First one for us — and I admit I’m terrified. I mean, is this where they tell you your child likes to poke the class pet “Snowball the Hamster” in the eye with a gluestick? Or that he regularly exposes himself to the hand puppets?
The pressure. Maybe I’ll wear a tie…
They’re TEACHERS, Jeff, with all that that implies. Don’t worry about it
Where an O! button, and you’ll be fine.
Just try not to correct their English. It would be racist.
Apples, Jeff. Don’t forget the apples. Polished. Big red ones. And don’t volunteer for any committees, whatever the hell else you do.
Wear a NEA button. Try O! intimidation techniques.
Just bring the teacher a big fattie. They don’t piss test teachers and she’ll appreciate it.
Smile a lot. Nod knowingly and, yes, don’t volunteer for anything that night…
I mean, I did tons of volunteer stuff for my kids’ schools but I learned early to do it as close to my terms as possible and learned early to practice the word “NO” and use it often.
Just had this conversation with my 6-year-old before logging on. “What’s a conference and why can’t kids go?” It’s where your teacher says how wonderful you are and daddy and me say, “We know.” It’ll be fine. On a related topic, though, a male friend of mine who was the primary caregiver of his two children would get a bit peeved when teachers directed all their comments to mom. So watch out for that. But I assume since you’ve been home with your kid forever you’ve dealt with your share of those kinds of situations.
If you get stuck with the type — and you know the type — give ’em a little treatise on the occupational martyr complex as an alter-conformist masochism for physical and sexual cowards.
You might want to make your pecs bounce along with “alter-conformist” to make the point. Teachers tend to be pretty dim.
Along with the whole kid-fucking thing.
Statistically.
(This becomes the top search result for “alter-conformist” in 3, 2…)
At my number 3 son, the Beast’s, first teacher conference last year, his teacher complimented us on how well behaved he was and how he did things without being told, yadda yadda. You know, exactly the opposite of the way he is at home. She said to us, “Whatever you’re doing, keep it up!” And I said, “Thanks so much. It’s the beatings. On the soles of his feet, so the bruises don’t show.”
Mrs Cookies doesn’t make me go to the teacher conferences any more.
A bottle of Chardonnay works better now than an apple.
My hunch is that you’ll be astounded that so little learning will take place this year.
Because “regression to the mean” doesn’t happen all by itself.
I have never been to a conference. Unless Human Services is involved, it’s a waste of my time.
Avoid phrases like …
Pull my finger.
The smeller’s the feller.
My, ain’t you got a purty mouth.
Are you a Muslim?
Bumper Stickerist – Regression is something that we are dealing with right now. Our daughter actually read better and spelled better before her kindergarten year. Over the summer, she seemed to get back in a groove, but in the first couple months of school, she is headed back towards the pack again. Frustrating.
Don’t let the teacher surprise you. For instance, s/he might say “So – what is a figure four choke, Mr. Goldstein, and why is the eyelid rip an option?” The correct answer can ONLY be, “I dunno. He watches a lot of Sesame Street.”
In talking to mothers I generally try to imply, as gently as is humanly possible, that the main problem we’re having with Junior is genetic in nature and can’t be fixed. That if she’d been fucking me 15-16 years ago we wouldn’t be having to have this conversation right now. And if she’s a dripping wet MILF………or at the very least still got any looks to her at all, I offer to father any additional children she might be considering. As a public service to the community and as a favor to her. So that, ya know, in her old age, maybe one of her children might be capable of providing some assistance. I’m a giver that way. I very rarely see the fathers of my students.
So Ashley Todd has to take a poly. Hmmm did the stripper? Sorry Pgh is filled with Demorats, West. PA is filled with Clinton gulpers. Yo mayor Luke and Exec Dan this Barney Frank is for yinz.
If the teacher tries to get all elite on you, and stuff, tho’ down wif your Ivy League Bona Fides, yo…
And if that don’t get it, challenge the teacher to a best out of 3 falls match, to settle the matter…
I mean, it’s for the children Jeff…
Enjoy checking out the young mom’s… or is that only me?
i calls em-‘yummy mummys’-and of course I care about the children-my only problem is I can’t get them close enuff to my van…
but that innocent,befuddled look in their eyes when we reach that “special place” is priceless-i’m sure they’d agree /and once i take the duct tape off their mouths i’m sure they’ll tell ya
Jeff–be cool. You will go to many, many of these. And, no matter what the teacher says, it will change in the next few years.
