Well, today was the first day of Parent/Teacher Conferences. They had Subway brought in for us and that was really nice because by about 1pm I was starving. We only saw about 10 students and their families which was disappointing. My CT says that the second night is always better. We shall see!!
So, leading up to the conferences has been rather interesting. It seems that our students have learned many new ways of passing notes since I was in school, you know, back in the dark ages. In my day and time a note was passed by either having a kind classmate pass it or perhaps, by simply dropping it on the floor. No more of the fairly simple straight forward methods. They are now huge productions. Here is the latest methods of note passing. "Excuse me, may I please throw a piece of paper away," the polite Student A asks. "Well of course you can, and thank you for asking," I reply. Student A goes to trash can and throws a paper away. Moments later another student asks, "Can I sharpen my pencil?" "Absolutely," I answer. That student goes to sharpen her pencil, stopping first at the trash can to retrieve "the note." I did finally figure out what was going on and asked them to stop. But it gets even more elaborate.
Several of the girls starting passing around a spiral notebook. It might be resting in a book that supposedly needs to be returned. They managed several different ways of passing this notebook around. And it made the rounds in all different content areas. Finally, I got a hold of the Justin Bieber notebook and the Biebster went bye-bye. However, the very next day a plain black spiral was taken away in their math class. I just about pulled my hair out. But the spiral notebook isn't the end of it.
The next day, my CT and I are on a half-day collaboration so there is a substitute in the classroom. I go up between classes to see how things are going and she tells me that one of our students from the 6/7 hour class came in during 8/9 hours with a pass from a teacher and walks over to another student and hands her a note, claiming it was from a teacher, then walks out. Can you believe that?
My question is what are some creative ways that I might try to use to combat this distracting note-writing? It has gotten way out of control. We have called in some big guns. Their names... Dad 1 and Dad 2. And believe me, they really help. However, not every girl has an involved Dad so I need some more ideas. I need any and all ideas because what might work for one young lady may not work for all of them and this crazy insane note writing needs to stop!!!
