Montague

Over the past few weeks, especially this week, there were a couple of things that I have noticed. First and foremost, yesterday we had our first parent-teacher conferences. I have noticed how time consuming and long conferences can be but then again, how beneficial they are. To be honest, I usually get nervous with these types of things, but this time I wasn’t (they really aren’t my own yet either so next year may be a different story…). I was completely blown away by the number of parents that showed up for conferences!! I have worked in a school for several years before this as a teachers aid and before/after care manager. I have never seen such a good turn out for conferences. So the number one thing I noticed from the parents at this school was how important they take their child’s education. It makes me feel so happy to see this kind of support coming from parents. The conferences went really well and all of the parents seemed happy with what my MT and I were doing. For students that we have had problems with, we got an opportunity to sit down and get on the same page, discuss why things are happening and how we can work together as a team to help better their child’s education. This is another thing that I have never seen out of ALL parents that showed to conferences (and had children who had some negative reports from the teacher). When I sat in on conferences before (when I was an aide), the parents at my previous school were all about how their child was innocent, how the teacher was wrong or things like that. Yesterday, nothing like this happened. The parents listened and collaborated with us and expressed their desire to do what it takes as a team to help their child. I was so happy after meeting with these parents to know that we have them on our side so to say. We have them rooting for us and their child and we now know that we can seek their support because they too want what is best for their child and they can acknowledge that their child needs that extra help. So overall, in terms of conferences, I noticed how awesome our parents are!

Another thing that I have noticed a lot this year and something that continues to really bother me, is the number of students that have accidents (wet their pants). I feel so bad for the child but yet I feel like I cannot do anything to better the situation. I sometimes feel like I am stuck between a rock and a hard place. When students tell me they have to go to the bathroom, I tell them to go ahead. I am usually pretty good about determining who really needs to go and who is just playing around. When I don’t know, I usually tell them they can go and walk out a few seconds later to check to make sure they went into the bathrooms and are not fooling around. However, when I tell students to go to the bathroom, since it is not my class, the child is often told to sit down and I am told not to be talking to that particular person (usually because they have been in trouble). Well today, one of my students with this exact situation, did this. I feel bad because I feel as if it is my fault because they DID ask me to go, I told them they could go and then they were told they could not until they sit their and end up peeing on themselves. It is humiliating for most of the students because the whole class finds out about it and the student is typically called out. To me this is frustrating and is one of the reasons why I think bathroom break should be given first thing in the morning, before/after lunch, and when they come in, AS A CLASS. Then, for those who need additional bathroom breaks, we can give individually. I think that if we were to ensure that all of these breaks were given, we could cut down tremendously on the number of accidents we have.