sigh.

Well, I now understand the conference set-up. All the teachers line up along the wall with their grade books and laptops, and the parents take a spot on a queue to have their few minutes. I headed straight for science, but the guy was late to his desk, so I jumped over to the history teacher, who had nice things to say and we went over the grades and everything was going pretty well. So then I saw the math teacher's line was shorter and headed to him next. We had a pretty good talk, he's a nice, young, and enthusiastic teacher, and it seems that Brian has missed some homeworks as well as had some poor grades on recent tests. So we agreed that I will check that he has done his homework, not just by asking but by checking the homework log online and then seeing the actual work, and that Brian will come in to the teacher in the morning if he is ever unsure of the material.

On to science next, and I had a bit of a longer wait for him. Apparently it's the labs in that class, Brian won't answer in enough detail and he isn't following the proper 'rubric' for these assignments. So that's mainly what has dragged his grade way down in there; for the most part he has had respectable test scores. I moved along after this to religion (doing OK but missed an assignment so will lose points on that, he claims he emailed it and it was in his drafts folder, not really a viable excuse and also probably means he submitted it late anyway because I think they're usually turned in in hard copy) and Spanish (not much to say here, this is oddly enough his best class, his only A, and she said that his '96' average on tests was "unusual.") Hmm. She's not kidding. (haha)

Finally, I glanced over to the longest line and yes, I had to wait on it. English. Brian is sitting right at 80 in that class, which is generally where he sits in English classes no matter what. So I introduced myself and explained that Brian seems to be lacking the family's English and writing gene, and what can I do about it, and where is he falling short...and again it seems to be that he has come in unprepared for a few tests, like on poetry pieces and outside reading, mainly. His writing grades were more solid, so that was good, but his grammar test scores were not so impressive.

But overall I left the night feeling that there is hope. At least I didn't have an experience as I overheard next to me at one point, where a parent was being asked, "does he want to be here?" All of his teachers (except for science) seemed to feel he was on the right track and would be able to bring his grade up substantially. The science teacher didn't say he couldn't, but he did have some of the lowest grades in the class, consistently, on labs, which would also annoy me as a teacher, if the student showed no motivation to improve or change.

And here I sit, yet again, not having a job for the day. Usually on Fridays, the job bell goes crazy but this morning Megan was late which caused me to be gone for a longer period at a more critical time, and I also think that fact that it's a short student day and a conference day is making less teachers take the day off. I expect this may continue up through the Thanksgiving holiday, but then usually they take days during December. But this year is a new animal and things have not been the same at all. I'm afraid my job search will probably slow down a bit as well (as in I won't see any more listing for which to apply and be ignored,) so that will be depressing. I don't imagine most companies are heavily into hiring in December.

In other news, Megan has swimming for both teams after school again today, and then next week she has to get in three more high school practices. They have it on the schedule for the days before and after Thanksgiving but I don't know if they thought that through. Friday is also their homecoming dance.

And our college search is more or less on hold now, because of all this swimming - over Christmas we may take some day trips to schools close by in NY, NJ, and maybe PA (she will be at Villanova anyway for the training trip) and then it will go on hold again until after Easter, and then she will be preparing for her AP tests in school, as well as the SAT and ACT tests. Our summer vacation will probably be a driving trip to the south, Virginia and North Carolina perhaps, to have a look at some schools down there, and maybe in Maryland as well. Also, for some reason, University of Miami keeps coming up. Maybe we can somehow have a quick look at it, even without her, while we're down there in April.