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Tuesday, May 5, 2009

You can’t beat the system

I thought I was being so clever.

I asked for – and (to my pleasant surprise) received – the first appointment with the homeroom teacher at Sunday night’s parent-teacher meetings. The idea was to speak to the teacher before she started to run late.

And, indeed, I was in and out of there in under two minutes.

But there was a catch.

(There always is.)

You see, most of the subject teachers (i.e. morot miktzo’iyot for the Hebraically-oriented amongst you) had not yet arrived.

In other words, I had two choices:

1) I could sit around and wait for the other teachers to show up. Of course, by that time, a long line of parents would have assembled, and I would have been forced to wait even longer.

- OR -

2) I could go home without speaking to the other teachers.

See if you can guess which course of action I chose. (Hint: It wasn’t exactly the hardest decision I’ve ever had to make…)

smile_teeth

5 comments:

  1. my wife would kill me if I made the obvious choice in this situation..... I am satisfied if I at least get most of the teachers - maybe 65%. Usually I get upwards of 90%

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  2. "morot miktzo’iyot for the Hebraically-oriented amongst you"why didn't you write it this way:

    morot-miktzo’iyot-for-the Hebraically-oriented-amongst-you

    I like it better...
    I mean:
    I-like-it-better...
    You did it before, why didn't you do it again...

    ReplyDelete
  3. Rafi - Usually I get upwards of 90%I'm impressed! We find that it's not even worth trying to see certain teachers - such as the subject teachers who are also homeroom teachers (mechanchot or ramim) in their own right...

    M-A-G - I-like-it-better.But most people don't...
    :-)

    ReplyDelete
  4. I always made every effort to speak to all the teachers. As a teacher, I gave maximum hours to speak to the parents.
    One of the final straws in my decision to leave my teaching job was the last "parent teacher night," when I waited and waited (luckily I had some crocheting to do) and then wandered around searching, and the only parent I spoke to was a neighbor whom I had reported to the previous Shabbat.

    I taught for Bagrut and they didn't even show up. I felt/feel sorry for the students. I saw one student who said that his father would talk to me "after talking to the homeroom teacher." Well, that didn't work, since he had one of the last appointments.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Batya - Thanks for sharing a teacher's perspective on parent-teacher meetings. It sounds like these events are even more stressful for the teachers than they are for the parents!

    ReplyDelete

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