Parent Teacher Conference 1
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First of all, you get to connect parents with the almost-adults to which they gave birth. Sometimes this is like a moment-of-clarity machine that keeps a steady stream of insight pushing through your brain. Occasionally there are depressing moments, when you realize that there’s a reason the kid’s premonition of the future is so bleak: parents who can’t keep their eyes on you or who invent excuses (lie) in elaborate ways to explain the 60% attendance rate their offspring pulled in the last three months. Other times you hear unexpected compliments from parents of kids you thought hated you with singular intensity. There’s those, too.
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I am wearing a sweater and it is warm out. I am uncomfortable. Some of the dorm students are playing basketball on the cement court on which I look out from my desk. My friend who works with them says there has been an outbreak of huffing and the kids I see, some of whom I also coach, have the glazed, hyperdecimated look in their eyes. The eyes give everything away.
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My labtop is broken. Numerous things saved on the labtop are irretrievable. This is a disappointment, to say the least.
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I did the “teaching outside the box” today with my Honors class: went outside for the last thirty minutes of class and did an exercise in animating inanimate environments (not as difficult/obscure/abstract/hippie-crunchie as you might think). The sky was blue enough to make me wonder how difficult it would be to adjust to being blind. That then became the leading journal topic of the day: Students, if you were disabled, which disability would you most fear? Which would you most accept? Why? How would your life change? Etc. I don’t know if I have answers to half the questions I ask, which is suggestive of a false sense of formative influence that comes with having a miniscule amount of authority to wield.
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I have a friend who is having a baby. If you are that friend, have you had that baby?
First of all, you get to connect parents with the almost-adults to which they gave birth. Sometimes this is like a moment-of-clarity machine that keeps a steady stream of insight pushing through your brain. Occasionally there are depressing moments, when you realize that there’s a reason the kid’s premonition of the future is so bleak: parents who can’t keep their eyes on you or who invent excuses (lie) in elaborate ways to explain the 60% attendance rate their offspring pulled in the last three months. Other times you hear unexpected compliments from parents of kids you thought hated you with singular intensity. There’s those, too.
*
I am wearing a sweater and it is warm out. I am uncomfortable. Some of the dorm students are playing basketball on the cement court on which I look out from my desk. My friend who works with them says there has been an outbreak of huffing and the kids I see, some of whom I also coach, have the glazed, hyperdecimated look in their eyes. The eyes give everything away.
*
My labtop is broken. Numerous things saved on the labtop are irretrievable. This is a disappointment, to say the least.
*
I did the “teaching outside the box” today with my Honors class: went outside for the last thirty minutes of class and did an exercise in animating inanimate environments (not as difficult/obscure/abstract/hippie-crunchie as you might think). The sky was blue enough to make me wonder how difficult it would be to adjust to being blind. That then became the leading journal topic of the day: Students, if you were disabled, which disability would you most fear? Which would you most accept? Why? How would your life change? Etc. I don’t know if I have answers to half the questions I ask, which is suggestive of a false sense of formative influence that comes with having a miniscule amount of authority to wield.
*
I have a friend who is having a baby. If you are that friend, have you had that baby?
posted by am at
3:07 PM
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