Parent Conferences

It doesn't matter how many years I've been doing this or how I know, logically, that the same thing happens every year, but here's how it always goes: I get worried, worried sick, almost, about meeting with all my students' parents. No matter how prepared I am for the conferences, or how hard I've been working with the students, I always get all these gut twisting fears. I worry the parents will ask me questions that imply I'm not doing enough, or that they'll express extreme dissatisfaction with their child's experience in my classroom. I start worrying at least a week before, and then worry almost nonstop for a week stright.

And then the conferences will actually happen and they'll be wonderful. I'll enjoy meeting the parents, delight in celebrating the students, and skillfully coach the students through a goal setting process. I'll end up feeling a sense of gratitude from the parents, and a renewed determination to help them all reach their fullest potential. All in all it's always a positive experience. But---that doesn't change one bit the extreme anxiety I get the next time they come around.

Tomrrow and Tuesday are our fall conferences, so I'm in the anxious phase right now. I'll be glad when they're over.

My Girls' First Mom

Easter is the one who coined the lovely name for Florence, Robert's sister, my daughters' other mother: Our First Mom. I had sometimes called her their "real mom" and she is always referred to by her parents as "the Late." "Our first mom" is such a better name. It hasn't been easy, knowing how to honor her memory, how to speak with them about her death, and how to come to terms--myself---with the very confusing feelings of gratitude and anger I sometimes feel. Gratitude for the gift of these children, but of course anger at the world we live and the choices that people made that caused a mother to die and these children to suffer so unnecessarily. But if not for this tragedy, I would not have my precious little family. Robert is still unable to speak much about his sister. There is a very deep sadness there that I suspect may be coupled with crippling guilt--that he wasn't able to do anything to help in time.

One wonderful way of honoring, loving, and remebering developed quite accidentally over the last few months. I loved The Lion King broadway production that I saw with mom and grandma in NYC. There is a powerful broadway-esque song that isn't in the Disney movie called "He Lives in You". In the play it seemed to strongly signify black Christian spiritualism in the US and the "HE" seemed to reference god more than Mufasa. It's got a very gospel feel, but also African drumming and rhythms. I downloaded the song when I got home and it has become Easter's "favorite song", as in "play my favorite song, please," everyday in the car. A few weeks ago I told her about seeing the play and how spectacular it was and about how the song fits in the plot she knows from the Disney movie. I told her we should change the "He" to "She" because little Simba's story is just like her story--so that she could remeber her first mom. So driving home from the library today, a few weeks later, I hear her singing along in her sweet, sincere, soft singing voice:"She lives in me, She watches over, In your reflection, she lives in you. She lives in me."