child is sooooo perfect" Not!

Today was my second (and final) day of my first round of parent-teacher conferences. Whew.

Yesterday was the “official” conference day. However, because the 5th/6th grade team teaches a total of 39 kids, there was no way we, as a team, could do 39 conferences in one day. So our Head of School ordered some subs for today, and we spent the day talking about the kids with their parents.

Now, this whole situation was complicated by the fact that the lead 5th teacher (and 6th grade math/science teacher) had a baby last week (rather, his wife had a baby). So he’s been out since Thursday, and was absent for the conferences too. We missed a big component there.

It was a long two days. It felt a little bit like speed dating on crack: every twenty minutes a new parent (parents) would be sitting in front of us, ready to “sell us” on their child. Over and over again. For two days.

Seeing and meeting the parents really answered a lot of questions about the kids too. I loved the moments when I saw a parent look at me a certain way, or do a specific hand motion, or use a certain phrase – which were things their kids does as well. It gave a good backing for where the child is coming from, what their make-up is, the sort of attitudes and views they really get from their parents. One could write a whole ethnography on seeing teaching that way.

But the one really interesting result is now I really see the kids differently. I know all these things about the children: how one loves to play the drums, or how another rides ponies, or how another is usually stubborn the first few months of school and then really opens up to the teachers. Their parents were so insightful and had such detailed things to say about the kids’ personalities and idiosyncrasies, things I never would have picked up on. Now, I want to get to know each and every one of them better, as unique individuals. Today, as I walked in and out of the classroom, when the kids were in class or at lunch (we had lunch inside today, due to the poor air quality caused by the fires), I kept seeing new things about them, observing them do things in a way I hadn’t noticed before. Familiar, but fresh and beguiling. It was like meeting them for the first time, or more like seeing an old friend after many years.

back-to-school night

isn’t all that it's cracked up to be. Not so bad. It wasn’t so scary. I bit my lips, dug my claws in, and came out the other side, growling, covered in some amniotic goo, and ready to fight.

Because the 5th and 6th grade teaching teams consist of the same people, we devised a very clever rotating system which, through a complex mathematical equation, arranged the allotted time into time slots specifically proportioned to the amount of time we have each week with the kids. Don’t you love 6th grade math? Unfortunately, the 45-minute all school presentation turned into an 80-minute all school presentation, and so our time with the parents – the most important part of the evening – was drastically cut short. So, that meant that my 3-4 minute shpiel became a 30-40 second shpiel.

“Hi, I’m Joel Abramovitz. I love this school. Your kids are amazing. They rock my world. Ok bye!”

So it goes.

But the parents, bless their hearts, seemed totally disinterested in me and anything I had to say. All they wanted was the goods on the curriculum, how many times they’d be asked to drive/bake things this year, and what trouble their kids had caused so far. Nobody wanted to hear from the new guy. And that was fine by me.

One back-to-school night down! So many more to go...

Columbus day

sucks.

For one thing, we don't even get it off. Not that I'd want it off, because with the past month's days off I've hardly worked at all. Do I have a job? I forgot. But still. If it's a national holiday, which I guess it is, then schools should be off.

And the post office is closed. And the libraries are closed. And that just makes me so angry, I could eat a ham!

But what really gets my goat about Columbus day is it's a holiday named after Christopher, and there's absolutely no observance of it. Things are closed, sure, but who the hell talks about Christopher Columbus on Columbus Day? There's no discussion - commercialized or otherwise - about his legacy. Jerks.

I feel like I'm being a bit bitchy. I just got home from an awkward 5th/6th grade team meeting about social issues going on in the class, which morphed into a referendum on how the administration feels about the way the 5th/6th grade team is doing our job. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Schools are way too political for me. I thought teachers DIDN'T have to deal with workplace politics. Just student driven politics. Grr.

fits and starts

is my new favorite phrase. I've been using it to describe how starting the school year has been going. "Oh, you know. It's really hard to figure out how it's going; with all the Jewish holidays it's been a thing of fits and starts." I always manage to quote Stanley Kunitz's The Dragonfly - coincidentally my favorite poem. We're in our 5th week of classes (oh my god) and it feels like we haven't really started. Like it's all been a prologue until now. And this week, too, we have Thursday off, and then go back on Friday. It's frustrating, especially because I really need to find a groove, to get a firm handle on things, start figure out what I'm doing, and how to do it. We're out of the honeymoon period with the kids, and yet we have no momentum. There's no traction, just friction.

Today, especially, felt symptonic of the stop-and-start nature of the last few weeks. I made a girl cry today. A 6th grader. One of mine. It's a long story, and involves anagrams of my name (Jell-o, if you add an extra "L"), a boy putting chips in another girl's hair, asserting yourself when someone butts their nose into your business, and the way this girl I made cry - let's call her Carly - has been viewing and talking to me the last week and a half. I thought Carly and I were having a really good, open, productive discussion about communication and how to apologize, and I was really proud of myself because I got to put some of the techniques and phrasings that I've been reading about into practice. As we shook hands after our conversation (no hugging!) I felt like this was a breakthrough for me and my comfortability in dealing with crises.

And then another 6th grader runs over and tells me Carly is crying. Because of me.

The other teacher on the yard said I did exactly what I was supposed to do, and that every kid takes things differently. And some kids use crying as a manipulative tool. And some kids are just criers. They cry. But still, it's a shitty feeling right now. I didn't fuck up, but I didn't do as well as I could have. And there was no way to know that in the moment. But now, I can reflect on my actions, and see that she probably felt singled out and alone.

I don't know. I think if we had more continuous time with the kids, less starting, more moving and going and momentum building, my ability to gauge their feelings, internally and externally might be sharper. Slightly. But enough so I don't make anyone cry again.