Tips for parent-teacher conferences

Who doesn't want to make parent teacher conference time go more smoothly?

Let's remember: you've probably worked all day and barely had time to grab a bite to eat, and then you sit and meet with parents rapid-fire in ten or fifteen minute increments.

So here's some tips:
1. Dress professionally in welcoming colors that flatter your skin tone. I like blue or green due to my coloring. Avoid red or black. Think about matadors and bulls, here.

If you can, don't wear your dressy clothes all day-- they will be wrinkled and possibly sweaty if your schools HVAC works as well as mine does. Wear comfortable clothes during the day, and then change after the kids leave.

Brush your teeth before the parents come, too.

2. Some fresh flowers are lovely to brighten up the room, and they smell nice, too, while not being as overpowering as other options to freshen the air.

3. I also like to keep a dish of hard candy (sugar free as well as fully leaded). It's a welcoming gesture.

4. Keep some blank paper or coloring books and crayons or markers for little brothers or sisters who may accompany mom and dad to the conference. This helps everyone concentrate on the conference at hand. Plus I then post those pictures(signed by the artiste) that kids leave me in my room, and you'd be surprised how much my big kids love this.

5.Start out positively. Name problems as challenges. If a kid doesn't turn in work, it's always effective to present a parent with signed "I didn't do my work" forms from the week. I recommend that every students give you either their assignment or one of these forms, so that you have something tangible so that parents can see the extent of the problem.

6. Do not allow one parent to monopolize an hour of your time. Stand up when the time is over, smile warmly, and say, "It's been lovely to speak to you, Mr. Pjhtwy; I hope you have a wonderful evening." And then, if you have to, walk to the door and possibly even out into the hallway.

7. Keep It Simple.

8. Don't argue. Realize that sometimes you and parents will never agree. Nonetheless, it is your classroom, and you have the right to expect reasonable behavior from your students. Do not agree to an intervention that puts the onus on you with all the other tasks you have to do unless there is a component built in for the student and the parents to buy in as well. For example, if the parents have access to grades online, and they actually HAVE that access, hold parents to that rather than agreeing to run a daily or weekly report. If you do that, you're still the only person who appears to care, and chances are the report won't get home anyway.

9. Parents who don't show up at conferences should be contacted via phone or even better email.

10. Prepare yourself to see parents wearing pajamas, parents wearing A-shirts, parents wearing clothing that would make a Vegas stripper blush, parents wearing slept-in sweats and no underwear (don't ask me how I knew this, just believe that I still have nightmares), parents who smell of alcohol and/or marijuana, as well as parents who dress and act professionally. Learn to school your expression so that you maintain outward calm.
Oh, and just because parents are dressed nice doesn't mean that the family is functional.

11. Do not assume that you're looking at Mom and Dad, or that names are the same. It's best to introduce yourself to each person. We have had people who were assumed to be one gender who turned out to be another, so don't make THAT mistake, either.

Oh, and make sure you get lots of rest afterward. You're gonna need it.

Brutality on the bus

I imagine you've probably heard about this by now:

The [Belleville, Illinois] School Board on Monday handed out the harshest punishment allowed to two students accused of violent attacks on another boy on a school bus last week, saying it was sending a message by expelling the two boys for the rest of this year and all of next.

Board President Curt Highsmith said the kind of violence caught on the school bus' surveillance camera and shown widely on TV and the Internet has "never been tolerated and never will be tolerated" in the Belleville Township High School District.

The video taken a week earlier by a camera on the bus showed a 17-year-old Belleville West High School student get on the bus and look for an open seat. He took a seat next to another teen, who after a few moments attacked the victim, punching him in the head several times. At one point, the attacker held the victim by the neck with one hand while he punched his face with the other.

A few minutes after that beating ended, another student argued with the victim and then punched him in the face several times. Each time, other students intervened in an effort to stop the attacks.


The victim was treated by a school nurse after the beatings and later was released to his mother.

