Eager Beaver Parents

This was my third weekend here and my second one where it required me to go to some school function or other. Somebody thought it would be a good idea for a First Year Parents' Briefing to happen on a Saturday afternoon. I'd like to meet that person.

As I am a first year form teacher, I had to be there so there was lots of hand shaking and smiling. Parents here seem like a different kettle of fish to those at home. We take a much more relaxed view to the whole thing. Not here though. Parents wanted me to assess after a handful of lessons how their child was doing, was going to do and how they were responding to secondary school life.

It was round robin affair where the parents were grouped into their child's form class. I was in the humanities department, with the Geography teacher. Despite not really knowing what I was supposed to present on (come to think about it, nobody told me I would be presenting anything) I bluffed my way through a little speech and obviously gave them enough information not to ask me too many more questions. We saw four groups and more or less said the same things four times. I think the Geography teacher felt as stupid as I did, repeating ourselves with the other hearing it each time. When was starting the fourth class, he turned to me and said ‘this is the fourth time of saying this!’ Little did we know the trouble that would bring in the question and answer part of the presentation:

‘You said that this was your fourth time doing this talk. How do you deal with that in the classroom when you have to repeat lessons. Do you get fatigued teaching the same thing?’

Other questions we got asked included:
‘Which chapters in the textbook are you going to cover?’
and
‘Can you give us dates now of when all the end of topic tests are going to be?’

Like I said, a different kettle of fish out here. But I am slightly scared about the results my students get, because judging from these parents it'll be 100% my fault and 0% theirs.

So I must go and prepare my Ancient China intro class for tomorrow. And who says History is dull?!