(no subject)

[the_rck]

I tried to nap this morning, but by the time I finally relaxed enough to maybe be ready to fall asleep, it was twenty minutes before I had to be up to go to an oncology appointment. I'd had 2.5 hours when I lay down. The appointment was fine but took much longer than I expected because I had to wait twenty minutes to check out afterward. I'll be going back in four months because the nurse practitioner I see picked up on me being nervous about waiting until June to check in. I'm not sure if she quite understands that I don't trust mammograms right now because the mammogram didn't see the lump until six months after I first found it.

I got a flu shot while iI was at the appointment, and it's really hurting this year. Moving the arm at all is unpleasant. The nurse who did the shot put it very high up on the arm. I actually thought she was going to put it into the joint itself.

I'm really glad that Scott didn't work today because parent teacher conferences were grueling. Cordelia's geometry teacher and social studies teacher both had really, really long lines. It took an hour to get through the line to see the geometry teacher and almost as long to see the social studies teacher. Scott saw the business fundamentals teacher without me, while I waited in line for the social studies teacher.

All the teachers seemed pleased with Cordelia. We found out that a couple of the teachers had mailing lists that we weren't on due to Cordelia having been at Community for those three days. The geometry teacher told us that we weren't the first to express unhappiness with 8th grade math at Cordelia's old school. I got the impression that the other parent(s) were also concerned about their kid(s) not having the necessary fundamentals.

The business teacher seems to have talked Scott's ear off. Scott was gone for quite a while for that. Scott says that the teacher is frustrated by the kids who don't understand the difference between writing a ten page research paper and preparing a presentation.

I think my body is starting up another period. The last one started on the 27th, so this is much sooner than is normal for me.

I suspect I'm not going to sleep much tonight because we bought food at Wendy's before the conference. I basically fell over in exhaustion a bit before the cleaning lady left, and we had to get something that wouldn't take long and that might give me enough oomph to get through three hours of conferences. The burger did that much, at least. I was still pretty dead on my feet until about an hour after I ate, but now, almost four hours later, I'm still pretty awake. Unfortunately, my digestive system isn't happy. The timing is bad for any of the things that might help relative to my medications. If I take everything now, I can have vanilla ice cream in an hour which might help (about a 75% chance).

Just have to make myself stand up again...

Comments

[kyrielle]

...lines? They don't do appointments? O.o What the--!

I mean, admittedly my kids are in primary school, but each teacher puts their slots out (I suppose for high school email might work) and you sign up for a slot and that's...just when you're there.

[the_rck]

Elementary school teachers around here make appointments. Once kids hit middle school with a different teacher for each subject, this sort of open house thing is pretty common. We didn't have much difficulty last year because the 8th grade at Cordelia's school was so very small.

Each teacher at this school teaches four classes of 30 to 35 students each (other local high schools have teachers doing five or even six classes of that size each day. They run on semesters rather than on trimesters. This school does trimesters with each child having five classes per trimester instead of six or seven per semester). That's a lot of conferences to try to schedule.

This is how my high school did conferences in the 1980s, so it's not new.

[kyrielle]

*shudders* I hope that is not how our upper-level schools here do it. I don't know how I could make that work. What a horrific waste of parents' time, to spend more time in lines than meeting with the teachers. (And I don't think I'd want to be the teacher with the enormous line either!)

[the_rck]

I'm pretty sure that the idea is to have the teachers only be committed to one ultra long day (they were stuck in the building for about fourteen hours today) as opposed to a lot of them. Each 'conference' is supposed to take five minutes, maximum, and have the opportunity to set up something longer if it's absolutely necessary and can't be done by email or phone.

The elementary schools focus conferences to just a few days (3-5 in my experience) because there aren't as many kids to cover. When you have four to six times the number of students, that sort of conference devours time. The teachers at that level also know the kids better than teachers in middle school or high school can.

[kyrielle]

Even so...have up to 6 parents sign up per half hour? At the start of the half hour, run through those six in whatever order. If they're not there, they lost their slot. If the half hour isn't up when you've processed those six, additional parents (including people who missed) who are hanging around can have a conference.

That seems better than hour-long lines....

If a single parent has two kids three years apart, a senior and a freshman, I sure hope they don't want/need to talk to all or even half of their teachers. O.o With those lines, that becomes a 14-hour day for the parent too. And hopefully they get all the teachers by doing that. O.o

[lemon_badgeress]

Scott says that the teacher is frustrated by the kids who don't understand the difference between writing a ten page research paper and preparing a presentation.

Well then why doesn't this teacher fucking teach them the difference then?

[the_rck]

I think he's not quite sure how. At least, that's all I can come up with. He has told them, after the first couple of people didn't, that they need to face the audience. He also loved what Cordelia did and told the class that they should do exactly what she did. Which pleased Cordelia but isn't, IMO, a great teaching technique.

Then again, other assignments have been things like filling out a job application (for McDonald's using the actual application from their website) and making a resume. At least half the class is seniors, so I'm kind of wondering how they got that far without those skills. Cordelia's in the class because it was the only thing that fit as a last minute substitution in that particular time slot.

I didn't meet the guy, so I don't have a really clear opinion of his personality. Cordelia has decided that she likes him, but I think that may be largely because she's figured out that she can skate by on the assignments and still be a top student in the class. That means she's no longer scared of him.

[evalerie]

Ugh. Pioneer used to do the type of conferences where parents stand in line to see a teacher. I hated those. Community has time slots that you sign up for, which is much better -- though there aren't nearly enough slots for everyone to see everyone, which means that if you don't leap quickly you may not get to see all of your child's teachers, and that's not ideal either.

Sigh....

[the_rck]

I think I'd rather have had time slots, but I'm not sure there's a good way to do conferences for a school that big where each teacher has so very many families to talk to.

If we hadn't gone, we would never have known that the English teacher and the geometry teacher have mailing lists that we weren't on (due to Cordelia's temporary stint at Community). I think that was worth the effort on our part.

[minim_calibre]

My flu shot also hurts like hell. It made finding a comfortable sleep position almost impossible last night because my right hip was hurting and the shot's on my left arm. (It's also high up in the arm because of the position of my tattoo on that arm. I probably should have gone with the other arm so she could go lower.)

[the_rck]

I wonder if it's just particularly bad this year?

I can only get the shot on my right arm because I've had lymph nodes out on the other side. The nurse seemed to be trying to get as close to the shoulder joint as she possibly could, though, and I don't have anything that makes that necessary, so I thought it was odd.