Police initially said the attacks may have been motivated by race but later backtracked, saying it appeared to be a case of bullying, not racial animosity. The victim is white, his two attackers are black.

Most of the 50 people attending Monday's School Board meeting appeared to support the expulsions, which school officials said were the harshest penalties allowed by law.

Parent Angie Brown said she backed the board's decision but wanted to make sure the expelled boys still attend school somewhere.

"Everybody deserves an education," she said.

But Tami Graham said she was more concerned about the safety of students who follow the rules than about the schooling of boys expelled for the attacks.

"I don't care about their education," she said.

Some were unhappy about the way video footage of the attack thrust Belleville briefly into the national spotlight. Parent Alicia Bradley said she was angry that the video had been released and that so many people had made hateful posts on blogs and websites. She said it was a poor representation of Belleville and the school.

Some speakers said the incident made them more concerned about bus overcrowding and gang issues at the school.

Several students have been suspended for cheering on the attacks or laughing as they took place. Tabasha Holloman, the mother of one of those students, said her son was in the wrong but questioned whether the district was imposing punishments fairly.

"That's the way teenagers react to fights," she said.

She said her son had been the victim of an attack at a football game on Sept. 4 and that school authorities had not done anything about it. She said problems at the school go beyond what was seen on the school bus video.

Six Belleville police officers were stationed at the meeting but were not needed to keep order.

Both of the accused attackers were charged with felony aggravated battery on Friday. Illinois law shields the names of juveniles charged with crimes because they are minors.

The first boy, a 14-year-old, pleaded not guilty Monday at a detention hearing before St. Clair County Judge Walter Brandon.

"This is shocking in its violence and its brutality," said William Clay, an assistant state's attorney.

Clay said the victim didn't provoke the attack and had simply been looking for a place to sit on the bus. He said the first attacker "clearly lost control that day."

Prosecutors argued for holding the teen until trial, but Brandon released him to his father, a pastor. The teen will be under 24-hour curfew and must get a court order if he wants to leave his father's home for anything other than attending school.

John Hipskind, the teenager's public defender, said he has no prior juvenile delinquency cases, attended school regularly and made good grades before the attack.

The other teen, a 15-year-old who is accused of beating the victim later in the bus ride, turned himself in to authorities on Monday. He did not appear before a judge.

Clay said that teen flashed apparent gang signs after the beating.

Here is an edited version of the video from the school bus from the CBS Morning News:


The 15-year-old was placed under 24 hour house arrest after a hearing before a juvenile judge today. He will not be allowed out of his house without a court order, and is being held in custody until his father, who is a minister, gets a land line so that his monitor will work.

The bus driver, after an investigation, has been removed from that route.

There are links to related stories here, and here.

The full, unedited video, which lasted 13 minutes, is here.

I am disgusted with kids who think this is funny. I am disgusted that the second attack was not prevented, much less the first. It seems these kids had no fear of consequences. I am disgusted with the parent who said that her child was wrong for laughing but excused that behavior at the same time, because the laughter helped prolong the first attack and provoke the second attack. I am disgusted with the parent (who is a minister) of the fourteen-year-old attacker who talked about how his family's life was harmed by the publicity and reaction, when he should be wondering why his child felt free to attack someone in such a vicious manner.

God help us.

Avast, scurvy dogs!

And today? Today is International Talk Like a Pirate Day!!!!!!

You Are 80% Pirate

Shiver me timbers! You be a tried an' true buccanneer. Yer likely the captain - shoutin' orders to scrub the deck or walk the plank. If anyone questions yer shipmate skills, ye'll jus' crush the'r barnacles! Ye have been flying the Jolly Roger fer a long time. So long that you likely be havin' a bad case o' scurvy.

Would You Make a Good Pirate?

Now, who be surprised?

President Obama's "Liberal" Agenda for Education

Well, now that the speech has been made, we see that President Obama's evil, socialist, partisan agenda to indoctrinate our nation's schoolchildren is this, summarized from the text of the president's speech:

1) It's not just the job of teachers and parents to make sure students learn. You, the students, have responsibility in this process, too.

