Parent/Teacher Conferences As Urban Team Sport

I can so relate to this post about parent/teacher conferences. Why, they’re a new urban team sport. It’s from My Sidewalk Chalk, which focuses on education.

In addition to navigating parent/teacher conferences, My Sidwalk Chalk blogger, Joyce Joyce Szuflita, consults with families who are looking for a good fit for their kids nursery school through high school, public or private. She knows Brownstone Brooklyn and she can help. 718 781-1928.

Let me explain the rules. You wait with hundreds of other parents in a giant shivering mass outside the school doors like it’s a Who concert with festival seating. (Imagine how those teachers feel, trapped inside with only an endless line of “issues” before them)

If you are an “elite” NUTS player like myself, you have a list of teachers and room numbers coded by location. In a school the size of Murrow, this is key. You race to the farthest room, sign your name on the list outside the door and repeat on all lists in the near vicinity. Then you send your husband who is having trouble reading the map to sign up on other floors. (This may be a tactical error)

If you are positioned outside the door when your name comes up on the list, you may go in and have your 3 minutes. If you arrive back to the classroom after your name has already been called you go to the end of the now endless list. The art of it is to fit in a couple of the less popular teachers between the majors.

The team who finishes all their conferences in the least amount of time gets to go home and have a stiff drink

!