Friday November 13- PT Conferences and 9 week grades

Parent Teacher conferences today! I almost sent one kid to the office today. He was constantly getting up out of his seat, talking to other kids and playing his air guitar and riding his air motorcycle in class, so it was distracting to the other kids. The only difference with this kid is he has ADD, so it’s hard for him to stay focused, which I understand. I try to help him, reminding him to take things out for class, reminding him to focus, asking if he’s understanding. I don’t know what else to do for a kid with ADD in my class. How much of his ‘misbehavior’ can be attributed to his ADD and when does it cross the line into his responsibility? I constantly have to tell him to listen, stop talking, stay focused, sit down. When is he just not listening and obeying and when is it because of the ADD? I try to be patient, but doing that everyday along with telling other kids besides him wears me down sometimes. So any suggestions are welcome!
The kids got to go home early at noon so we would have time to prepare for parents to come and pick up grades and talk with us if they have problems. We had lunch, got ready (we had to look nice and wear our full uniform of pants and suit jacket with white button up shirt) and then the parents could come to pick up their grades between 2 and 6. It was a long day. It was weird to be on the other side of PT conferences, being the teacher and not the student. It made me appreciate my teachers more, as this whole year so far has been teaching me. I had an overall good experience with the parents; it just helps when they can speak English! I had a few parents who spoke English, some I did by myself in Spanish and got my point across, others Mr. Bran and Mr. Lara translated for me because the parents had more complex questions and issues and I wanted to make sure I was communicating what I wanted with them.

Most of the questions and problems I had with parents were over their grades in Language and Reading. Let me give some history as to why this may be difficult for many of my students. Last year, while the teachers were great, they didn’t follow the curriculum as closely as the administration wanted them to. So now I come in this year and the administration really wants us and expects us to follow the curriculum more closely, which I have been. Also, it’s a new grade so the curriculum is not only being followed more closely, but it will be harder; that’s the basic logic of education. My reading scores may be low because we have a reading quiz over vocab every week, which counts as a test grade. So if the kids don’t study or don’t do well on those, their grade will drop. Otherwise reading is participation in class and doing worksheets which test their comprehension and speed. Some of the kids have trouble with this (understandably so since it’s in their second language), but I try to give them extra time than the sheet states to give them a better chance. Language…English and English grammar is just hard. The verbs we use are just consistent in the way they change from present to past to future; the singular to plural nouns don’t always follow the same rules for all words. I feel for these kids and the difficulty with trying to understand it. Some things they just need to memorize, others they just need to practice. So in class they do well, but they all seem to have trouble on the tests. So I have kids who are failing or having trouble with subjects stay for tutorias on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
It’s interesting to me as well that the students who have very good grades, but have a 90 instead of a 95 in one class are concerned about that one class and why the grade is low. Its like, just be satisfied in your children’s performance this time, encourage them to keep at it and try a little harder if you want their grade to be higher, but have a little grace they’re in 5th grade. Another parent was very concerned that her student’s grade in 2 subjects were below 80, which is also understandable. It’s just the way she expressed her concern almost made me feel like she thought it was partly my fault her daughter had low grades. She said her daughter had never had this low of grades before, why they were that low and what she could do to help her at home. I gave her suggestions to help her student and told her to try that and then be patient and see how things go this 9 weeks.
At the end of the night I was so tired from the long day (like 10-11 hours), talking to parents, explaining the same thing more than once and trying to concentrate in listening and speaking Spanish. We walked home in the dark (I had a flashlight this time!) and had easy leftovers for dinner. I relaxed by watching a movie and fell asleep.