Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Parent Conferences etc

Yesterday and today are student led parent conferences. However, Ms. Vaughn and I are learning a lot about how to make them run smoother. For one, we learned that in order to review each child's student learning plan in depth we can not schedule more than one conference with a student learning plan. They take in depth explanation and between the two of us it was a tight squeeze explaining to parents in a half hour with four conferences at once. I also watched a very tense conference happen. The student does not seem to be aware of the tension, but Ms. Vaughn and I noticed the tension between the parents and realized the roots of her academic problems may be from this tense family situation.

I will be having a conference today with the student whom I mentioned before about his reading grade. Ms. Vaughn and I decided that instead of calling his parents we would see what he would do on his own. He asked for the rubric to make up the assignment and never completed it. We will be telling the parents that we wanted to see how he would do on his own and ask if they would like the grade to stand or if they want him to make up his work. It could be a shaking experience for him, but hopefully one that kicks him into gear.

We have also moved a few of our students around. We have noticed a couple girls who are learning English don't always pay attention because they think someone else will translate for them. So we have decided to move them to tables where no one else speaks Spanish and require them to use as much English as possible. This is also set up to assist in our goal to get our students to ask more questions. I keep telling my students that smart people ask questions because they want to learn more. One of our girls is very quiet and she asked what she could do to improve her participation grade and I told her to ask questions. I told her I was a lot like her in school: smart, but quiet, and that it's taken me awhile to learn to ask questions. Then Ms. Vaughn said that I'm still working on it and I told her I was and I hoped she would learn quicker than I have.

Another one of my students came in yesterday and told me she was a part of the Southcenter Mall shooting this weekend. She is shaken up about it. She told me she woke up to a nightmare this morning and wasn't able to go back to sleep for two hours. This student has already had health concerns the past couple weeks and now is facing this trauma event. I hope she recovers well. I told her that it was perfectly healthy for her to feel the stress from the situation she was involved in and she is willing to talk to both me and Ms. Vaughn about the situation so she can overcome the trauma.

I have two more observations left to schedule and it's getting a bit hectic. We haven't been able to find the science kit I want to teach (FOSS Variables) so I might be revising that idea, but one of my observations needs to be in science so hopefully something comes up. And then I have to figure out what I'm doing once I graduate. I have heard rumors of a full time leave replacement around here which I will be looking into though!

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