Parent Teacher Conferences

Wednesday and Thursday were Parent Teacher Conferences (PTC). This is mainly an endurance game for the teachers, because we put in 12 hours a day for two days in a row and are expected to say nice things to the students when we see them and say nice things to the parents, especially if the parent starts to yell or get mad at you. It is obviously your fault as the teacher that their student is failing, especially when their student has turned in a total of one assignment for the whole year. But I didn't get yelled at, and most everyone was happy to have their student in my class--which is an ego stroke for me!

This PTC, as a school we had the absolute best experience. Unfortunately it was not my minion, but my neighbor's minion. But it still makes a great story. Mrs. J, my neighbor was explaining to one parent about why their child was failing TA. TA stands for Teacher Advisory and we encourage the use of planners by doing planner checks to make sure minions are writing in them. This hopefully helps minions become more organized. She explained that this particular minion did not use his planner and was failing because of it. Mrs. J. said that she wanted to help him learn responsibility. The Mom said, "That's what I'm hearing from most of his teachers." Mom looked at minion and said, "you need to learn to be responsible. They're trying to help." Without missing a beat, the minion replied to his mom, "I get my irresponsibility from you Mom. After all, you had me when you were 15!" There was an awkward silence and Mrs. J tried to change the subject as fast as she could.

All the math teachers have been dying of laughter over this story. It makes us laugh really hard, and I thought I would share.

I'm doing great, not showing at all, and in a few more days I will be able to know what I'm having! I'm really excited for Tuesday!

Two weeks of Minions

I have now had two weeks with this years batch of minions, and they are up to their usual tricks and I have many stories about them.

Yesterday two of the stories happened and they made me very happy. The first of them happened not in my class. Mr. S, another math teacher had one of his minions tell him that he was boring. Mr. S then said that if he wanted an exciting math teacher the minion should sign up to take a class from me, Mrs. H. The minion then replied, "Mrs. H, is like a kindergarten student who's really good at math." When Mr. S told me that story, I just laughed and laughed.

The other story happened during 7th period, the second to last period of the day. Every Friday I celebrate that I didn't kill any one, no one killed me, and I get to sleep in tomorrow by dancing to the music in the halls. Before 7th period, I was dancing in the halls and once it started I passed out papers. Half way through the process, one minion looked at me and asked, "did you just change your shirt?" "No. This is the shirt I've had on all day long." Another minion asked me if I'd been wearing the shirt in TA (2nd period) and I looked at him and said, "Yes." The whole class was convinced that I had changed my shirt right before I came into class. Mr. S thinks I should change my shirt halfway through the period sometime next week and see if they notice or say anything.

Last week, the principal shared this story with me. She told me that she walks around during lunch talking to the kids and she asked one seventh grader who their favorite teacher is. The seventh grader said, 'I think it's Mrs. H. But she's scary." The principal asked why I was scary, and the seventh grader looked up at the principal and said, "You know she wears a calculator on her leg, That's scary." The principal and I thought that was funny too.