Parent Teacher Conference was today. In the past all Elementary Schools have had a day, Middle School has had a day and High School has had a day.....busy still for us, but workable.
This year that changed....ALL schools had Parent Teacher on the same day. <sigh>
Scott was out of town so I had......
4 hours
4 schools
and 44 teachers to see.
I am not the mathematician of the family, but even I understood that was not going to happen!!!
I am happy to say that I did manage to see 21 teachers, from 3 different schools in 4 hours. Not shabby. Not enough time to do any more...
Tomorrow my letter will go to those teachers I missed apologizing for my absence and asking that they please contact me should they have any concerns or thoughts they need to share about my child. I always feel like that's kinda wimping out but it is simply the best I can do.
I sat for 25 minutes at Northside (Nina's school) waiting to see her 4 teachers (who thankfully meet together!). One mother was in talking the whole time I waited. At 2:25, when I entered the meeting I laughed and said, "If you think we need to spend 25 minutes talking then I need to just schedule another time to do it." They smiled and assured me we would not. I spend 7 minutes talking with them:) I am thankful Miss Nina had straight A's!!! HUGE Gigantic accomplishment!!
I had some lovely surprises today as I talked to teachers and some frustrating surprises too. Such is life with a bunch of individual people!!
You certainly accomplished a TON in that 4 hrs! I had an experience where I only needed to see 4 teachers (well, some of the meeting times included 3=4 teachers each, but they all met together, thankfully) in a 3 hr period - easy peasy, right? Well, no. Every single of my appt. times just sailed right by while other parents sat with the teachers talking and talking....The first one, I sat for 40 minutes and didn't even get to see the teacher - had to move on to the next one - and then sat there for another 25 min. until my next appt. and so on.....it was so, incredibly frustrating. I ended up seeing the last one and got horrible news about one of my most challenging kiddos. I left in tears, went home and e-mailed the rest of the teachers exactly what you did. Not one of them contacted me to apologize for over scheduling or not sticking to the schedule. My view of PT conferences at that point plummeted to new lows and now I just make sure I keep in contact with any teachers I feel I need to or else they're contacting me regularly so I don't feel the pressure to even go to the conferences. I remember when I only had a few kids in school and just sailed through the evening.....the good 'ol days :)
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