Back-to-School was last night. 65 sets of parents out of my 175 kids. Pretty low attendance percentage. But surprisingly one of the best in the school because I have honors kids whose parents show up more often.

The biggest reason for this low parent involvement is that we have a lot of "cap" students who come from far away. The schools in their areas are over capacity so these kids get the pleasure of riding a bus for 1.5 hours before and after school to get here everyday. Their parents probably cannot take off work in order to come so they don't. I'm sure the MTA bus strike did not help either. But still, it says a lot about the discipline issues the teachers face when we can never contact the parents via phone (disconnected numbers), and they don't ever come to school. Okay, enough complaining. All in all, I have to say that my kids this year are more behaved, harder working, and have the fewer absences and tardies that my previous years' students. I'm not sure how much of that is me "blossoming" into a better teacher and how much of that is just the level of the kids. The age-old question of nature vs. nurture.

I don’t spend a lot of time talking to individual parents because that will come during parent/teacher conference night in 2 weeks. Last night was just a 15-minute lecture to the parents about how the class is run, expectations of the students, and what parents can do to help their child’s achievement. Non-stop talking for 2 hours. (I’m sooo tired today.) Parents also get to browse through their child’s binder and see the posted work on the walls.

Once after a back-to-school night for my brother, my parents came home really worried about his future (a trend that still continues till now). His 2nd-grade teacher had hung up a research project they had done on their future profession. My brother’s poster was on MAD SCIENTISTS, complete with drawings of exploding test tubes and crazy white hair. Luckily, they weren’t as worried as my next-door neighbors. At least science was an academic field. Clarissa’s poster was all about SCHOOL BUS DRIVERS. Her parents didn’t understand that she was paying a high complement to our bus driver who was one of the nicest ladies in the world – she always greeted us by name and baked cookies for us at least once a month. Yummmmm! The world is so much nicer and inspiring because of little acts of kindness.