Parent-Teacher conferences

Well, okay. It's hard to believe, but I've been teaching for nine weeks now, and we had to turn in our grades for the first quarter last week. Yesterday, we had parent-teacher conferences to discuss the children's grades. haha, ah I don't even know where to start. Overall, the conferences went well. They were, however, extremely exhausting. The students left at noon, and the parents could come for conferences anytime between 2 and 6. That's a really, really long time to be sitting at a desk, waiting for parents to come. Every non-bilingual teacher was seated next to a bilingual teacher to help with the translating. That was great, except that we all had conferences at the same time. So most of the times that a parent came over, my translator was already in a conference so I had to do it by myself.

It was then, while I was trying to communicate with parents about their children, that I realized that I have a long, long way to go before I will consider myself good at Spanish. I have never in my life felt so frustrated with my inability to communicate. I thought I was doing pretty well with Spanish. I can pretty much understand what most people say to me, and I can carry on a decent conversation. But I am learning that language is so much more than grammar and vocabulary and small talk. Language has nuances. Different words mean more than dictionary definitions; they have more or less weight, they can imply different things. I love language; I love playing with it, I love being clever and having a decent vocabulary and using language to make implications. I simply do not know the nuances of the Spanish language, and that's a level of language proficiency that I don't know how to attain. It probably would take years to get that. But I feel like until I reach that, I won't be satisfied with my ability to communicate in Spanish.

So that was my disappointment for the night. I really wanted to talk to these parents, and tell them about their children's academic lives and explain to them my excitements or concerns, and I just didn't really know how to do that. There were a couple times when I had to find someone to translate for me. I can't be speaking broken Spanish to the lady whose son still can't count, or the lady whose son might very well be dyslexic.

I only had one or two parents who really gave me a problem. One of them asked me which teacher was in charge of taking care of the students' things. I thought I didn't understand her so I asked my translator to help me. But it turns out that's really what she was asking me. So, I told her that there is no teacher in charge of that, the students are responsible for their own things. So then she got mad because she told me that she had given her son a ruler, and now he can't find it. It took everything in me not to just shrug at her. I said that I constantly remind the children to respect each others' things, and that if I find things floating around the classroom, I always ask who they belong to. I said that I was sorry her son lost her ruler, but I don't have any room or time to take care of 19 students' school supplies. She responded by saying not to worry, but she's going to punish her son when she gets home for not taking care of his things. So I thought, that's great. I'm sure your seven year old son lost his ruler on purpose, and in the future he won't lose it because you spanked him. Does sarcasm translate over blog posts?

I was so tired when I finally got home, I didn't even know what to do with myself. I felt completely dazed. My mind was exhausted from all the Spanish, I was emotionally exhausted and I just felt physically done also. I really sympathize with my students. They probably feel tired all the time from listening to English all day. It must be so hard to go to a bilingual school.

I was really, really ready for the weekend after yesterday. It's doesn't feel real- it's only a week and a half until Thanksgiving, and then less than three weeks after that, I'll be home for Christmas! Where has the time gone? I can't believe it's almost Thanksgiving. It kind of blows my mind.