Conferences...

Last week we had our Parent/Teacher/Student conferences. It is a crazy week with the book fair for the PTA and two kids conferences at one school and then one conference at another school but that student has 8 teachers. We always look forward to these days and finding out how the kids are doing in their classes, good or bad. We always have good communication with all their teachers regularly anyway but it is nice to sit down face to face and discuss anything that needs to be taken care of. Of course I wish my children were perfect but I am under no illusion that they actually are perfect so it is nice to know if there is anything going on that we need to know to rectify any situation.

So with all that said, we had Sami's conference first and Pat was here for that one. Last time we spent an hour and half at the school talking to everyone, so this time we were a little shorter on time so we tried to spend the majority with her core teachers. She has great teachers that expect the best from her, some times they push, which is great because she can deliver! She has gone up or stayed the same in every class except for one and we got to discuss what the problem was and she set goals for her self to correct the situation! I was so proud listening to her explain what went wrong and how to fix it all by herself. She took the blame and worked out the solution with out help from Pat or I. Now with all that said her grades were good, ALL A's except for the one that is a B+ that she has a goal for herself to get that back up because she had an A in it for the first half of the year, so she is capable of an A in that class. Sami also was excepted into the National Junior Honor Society because of her academic abilities and her outside class activities. This has been a great year and we have many things to be proud of Sami for, she is amazing me all the time.

The boys conferences last about 15 minutes because the teachers have a lot of students to get through in two short days and Pat was not here for those because he was off to DC for a few days. Patrick was first up and we have had some problems in the past that we thought were improving but it would nice to hear what the teacher thought about it. We sat down and during the conference we heard many YEAH's from the teacher! She was excited to let Patrick explain his grades and show us which ones are up from the previous quarter! He has improved quite a bit and he has also improved his behavior in class, YEAH! Not as much talking, more listening, more time management, no homework missing!!!!! He does have to work on asking for help when he is not understanding something but that is going to happen soon because he is doing extra work at home until he learns to ask the teacher or his parents for extra help before the test. Again, he has all A's except for one that was an A and it will be an A again before the year is over because he has set goals for himself also!

Jonathan was the last one on the list and he is a very interesting guy. He has been on a chart system for behavior because he has a tendency to get off task easily, so we have been working with the teacher and Jonathan to improve that. We found out at conference that he is doing so much better that he is now off the chart system because he is doing so much better. YEAH! He has also improved on reading a little bit, but that is not a huge concern for me because my other two had problems reading until fourth or fifth grade and then BAM, they took off and love it! So we will continue to read and he will get there eventually. He is doing better with his spelling and his math is wonderful. The problem with this grade is that so much is tied into reading that since he is slowing working into reading everything else is slow going but again not too worried. The other two had the same problems and it all came together in the end. He is having to read a little more then the other kids in class at home, do a few worksheets a week at home, and we make him read more when we are out and about so he can hopefully have it all click soon but you never know when that will happen.

All in all we had great conferences and these kids amaze me everyday with the good and the bad. It is wonderful to be in a school system that keeps in contact with the parents so much that I am not surprised by anything at conferences. The teachers are amazing and they are wonderful at getting the best out of my kids. I am not going to be ready to leave here when and if Pat gets orders because it will be hard to leave a place that has had such a wonderful impact on our family!