**English and Spanish do not use the same talking muscles. After 8 (8!!) hours of translating (back-to-back-to-back) parent-teacher conferences for Spanish speaking parents last month: my tongue was bloated and my jaw was sore for 3 whole hours afterwards, my throat was raw until the next morning, and clearly I was smoking crack when I made the decision to learn a second language years ago.
**It takes 5-7 years to become proficient in a second language, occasionally up to 12. If you don’t use it, you lose it. For every so many months you do not use your second (or 3rd or 4th) language, you lose 30% of it. I use my second language here and there with small children daily, but really only USE use it twice a year, for a total of 16 hours (I call these: my bi-annual reviews). By my mathematical calculations (and don’t put all your trust in these, I’ve already gone over with you people how it is with me and math), this means that after 4 years of high school Spanish, 4 years of university Spanish, and 3 years of living on the Mexican border teaching almost exclusively in Spanish, that equals 11 years of Spanish acquisition. However, because I haven’t lived on the border and thus have not used Spanish every day for 8 years, I now only speak 30% of the Spanish I once used to.
……………………….Which equals 30% more Spanish than any of the teachers around me speak. And I speak 100% more English than almost all of the parents around me speak. So it’s all good.
**Sometimes, children just aren’t developmentally ready to read. This is not a negative; some kids are just late bloomers. Actually, I think the United States has it all wrong about what age young children are ready to read—I think the Swiss handle this much better by waiting until the end of 1st/beginning of 2nd grade. (To be even franker, I think the United States is all wrong about a lot of things when it comes to the teaching of young children, but unfortunately I am not the boss of schools in the USA) (because if I were the boss of schools in the USA, we would totally do things that made sense) (I’d dismantle that ridiculous No Child Left Behind testing mess, for starters)
**So if you’re a parent, and your child can’t read, please do not automatically assume that it’s the teacher’s fault. Because, usually? When a teacher has 5 other teachers sitting in on a conference? (And these 5 other teachers do not typically enjoy sitting in on conferences. But they aaaaaall begged to be at your child’s.) And they are all saying the same thing and expressing the same concerns as the teacher you are angry with because you’re convinced s/he is obviously lazy and not working up to his/her full potential in getting your child to read? This situation always means: it is not the teacher’s fault. And that is 210% of the time.
**Because, sometimes, it’s not a developmental problem. Sometimes there’s a lot of stuff happening up there in a kid’s brain: there really are such things as processing problems; and we have specialists for this, people who are specifically trained in specific ways to teach children how to overcome specific processing problems. So please do not throw a tantrum about how your child is NOT going to be different than other kids and so you will NOT have your child labeled by teachers; sometimes, it’s okay to be different. Different isn’t always bad. Sometimes, if your child truly needs help, a label can be a GOOD thing. Sometimes, getting your child the help s/he needs is far more important than your worries about how it might be a negative reflection of you as a parent.
Because sometimes, it’s not actually about you. Sometimes, your child having a reading problem and your refusal to grant your child the help s/he needs to conquer that problem reflects much worse on you than your child visiting a school specialist every day. Which means YOU get the label, not your child. And then, yes indeed. Labeling does suck.
**If it turns out your child does need extra help, please do not assume that it’s your fault, that you are a bad parent, and that you can somehow fix this yourself. Please do not think that, if you just beat your child more at home, doing so will magically help him/her decode words and comprehend stories and then they will be okay. Because they will not be okay if you do this. They will be very, very, very not okay.
……We have thousands of people in the USA who shun books and reading; these people would rather listen to Snoop Doggy Dogg rap about all the women he takes to bed or spend their time watching Violence: The Movie. I would like to beat these people, too, so they would read more and vote smarter.
Unfortunately, their parents got to them first.
**If you have personal psychological issues, please find a babysitter so your child can stay at home when you come for a school conference. Please do not make him/her listen to you rant about how stupid s/he is and/or how s/he is just like his/her father/mother, the skanky ass who cheated on you 5 years ago with another skanky ass and so you divorced his/her skanky ass in the midst of a nasty custody battle and now you always lovingly refer to his/her skankiness as “Shithead.”
**Appropriate attire for a parent-teacher conference is typically: a nice, clean shirt or sweater, jeans, and decent shoes. As a golden rule, underwear should be worn.
