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...