From 2019: School: Parent-Teacher Conferences

The centrum area outside of the
boys' classrooms.

**The events in this post happened in February. I may back-date posts later after I am done catching up with writing.

In mid-February, I got a notice through the classroom texts among the moms that the boys would be receiving report cards. Right away, we were assigned a conference time to meet with Ethan's teacher and pick up the report card. Nobody was sure whether Ben would receive a report card or not- after all, he had been in school here for only a few weeks! It took a week of talking to the teacher and the room mom (my lack of knowledge, nothing lacking on their part) for me to determine that he would receive a report card. For Ben's conference, I was told that the teacher wanted to meet with all of the parents at one time, and then she would meet with the parents afterwards if they had individual concerns.

Ben's art from Holocaust
Remembrance Day

The conferences were happening on a Thursday afternoon, so Dave made sure to be off of work. We arrived a few minutes early, and I finally (!!!) got another look at the interior of the school and the boys' classrooms. There was work posted in the hallway, including some of Ben's. In general, the classrooms were very traditional and less decorated than is normal in America. Each student has his or own separate desk. They are arranged in rows or pairs, reflecting the generally teacher-centered style of teaching. There were lots of posters and student work, all of it reflecting what the students were studying. There weren't rugs or curtains, so I could understand why the boys felt like the classrooms were really loud when they first arrived. There are definitely lots of echoes.

Inside the classroom

Unbeknownst to me, the reason that Ben's teacher had called a group meeting was because several parents had concerns about the homework assigned and teaching happening in the class. She and her co-teacher (they split subjects, not teaching at the same time) sat up front, and over the course of more than an hour, explained their teaching methods and why she was deviating from the lessons in the students' books.

All of this was done in rapid-fire Italian. I followed as much of it as I could, understanding that her point was that she doesn't teach straight out of the book because a) 21st century students need to be involved, engaged, and interact with their learning and b) the students needed differentiated work in certain areas. The parents then asked questions, at which point I was pretty lost. I did understand when she was talking about Ben and how at times she asked him to demonstrate native English.

More than anything, I came away from the meeting with a lot of empathy for Ben's teacher. Teaching is hard. Before the meeting, one of the moms joked with me that now I'd see 'how Italian moms love and protect their children'. Even with my limited understanding, I could see that the moms (Dave was the only dad there), definitely asked very pointed questions. Ben's teacher chose to call the meeting, but it definitely wasn't easy or stress-free.

Teaching is hard everywhere. Parents love their kids everywhere.

We didn't talk to Ben's teacher after the meeting. Part of that was due to the fact that we had to get to Ethan's conference. Also, while Ben's teacher is very good, I don't think she

Later that afternoon I saw one of the moms at soccer practice and confirmed that my basic understanding was correct. Apparently the norm has been for the classrooms at their school to be very teacher-centered and traditional.

Teaching is hard.

Getting books for Ben
Report Cards
Conferences
The school

[This is another unfinished post from 2019. I'll try to record some of what I left off below.]

Nobody told us where to get school materials for the boys. Actually, more honestly, they may have told us and we didn't understand. We tried shopping for the notebooks that Ben needed at a supermarket, but they didn't have them. It turns out there are special shops to go to for school supplies, and one was right across the street from school. Notebooks for elementary students have extra lines in them and that helps them work on handwriting (tough to explain). We ended up ordering Ben's books for each subject from Amazon.

Ben's school books that came in
the Amazon order