Never miss a chance to tell them they can be replaced. They love that.
Just don’t show up. All in all it’s just another brick in the wall.
It’s where you find out that he punches out other kids while saying: “My dad does too have a ‘dillo and I’ve seen him dance!!!”
Maybe I’ll wear a tie…
I’m just hoping you remembered trousers.
So, how’d it go?
Parent teacher
conferencesconfrontation tonightStay away from the “those who can, do, those who can’t, teach” approach.
I remember calling my brother for an update on my then pre-verbal nephew and his new Montessori-type part-time day care (for the purposes of socialization of my rug rat nephew and a mental health break for my working-from-home brother).
“How did things go?” I asked.
“I’m raising Hannibal Lechter,” he replied.
Yeah, the whole “pre-verbal” thing was a clue. Because what does a frustrated kid do when he doesn’t have to vocab to tell off the bully who stole his crayons? He bites said bully. Hard.
(Go nephew!)
Hope your conference goes better….
I started years ago telling the teachers that I hunt and my kids are being brought up in a Pro-NRA hunting household. My kids talk about guns and hunting, and I will not tolerate “zero tolerance” when it comes to our lifestyle, heritage and right to own guns.
My kids have never had a problem with any teacher they’ve ever had.
I also din’t get asked to volunteer for anything…I wonder why?
I have no kids, but I sure as hell would like to have a “Property-Tax-Payer-Teacher Conference” to see exactly what my ever-increasing mil levies are being squandered on. I would even wear a tie if I could afford one…
Great idea JWebb! I’m convinced if taxpayers really knew how their money was spent, schools would have to learn to live in a realistic budget. Or at least shift those funds from administrators and pet projects to (gasp!) education.
Wearing a tie? in a public school? Seems fairly reactionary and confrontational.
“Comment by BarrettBrown on 10/24 @ 8:57 pm #
Just don’t show up. All in all it’s just another brick in the wall.”
A pink Floyd fan.
It figures.
Interesting how we relegate our kids to the government and then devise strategies to deal with that “authority”.
Just saying. At 17, mine escaped the government school system her mother jammed her into. But not without cost.
The idea that Socialism has just come knocking is faulty.
I think it’s more the notion that Socialism has just kicked off it’s shoes, grabbed your last beer, seized the remote, and parked it’s big hairy ass in your Barcalounger.
But you won’t miss a thing because while he’s flipping channels you’ll be out working.
Thinking, should I like 2?
I should like to think junior will be just fine.
panther girl
The problem is that the oodles of money extracted from taxpayers for schools doesn’t show at the classroom level, where a hell of a lot of teachers are using their own pocket money for the colorful doodads on the bulletin board.
Keerist on a Pony, when I was in grade school, all I had to do was show up. Paper, pencils, crayons, construction paper, etc were all provided.
What you need to check out is the administration buildings and those offices. Dig a little into the salaries and perks of all the non-teachers clogging up the school district.
And then remember the next time the Teacher’s Union reps threaten the kids unless you vote for higher taxes for The Children.
It doesn’t help that things happen like happened in my county a few years ago.
The school board hired a superintendent who wound up getting the teachers, parents, and eventually the entire county electorate … wound up. Before it was over there was actually significant electoral turnover on the school board so you know they screwed up something fierce.
The board ended up firing the superintendent, but under the contract they gave her they had to keep paying her for an additional 11 months.
When your school system is getting one high-priced chief administrator for the price of two, it’s kind of difficult to get the dollars into the classrooms. It’s also kind of difficult to get a suddenly negatively-engaged electorate to support tax hikes to pay for such shenanigans.
Unfortunately, the engagement wore off before the 11-month severance package did.
I’d argue that the problem is that oodles of money is extracted from taxpayers, period.
My question, however, now that the S-word is finally in widespread use, is how come it wasn’t with regard to government schools, health plans, entitlement programs, and social insurance for decades?
All of which if not fitting the formal, official application of the dictionary definition of big-S Socialism, are surely socialistic and have been since inception.
