Upcoming conferences

Wow, I can't believe that in 2 days it will be November. We have conferences this week. I have to admit, they are not my favorite. It seems that parents do not want to hear any negatives about their child, so when you do bring up something, they immediately want to blame you, the teacher.
I am pretty good about documenting everything and I send progress reports weekly, so there should be no surprises academically. Now I have to decide if I want to bring up some behavior/work habit issues. I think with certain parents I will just keep my mouth shut and let them figure it out on their own. I have one set of parents that don't believe anything I say so I have decided not to say anything anymore. It is sad because I am just trying to help their child to become a responsible person, but they don't believe he EVER does anything wrong. Ugh! I love teaching, but the parents can be a real challenge at times.
I wonder if they realize that we really are PROFESSIONALS!! As in we went to college for this and we stay current with what is going on in education. Why, oh why, would any teacher make up something about a student? I mean, don't we all have enough to contend with?

On a good note, I have been visiting the Teachers Pay Teachers website and I have to say there are some pretty good things on that site. And lots of the teachers have free downloads for you. If you haven't visited the site I highly recommend it.

I have been using the math website www.ixl.com with my class to practice basic math skills and review in class work. I am quite impressed with the site. Check it out if you are interested in math!

I signed up for the math site www.tenmarks.com and set up a class and had my students do some work on this site this past week. The frustrating part is that I am now trying to go in and check their work and the report section doesn't seem to be working. I have sent an email and they responded quickly and said is should be fixed by Monday morning. I sure hope so as I told my students that I would be taking a grade on this.

I have spent way too much time on school things this past weekend. I really need to get a life!!!