2) Education provides the opportunity to discover your talents, but you have to develop those talents.

3) You not only have a responsibility to yourself to make the most of your education, you have a responsibility to your community and your country to become educated.

4) No matter what difficulties you have to overcome, there are no excuses for not making sure you make the most of your education.

5) Being successful is hard work no matter what impression you may get from tv or music, and you will have to overcome setbacks and failures in order to become successful. The key is to persevere.

6) Ask questions.

7) Ask for help.

8) Never give up on yourself.

9) Do your part to improve this country.


Wow. How dare he???????? What exactly in this message is not prudent and conservative, in the best sense of the word?

And please note that, unlike so many who get their news from the Colbert Report without getting the irony, I refrained from announcing my opinion until AFTER I heard the speech and read the text. Would that all supposedly responsible citizens would do the same.

I will confess that I am ashamed of the initial response my school district chose when this speech was announced. Letters were sent home to parents, which announced a set of limitations which made it nigh impossible for a teacher to have his or her students watch the speech. Parents were basically assured that their children would be protected from being forced to listen to a speech about the importance of education by the president of the United States. The fact that bitter, immature, uncivil, partisan sniping was in any way given credence at the central office was one thing. But then days later, we got a grudging admission pointing out that, well, we need to respect the office of the president, and Barack Obama IS our president. Oh, thanks.

Here's what I resent: when President Bush was still in office, any letter similar to the ones sent home last week would have been decried as unpatriotic and the worst sort of injection of political-- and in particular liberal-- bias into the classroom. But the second that a Democrat is in the White House, it is suddenly fine and dandy to use fear-mongering and smear tactics against the office of the president. We did not see such a response when Presidents Reagan and George HW Bush gave similar speeches to students, either.

It is my policy to never criticize the current president-- no matter who he is-- to my students. (Yes, that's one reason why I have a blog.) I can and do control myself and act like an adult. Furthermore, just because you vote for or against someone doesn't mean you should not continually re-evaluate and judge how well they have represented your beliefs and values. There have certainly been things I have disagreed with done by every president in my lifetime, including this one.

I would hope that our district administration would also follow this policy, and show the same restraint and respect we expect our students to demonstrate to us, whether they like us or not. I was hoping that this letter was just a reaction to a bitter but vocal handful of district residents who were stirred up by their blind obedience to the Limbaugh Lobby to hate any and all things Obama, and by their vociferousness often scared the bejebus out of petty bureaucrats. But by catering to this element, administrators, you appear to agree with them, and that is the injection of political bias into the classroom that should not be tolerated no matter who is president.

However implicit and subtle our district administrators think their very political response was to a non-political speech, our students are no dummies. Many of them realized that a reactionary fringe opposed to civil discourse was allowed to control the day on Tuesday. And that IS un-American.

Health Insurance for Dummies, Old-School Style

This year our insurance plan was "tweaked." At our last faculty meeting we bad lazy no-goodniks were chastised by the District Numbers Dude (henceforth known as DND) for the incredibly high coinage our insurance company has had to pay out in ratio to premiums paid. It is obvious that our refusal to drag our lazy butts in to school is the reason for this slacking when we should certainly just choose to do otherwise.

Apparently the gambit of offering people a hundred bucks for perfect attendance isn't working so well. (Show of hands-- how many of you out there have gotten to the point that you would PAY a hundred bucks to have a day off?)

So yes, we have to be "incentivized" ("I do not think that word means what you think it means....") by having a "doughnut hole" built into our coverage. This means that after a certain point, call it "x", we have to pay 100% of our medical expenditures, basically, until the insurance kicks in again at another certain point, call it "y." And of course, DND and friends don't call it a "doughnut hole" because that would mean that people would actually understand what this little tactic actually is.

