Parent-teacher conferences took place tonight. There wasn’t a huge turn out, but it was nice to meet parents. Students act very differently when they’re by themselves (instead of around their peers) and they act even more differently when around their parents! I was kicking myself tonight for not keeping up my Spanish skills–that was the major impediment tonight.

Grades for next grading period due tomorrow. I’ve been thinking a lot about the purpose of these mid-semester grades. The purpose is to send feedback to students, so I’m not as concerned about the grades matching up numerically with students’ performance as I am with the grades sending the appropriate messages. For example, one student was so thrilled to hear that he is going to get a B in my class. He told me he’s never gotten a B in math before. His mother was so proud. Truthfully, he is closer to getting a C than a B, but I’d rather him get a B now and work hard to maintain it (or improve it to an A!) rather than feel like he’ll never be good at math.