We held spring conferences via Zoom again this spring. The end of the mask mandate made the admin team at my school skittish about inviting all the parents of all the kids into the building over a two-day period. After my recent seven-day illness, where I napped for five to six hours a day and slept for twelve or more hours per night EVERY day for a week, I am glad for the decision.
Last week I made it to Tuesday before missing five consecutive workdays. I returned for the last day before two days of conferencing over Zoom. I was concerned that my students would not be prepared for conferences because they had to start their conference prep with a sub, and I didn't have time to meet with any students individually while trying figure what had and hadn't happened in my classroom during the two partial weeks I missed.
However, I needn't have worried. My students are confident and articulate when presenting. Their self-ratings and goals were thoughtful and reflective. Some parents expressed surprise to learn that there had been no coaching from me on the presentations. Even the student who has been traveling this week with her mom and was not able to do any preparation before her conference, was able to talk about her successes and struggles with specificity and set goals to meet before she becomes a fifth grader (all while sitting on a beach with sunglasses on and palm trees and blue skies in the background).
I love conferencing with students and their families. In my first few years of teaching, they were intimidating and anxiety-provoking. But I've reached a point where I have to do almost no preparation outside of preparing my students to lead their conferences (and the slideshow templates I've created for Zoom conferences thanks to COVID make that part ridiculously easy), and no longer have anxiety about talking to families about their student's successes, challenges, and goals. In fact, I look forward to it. As I ended my longest run of conferences (eight in a row), I commented to my husband, "So much smiling!" It's a good problem to have.
Day two of conferences featured a strange strobe effect on my work computer where the laptop screen would literally flash repeatedly and then stop. It happened while I was browsing files, on Zooms, and while I was doing other things, ignoring the computer completely. Thankfully this did not transfer to the monitor I had all my windows open on, but even checking the display configuration made no difference.
The flashing laptop screen in my peripheral vision was a major distraction during the first four conferences of the day and became more difficult to ignore as it increased in frequency. But as my fifth conference of the day started, my audio settings went haywire. The external speaker stopped working, and the only audio I could get was very, very faint through the laptop speaker. I literally spent the conference with my laptop on my shoulder just so I could hear what the student and parent were saying. At least the screen strobe effect didn't bother me with the laptop screen angled over the top of my head.
Well over half of my families paused at either the start of end of the conference to ask how I'm feeling and express how glad they are that I'm feeling better. Every family of a student who is new to the building this year, one new this calendar year, told me that the rigor at my school and my expectations are much higher than they had experienced in their previous school. But every family was grateful for the change. One set of parents said they didn't realize what their child should have been learning in third grade. Two told me they felt blessed that their child was in my class. But the highlight of my spring conferences was the moment where one of these families began by saying, "Thank you for being you," and then proceeded to credit me with reigniting their child's passion for and joy in learning.
Have I mentioned how much I love conferences?
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