To quote a student:

"But Mr. M, yo' momma's not a big black lady!" How right you are young man. That is generally the response you get when you tell a student you are calling home. Though my intentions for Parent/Teacher Conferences are not to get any kids in trouble, I imagine there are some students who heard it from momma.

This afternoon/evening and I had a series of unscheduled, improvised conversations with individual parents. I mentioned to a few that their child had problems turning in work, or I had to give him/her instructions no less than 11 times per activity per day, or my favorite: your student believes paper is for throwing/eating/spitting/flicking/plucking/inappropriate- note-passing and not school work. In most cases, the response was something to the effect of: "Oh no s/he di'int!" (that's not stereotyping...it's generalizing, and that still really happened!) I am glad to know that I have a few parents on my side, but I'm still waiting for a student's mother to come into my classroom and come at me for something. Trust me, I've heard some stories.

In a completely un-related story taking place no where near I live, [Ironic] You live in Medford? Come on lady!

Alright, in all seriousness, I feel very safe at my job and I will stop kidding about this for those of you who don't think its funny (Mom). But I get that comment from a lot of people, and usually find it ridiculous because if I can't feel safe talking about math with uninterested 12-year-olds then the terrorists have won.

And because I'd love nothing better than to be a crazy old math teacher some day, I decided to do something completely unrelated this weekend in DC. I saw Raul Midon in concert last night, and temporarily doubted my life choices, which could have been aspiring to do this. (Sorry I had to use Leno...I heard him first on Letterman a while back) Alright, I'll never be able to do that, and I have my sense of sight...oh well, teaching math it is! I hope I gave you enough links/videos to watch and be entertained because nothing really exciting happened at conferences like I thought.