Now let me just point out that it has never occurred to DND or any of the other Powers That Be that there are a few simple steps that could help alleviate ever-escalating health care pay-outs, and I bet it would be far cheaper than ever-increasing premiums, substitute pay, days of work lost, and cheap tricks. I mean, really, who wants to spend three hours writing lesson plans when they are sick so they can stay home and be miserable-- besides knowing all the work that is piling up while they're home sick?

Here they are, and these could be done on rotation:
1) Clean the ductwork in the buildings at least every other year. Our ceiling tiles are coated in a black gunk near the air vents which is disgusting. I know one building in our district in which several people have had to have polyps removed from their sinuses. See point number 4 below.

2) Patch the holes in the roof of every building.

3) Replace the ceiling tiles. They are over thirty years old and are coated with mold, mildew, and black gunk.

4) Realize that since we have an industrial site next door to our school, we cannot open the windows, which would help freshen the air. Most of our illnesses are respiratory in nature.

5) Hire a contractor who will provide healthy, fresh, recognizable food in the cafeterias.

6) Create a wellness program which actually interests people-- volleyball leagues, kickball leagues, 5K run/walks.

7) Redo the molding along the floors, which currently has gaps and loose edges granting entree to all kinds of critters.

Look, I know there are other school districts in far worse shape than we are, but that is still no excuse, given the waste and inefficiency that permeates budget decisions throughout the process.

And I'll tell you something: the first time one of my skinflint colleagues drags his sorry behind in to work while he is sick with H1N1 just so he won't lose that hundred bucks, I'm coming over to THEIR house so they can nurse me back to health.

Bring out your dead!

Critics of American public schools keep wanting to declare the death of public education, no matter how much we protest that we are still breathing:


Yes, it's that time again, when the test results mandated by NCLB come rolling over schools like a tsumani. And here's the shocker: about half the schools in our state did not make AYP.

The language of NCLB is laden with the pithiest of platitudes:

All children can learn.
Standards must be kept high.
No student should drop out of school.


All children CAN learn. The question is, WILL they when society tells them it is useless and that they are passive recipients rather than active participants in the process? When society tells them that people who like to learn are nerds or dweebs or geeks, socially inept twitchy wallflowers?


Unfortunately, the standards usually are not kept high in service to the third statement. Or am I just grumpy?



All I've got to say is, I'm fine, really!

I before E except after "team"

Yes, we got the good news that our staff development will include "team-building" exercises.

Does that mean that the administration will finally join our team? Or let the teachers join theirs?

And who here, besides me, is now thinking about that scene in Mean Girls?

You know, there is no "I" in team. But "ME" is in there if you rearrange the letters. And if you really rearrange the letters, you get "meat."

Sad news for all Tulsa baby boomers....

Uncle Zeb has died.

Carl Bartholomew, better known in the area as "Uncle Zeb," the host of a popular childrens' show from Tulsa, has died. He was 78.

Bartholomew is recognizable to two generations of Tulsans for his enduring role on the Unlce Zeb's show, famous for its "Cartoon Camp" had two runs on the airwaves — the first on KTUL, channel 8, from 1969 to '79, and then on cable from 1990 through '97.

Bartholomew also executive-produced, directed, co-scripted and starred in a 1988 vigilante movie called "Cole Justice," whose popularity in the home video market got him an improbable gig as the grand marshal of a holiday parade in Florala, Ala., sharing the spotlight "with a guy who could pick up 20 chickens," he recalled.

"Cole Justice" also played on Showtime and the Movie Channel and is still available from the Tulsa-based VCI Home Entertainment.

Bartholomew spent many years as the promotions manager for channel 8, where he created the well-remembered "Eight's the Place" campaign. In those brief spots — Bartholomew called them "micro-mini-movies" — he put the station's news team on horseback, into a '30s convertible, and even in Hower's biplane.

