We are making up our parent teacher conferences right now because of the snow last month which caused us to miss several days of school. I enjoy talking to the parents of my students. I repeatedly hear phrases like this "My son/daughter adores you." "My child talks about you a lot." All of which are wonderful things to hear, but very typical. Of course their children are going to like me (that is one of my goals). If they don't like their teacher, they probably won't like school either. Of course they are going to talk about me, they are around me for almost more than half the time they are awake.
Then, on Thursday I speak with another parent, and what was said is still tugging on my heart. I have had her son in my room almost two months now. He moved in from another school after Christmas break. The first day I had him I was on the verge of panic. He was very outspoken and behaving in ways that were interrupting our classroom. I have worked so hard getting my 28 students where I want them and I was not going to have one person undo all of this. From somewhere I pulled out all of the patience in the world for this student, and somehow it worked, and he responded to me very well. (Thank you God).
I could see this parent was quite anxious coming in. She was waiting to hear all the bad things about her son. She point blank asks me if he was bad in my class. My answer was no. This woman's face was full of relief and shock. She asked me if he did his work because at his other school he would just shove it in his desk. Again I surprised her by telling her, yes your son does his work. She tells me she dreads coming to conferences because they always tell her all the bad things about her son.
I also told her I can tell he has had a hard time in the past, but I am working with him and he is responding very well to me. The woman was still shocked, but no longer in disbelief. I did caution her that even though he is doing very well for me, I could see him getting into trouble again next year in middle school, but I will continue to work with him this year to help him with that.
She leaves and is still visibly full of happiness and relief. Now I am sitting in my classroom full of mixed emotions. I am thinking things like "Score for me. Best teacher ever! I am so good with kids." Then I am full of sadness for this woman. Her child has been in school for more than five years and she expects to hear all of the bad things about him at conference night? What kinds of teachers has he had? That goes completely against everything I have been taught about working with parents and students.
Actually, I was at a workshop earlier that day and we were asked this incredibly typical teacher workshop question, "How have you impacted someone's life...this week." Well, now that I had that conference with that parent, I have a better answer to that question.
That is my profession in a nutshell. Even the big "wins" I have are coated in sadness. Yea for me! But how incredibly sad for this parent and child. My best successes sometimes come from the worst situations. However, I must continue on.
