Conferences with Parents

It's conference time! Today and tomorrow are days off for kids while teachers meet with parents. I think I have the best parents ever this year! I just love them. They are super realistic about their kids, willing to do anything at all to help, and I don't feel like I need to sugar-coat information when things get tough.

I live in the Bay Area and we have some incredibly intelligent people here. I'm talking insanely smart, successful people who design/create/invent every piece that goes into your computer. I think a good chunk of the parents work at Google (or other high tech mega-company). This means some incredibly thoughtful discussions during conferences. Brain mapping was even a part of today's meetings.

At one point I was talking to the the parents of my most challenging little guy and the mom started snorting because we were laughing so hard! We have a great relationship. Apparently her little guy loves me so much that he "teaches" at home now and makes up little assignments. I swear it's a good thing that kid is so loveable! He's really expanding me as a teacher. Just when I thought I had things down in my 7th year, he threw me for a loop. Mix a genius brain, with a body of a teeny, tiny kinder kid and you get a whole world of adventure. I'm finding new ways of teaching, and trying to shift my thinking to make the classroom work in a new way. I've had to create a whole different curriculum just for him that mixes high level thought processes with kinder level wiggle time/hands-on learning and short task duration.

I have a small class so today was a day to catch up on planning and cleaning up in the 5 hours between meetings. I swear only a teacher could say "5 extra hours and I'm still not done!" I still brought things home... Time to read more about the Nurtured Heart Approach.