"That's kind of where I got bitten by the movie bug," he said. "Now, everything I write, I see in my mind as a film. This book is no different." Bartholomew was also an accomplished childrens' author. In 1998, his debut book, "Granmax: The Saving of a Steam Train," came out. He also released "Plane Phenomenon: The Pawnshop Mysteries," which mixed "Twilight Zone"-style thrills with
a plot line about a boy whose passion is remote-control planes, especially a Stearman biplane.

For those of you who don't understand, let me try to explain. Your boy scout/girl scout/ bluebird group would book a visit to the Cartoon Camp. You would then ride up a twisty road in the back of a station wagon to the top of Turkey Mountain in west Tulsa to the studios of Channel 8. You would walk onto the set, and there was Uncle Zeb. He'd tell jokes. He made squirrels out of handkerchiefs and made them jump at you with his fingers. You'd watch classic cartoons. At the end, you all got to line up and say your name into the microphone and get your 2 seconds of fame. Then you'd all jump around during the closing credits.

It was a blast. He was the nicest man.He was just so fun, and it never felt like he was talking down to you, even if you were six years old.

A while back I actually found some website about Tulsa TV personalities, and actually found a way to email him. Here I was, definitely middle aged, and I was thrilled that I got an email from Uncle Zeb. He was a true gem, and a gentleman. Now I just wish I'd asked him how to make those squirrels out of a handkerchief.

God bless you, Carl. You gave thousands of kids the gift of laughter.

Texas Fight Club case sentence comes in

One of the workers at the Corpus Christi (Texas) State School for the disabled has pleaded guilty to running a "Fight Club" among the students (and if that wasn't bad enough, the kids were often forced to fight). Here is the link to the news article.

In exchange for pleading guilty to a reduced charge, Vincent Johnson received a suspended two year sentence, 150 hours of community service, a $2000 fine, and five years of probation. He will testify against other employees implicated in this shameful episode.

Disgusting. And you know, plea bargains are one of the reasons I didn't go to law school.

Should parents get to pick their kids' teachers?

Here's the link to an interesting article about whether parents should pick their kids' teachers. Click over and read it while I muse on the fact that the Associated Press has decided to start charging bloggers for blockquoting their articles, and although I am NOT Arianna Huffington I also do not have access to her wealth, so I'm hoping that my tiny corner of the blogosphere escapes notice if I just provide the link from now on. Annoying, yes?

Okay, so hoping that you skimmed the article, let me just say: I have made sure that my children have had or avoided certain teachers, but I have done this sparingly. To be honest, usually my kids are moved into classes by counselors that know me as a former colleague and already know my preferences, so sometimes I get to coast and find out that the work has already been done. I used to believe in NOT doing this, but I (and one of my kids) got seriously burned by my laissez-faire attitude. Now I know better.

BUT....

As a teacher, I must say that I do get tired of having gi-normous classes due to parent/student requests, so I see the other side of that coin, as I try to wedge thirty desks in a classroom made for twenty-two.

What do YOU think, as both a parent and/or a teacher?

Getting back into the thick of it

I've enjoyed my little vacation-- and little is the mot juste, as our school district calendar keeps sliding staff development days in near holidays so that now there's basically only two months off, which no doubt is based on some half-baked study from probably Iceland (No offense to any Icelanders out there. Hvernig gengur? Mer likur vio Sigur Ros!) that this lack of down time as a bloc will somehow double our test scores or at least our sports teams.

Yesterday, it was announced that John Hughes had passed away. I am spending the weekend watching his films again. Yesterday was Sixteen Candles. Today, I think I'll do Planes, Trains, and Automobiles and of course Ferris Buhler. God bless that man.

My students' AP scores arrived. I must say, they exceeded my expectations! Yay, kids! You really WERE studying! And the kid who told me the Gettysburg Address was 1511 Gettysburg Avenue- you are forgiven. Almost.

