It's almost surreal to think that the end of the school year is almost upon us. Wasn't it just yesterday that we were all getting ready for Back to School? The good news is that this means that warmer weather is coming along with all of the other wonderful activities that signal the beginning of summer. This past Friday, I was driving to school when I received a phone call from a former teaching colleague and dear friend of mine. She was contacting me to let me know that she had run into the parent of one of my former students. This particular parent also worked as the pupil services secretary at my former school so I had the pleasure of having two of her children as my students. Her older son is currently attending college in Westchester County and she wanted to let me know that he will be graduating in June with a degree in English. He told her to let me know that I inspired him to become an English teacher when he was in my English Language Arts class in middle school. … [Read more...]
Calling All Parents! #Education
This past week, I have taken the opportunity to reach out to many of the parents of my students just to introduce myself and to give them an update on how their children are progressing in class. I cannot begin to tell you how many parents immediately get scared when I introduce myself because they think I am calling to give them a bad report about their child. Nine times out of ten I have to reassure them right away that this is a good call and that there is nothing to worry about. As an educator, it makes me wonder how often my colleagues are calling parents just to tell them that their children are doing well or simply to touch base. My experience has been that I get a lot more support and cooperation from parents that I contact regularly than parents that I only call to give complaints to. After all, nobody wants to hear bad things about their child all the time. I'm a parent and I hate when I get bad reports from my sons' teachers. The response to this round … [Read more...]
Wordless Wednesday/Letters From My Students…
My graduating eighth grade students wrote some letters to me and reminded me exactly why I became a teacher in the first place. (Just click on each photo to read each letter.) … [Read more...]
