PTC Observations

Last year I averaged around 35 students/parents per night at Parent-Teacher Conferences (out of about 200 students). This year I have many fewer students. We've started a new program at our school to give the lower end math kids math every day. The workload for preparing lessons and grading papers is still the same, but I have half as many kids because I see them every day. Also, I am teaching ESL U.S. History. I love it! It's a lot of fun, but I only have 12 students right now, again adding to my small numbers (this year I only have around 110 students).

Anyway . . . needless to say, PTCs were a little slow. Here are my observations:

• Shawn Bradley. Apparently he lives in Murray and his oldest daughter is a sophomore. I was walking past this man sitting on a chair and his legs were nearly reaching to the ceiling. I did a double take and realized who it was.

• The teacher on my right me made a parent cry. I can’t say I’ve ever had that happen. I heard the teacher say “he’s so smart it’s scary.” I don’t know what that means, but the mom is crying and they are talking about football.

• I bought a pink t-shirt. It’s for breast cancer awareness. Friday night is Murray’s “pink game” against Hunter. They are wearing pink jersey’s, selling shirts, raffle tickets, and other things to donate money to breast cancer causes. The teacher on my right said that her family does the breast cancer walk every year. She has two small granddaughters and this year they wore t-shirts that said "please find a cure before I grow boobs." Interesting. No, I don't think I'll be getting a shirt like that for Molly.
  

• This dad is walking around in a long-sleeved white dress shirt, short Levi shorts, white crew socks, and black high-tops. I’m worried his daughter is a little embarrassed of him.

• The teacher next to me (yes, the one to the right) is wearing a skirt. I’ve only ever seen her in Capris at school. Why do people dress up for PTC’s? My students and parents just get the same khakis and shirt my students get everyday. I’m such a terrible dresser. At least I usually match and my clothes are clean. The teachers at Murray actually all dress very nice. There are no sweat-pant-wearers like there were in Tooele.

• My principal has been growing fuzz on his face since the first week back to school. I’m not sure if he is intentionally trimming it or if he’s just been trying to grow it for that long. Some people are facial hair challenged and that could be him. It’s really light blonde and you only notice it close up. I just asked the teacher to my left what he thought about it and she thinks he’s probably trimming it to be trendy.

• I just talked to Benito. He is from Spain. I thought he was living here permanently, but I just found out he is an exchange student. He said he told me, but I forgot. He says American school is easier than school in Spain and the biggest difference is that in Spain you do not get easy points for doing work in class. You only get points for tests to see if you understand things. Interesting. Here is an e-mail I got from Benito a week or so ago: hi mrs bunggeli i don´t know that: we must to do the vocabulary for the next class?
  thanks for your time i will wait your anwers

Until tomorrow . . .