The homework controversy rages on. Homework in kindergarten? Yeah, that's a bit much. However, I shudder to think what happens to high school kids who don't do homework when they get to college. Wait. I know what happens, because I had a dorm-mate for one semester who had never done homework in her life after she graduated from some hippy-dippy private school. Note that I said, "one semester," too. She got to spend two thousand bucks to learn that she wasn't prepared for college. Tough lesson. You get that for which you work (see how homework taught me not to end my sentences with a preposition? Thank you Mrs. B Smith, my 9th grade English teacher....).

Oh, and on July 28, A Shrewdness of Apes turned four! Thanks for hanging out with me during this time, and I will be a better blogger than I have been lately, I promise.

So. How are YOU doing?

Federal support for education: Watch those strings

It's always good to remind people that the federal government actually contributes very little financial support to public school districts throughout the country.

Here is the link to an Associated Press article that explains the details. Basically, federal monies provide only about 8 percent of a school district's budget. School districts need to consider whether this is a good bargain for them, since that 8 percent leads to all kinds of requirements and regulations that actually may not be value for the money.

Traditionally, schools have been funded by local taxes-- usually property taxes as the bulk of the sourcing. Even with the proposed increase in funding that has been recently promised, that may not make up for all the other requirements that will inevitably be tied to those dollars.

An apology for supporting segregation in Virginia

Well, I guess this is "better late than never."

A Virginia newspaper expressed regret Thursday for supporting a systematic campaign by the state's white political leaders to maintain separate public schools for blacks and whites in the 1950s.

The Richmond Times-Dispatch acknowledged in an editorial that it and its now-defunct sister newspaper, The News Leader, played a central role in the "dreadful doctrine" of Massive Resistance. "The record fills us with regret," the newspaper said.

The newspaper took the unusual step of promoting the editorial on its front page. The editorial was published on the eve of a conference in Richmond marking the 50th anniversary of the end of Massive Resistance, which was dismantled by a 1959 court ruling.

Massive Resistance was Virginia's answer to Brown v. Board of Education, the 1954 Supreme Court decision that outlawed school segregation. Endorsed at the highest levels of state government and promoted by U.S. Sen. Harry F. Byrd, the policy cut funds to any school that dared to integrate.

"The hour was ignoble," the editorial says. "Editorials in The News Leader relentlessly championed Massive Resistance and the dubious constitutional arguments justifying its unworthy cause. Although not so intimately engaged, The Times-Dispatch was complicit."

Words are indeed powerful. Although, these words of apology would certainly have been more powerful if they hadn't waited fifty years to utter them.

You know, I've heard apologists for segregation repeatedly act as if the problems of the civil rights movement were purely a "Deep South" phenomenon, all a part of the "it's just a part of the Southern culture" mumbo-jumbo-- that it was in places like Mississippi and Alabama and South Carolina, especially areas where blacks outnumbered whites, that the worst kinds of race relations took place. That kind of thinking flies in the face of facts, such as that Linda Brown lived in Topeka, KANSAS. They also ignore the fact that the Brown case was actually five cases combined together: besides the Topeka action, lawsuits from Prince Edward County, Virginia; Summerton, South Carolina; Claymont, Delaware; and Washington, D.C were part of the Brown decision. Although Delaware was technically a Northern state, as was Kansas, our nation's capital was (and is) a Southern city. The evils of segregation and discrimination remain a legacy ALL Americans must acknowledge.

And I thought summer would never begin for me...

but this is worse!

Summer break will finally start at two Southern California schools after the state rejected a district's plan to use summer sessions to make up for a potentially costly administrative error.

Officials at Chino Valley Unified School District said Friday they have ended the sparsely attended classes and are now depending on a state bill that could waive a $5 million penalty for not meeting the state requirement for school day hours.

Students had been attending extra classes since June 15 at Dickson Elementary in Chino and Rolling Ridge Elementary in Chino Hills. With grades already final, attendance dipped as low as 8 percent at Rolling Ridge.

The error occurred when administrators shortened bell schedules on 34 Fridays below the requirement of 180 minutes a day.

Well, it wasn't much of a program if attendance was voluntary, although it must have just stunk for the staff. I wonder what the people who made the error have learned?