**Inappropriate attire includes but is not limited to: leather and chains and other dominatrix/gay bar frequenter outfits; and hooker costumes combined with clear-heeled stripper shoes and/or thigh-high stripper boots. Dressing your child in the aforementioned clothing is also not generally recommended.
**Also inappropriate for girls under 10: shirts that say LUSCIOUS across the chest; sweatpants that read SEXY across the bottom; sandals, micro mini-skirts, and spaghetti strap/belly-baring mid-drift shirts in 20 degree Fahrenheit weather.
**Please at least LOOK as if you’ve showered before coming to the parent-teacher conference.
**Cologne and perfume: less is more.
**Ditto jewelry.
**Please come sober. Sobriety always helps you get your points across much better.
I cannot tell you how impressed I am to read this. I hope it does well in the search engines because this is useful information, which of course means that not nearly enough people know about it.
My husband is a teacher in an inner-city school. He tells me stuff like that all the time.
I’m going to print this and send it to my principal so he can put it in his mimeograph (I swear) and hand it out to all of the teachers to stick into kid’s backpacks.
Hmmm… maybe not. Maybe I’ll just plagarize this and leaflet the school.
Hmmm… well, hell, how could I do this without getting caught or have any of the teachers get into trouble? Maybe I’ll just give it to oldest’s teacher and tell her she can use it at her discretion. Like a little checklist. And then we can laugh about it. I’m fairly sure she’ll laugh… lol
‘Cause it’s all true; oh-so-very-true.
I overheard a skankyass conversation once and it wasn’t pretty. And there was this really cute little boy standing there, looking from mom to the other lady, back and forth, listening intensely. I felt really bad for that little boy.
Our kids just got through testing last week. Lordy! It’s awful! And now GEE dubya is talking about signing off on NCLB again. Do ya think he might come up with the funding this time? I mean, testing is okay and knowing where we are and where we need to be are okay… but not without the freakin’ funding, man!
Don’t even get me started on monies for salaries and professional development. It steams me and I’m not even a teacher! Well, maybe I am but I’m not degreed, hired, employed, or practicing as one within the school district.
But I feel like I would know how to play one on TV.
That should count for something.
I think you could call it bi-lingannual reviews. But then, I only speak Spanglish so, what do I know?
Either way: I think you are quite the cunning-linguist in any language.
And that’s not even a smart-alek-lesbian-joke, either.
WONDERFUL!
Yes yes yes! Thank you for this!
I especially loved your paragraph about how a lot of reading is developmental and sometimes kids just aren’t ready for it. YES. So so true. I saw the product of shoving kids along a prescribed path that didn’t match their developement in high school. I can think of several who I really felt that there had never been a true disability, that their instruction just got off track early on and then snowballed, so that by the time they reached high school, it was really about missing the instruction they needed at the time they needed it.
Some aspects of behavior are developmental, too, which is why I get irritated that I have so many behavior referrals for kindergartners and 1st graders, like they’re ready for a BD room.
Parent-teacher conferences are eye-openers for what behaviors the kids have learned, too. So I like what you said about parents solving their psychological issues. I just had one fo those 2 weeks ago, where I think the mother was disabling her kid more than any biological condition.
Oy. It can be rather discouraging, can’t it?
I still think it’s the coolest thing int he world that you can speak enough Spanish to translate. Even if it makes your face tired.
This is great, Amy. I lauged out loud when you said underwear should be worn, mainly because I know there has to be a back story, and I can’t wait to hear it. Oh, the things you must see…
Cologne: Agreed. Less is ABSOLUTELY more.
And, I’m really glad that you can speak Spanish because who else would I call when I need something translated for an inquisitive 3 year old.
those are great tips & I know I personally always limited myself to two gold chains with shirt only three buttons open, because less IS more.
BUT I really came by because I found a comment on my space from someone who says they are you, but then they said that Corona Light tastes as good as Heineken and all I can say is this:
if you went to Mexico I guarantee you would find many thousands of people drinking Heineken, but if you went to Holland no one would ever drink a CL. Cute commercials, yes, but . . .
I almost wet myself laughing when I read this! Great information, but great humor as well.
I have nothing to add. Great list!