American Socialism probably started in earnest with FDR. Now the the govt controls almost as many ways and means as the private sector, and now that it controls all of the monetary policy, how about we take a candid view of American history and reframe the events of this presidential race not as new, but as the natural culmination of the last seventy-five years or so?
The media/academia/populist view isn’t just wrong because it’s left of center. It’s wrong because it’s willfully and utterly myopic about the political spectrum of the entire last century, having dragged “centrism” someplace a fraction of a degree north of the most spectacular degrees of Carter-era liberalism. Revisionism isn’t a strong enough word.
To run an actual classical liberal for President today — complete with real government rollbacks, sunsetting three quarters or more of the shit on the lawbooks, abolishing the tax code, and returning all social interests to the private sector — would raise a mighty din and a holy stink from establishmentarian postmodern secularists that would convince God Himself the poor fool was Adolf Hitler.
WTF?
JHoward
I agree that the Feds should be out of the education business altogether. But don’t confuse that with the history of local communities voluntarily setting up their own schools. From the one-room school house to the city public schools, the citizens came together in their own self-interest to educate all kids in their community.
My little niece person was excited last week cause they were going to have Apple Day. A day where they would celebrate … apples. This was prelude to Pumpkin Day which is gonna be towards the end of this month. Pumpkins are big and orange I said. Uh-huh she said. They sure are.
When they tried to dub my youngest daughter, then 6, with ADD at one conference, I barely succeeded in not laughing them right out of the room. Among other things, I’d already been doing math homework with her for two years. So they didn’t get their extra gov’t money in her case. But, man-o-man, I sure wondered about the fate of the rest of the kids there whose parents didn’t know too much.
And watch out for the new diagnosis in vogue, the dreaded “autism spectrum”.
To this day my daughter is still running circles around teachers. For example, she still does her homework, but now usually not even during class anymore. [Once in Middle School she became “very annoyed” in class and had to tell some guy behind her to stfu because she was trying to concentrate on doing her homework.]
So now, instead, she tells me that she occasionally has to “go off” on a certain College teacher when he starts to spout Faux Liberal class-race dogma. But she still “likes” the poor self-hating white guy, who she thinks is mostly just afraid of the Minorities in the class. And most recently, as per usual, she was the only one in the whole freaking class who had done a particular long-term homework assignment. I guess the rest must have “treated” ADD.
So those p-t conferences can be critical.
Maybe I’ll wear a tie…
Depends on where ya wear it, I’d suppose. Around your head like a pirate bandanna is my preference.
Try “Him an’ me jus’ thinks yer great, Teach.” She will be quite relieved that you won’t be judging, thereby setting herself up for a sucker punch from you, should later events so require.
Teacher; a guide to What they Say, and What they Mean.
Lively= ADD
Inquisitive=interrupts
A leader among his peers= will be the boss of Cellblock 10 one day
Very verbal = will not shut up
a bit of a loner = psychopath
independent thinker=sociopath
sensitive= paint a target on his back – oh, wait, somebody already did!
Energetic – see lively, above
Don’t you love parenting?
I “heart” psycho. Don’t take that in the wrong way, psycho. Seriously, don’t.
Anyhow, Jeff, it’s a cool scenario. The person that is in “charge” of your child for a large amount of time meeting and discussing his progress with you? As others have mentioned, the teacher is most likely inferior so humor them, but call them out on bullshit. It’ll be fun (or it was).
…Maybe I’ll wear a tie….
Racist!!
Soon enough they’ll be making their own mistakes. Like the poor kid featured on CNN recently. He has to flee the country to skip out on $160K he owes in student loans on his degree. Who knew that a music major from a prestigious university wouldn’t make the big bucks?
The schools are training kids to be victims. They do learn to defer to authority, so I guess all’s not wasted.
I do not miss those days. Even better, the dreaded call from school. Your son was in a fight and he smacked someone in the face with a can. What happened? Turns out some kid was smacking him in the back of the head on the bus. Third time was a charm. Kid’s parents had the nerve to say he shouldn’t have retaliated. That isn’t right, smacking someone with a can. I guess the “be a victim” lesson didn’t take. The bullies moved on to other victims, which is about the best you can hope for.