Dear Diary:
Sample text book? Check. Copies of expectations and class rules? Check. Power Point explaining key curricular points? Check. Presentable appearance? Check. No matter how many times I go through a Back to School Night I always run through this list in my head out of nervousness. I spend all day talking to groups of children, teenagers to be exact. One would think that looking out into a sea of faces would not unnerve me after all this time, but it does. I dislike Back to School Night with a passion. But, just like the first or last day of school, it too must come. I must do what every educator must and I put on a show for the parents.
I often used theatrical allusions to explain exactly what I do to non-educators because I don’t think that just saying “I teach” really conveys what I do. Back to School night is akin to making a 90 minute summer blockbuster movie out of a five hundred page book. In the whopping ten minutes I am given to talk to the parents of the lovely adolescents I teach I have to encapsulate what I do with their children, what I use to do it, and add just enough pizzazz to convince them that I am actually educating their children, not just talking about Spanish. Just like the movie versions of books, something is always missing and I always feel like I haven’t really done justice to what I do everyday in the class in the ten minute blips I have to present on this yearly occasion.
The one glaring difference is that unlike a movie, this show is interactive and the audience can interrupt the showing. There is always the one poor mom who walks in late because she can’t get her bearings in the building. There is always the two or three that feel the need to talk to me one on one even though we have communicated over the phone or over email practically every week since the first week of school. And of course, there is always the heckler. In a World Language classroom the heckler usually manifests him or herself in one of two forms: the parent who speaks the language you teach and makes sure you and everyone else knows it, or the parent who is still feeling the sting of a tramautic high school language class experience and brings the psychological baggage with them.
If I could choose a soundtrack to this event it would be “The Flight of the Bumblebee.” You talk at light speed you meet what feels like a thousand people in two hours and, after all is said and done and you have put on your show for your rather dazed and anxious group of parents you feel like the last two and a half hours of your life have passed in a blink. At the end of it all, you, dear educator, feel like you have lived two full days of your life with no sleep and just as exhaustion kicks in, your usually caffeine addled brain realizes, “Oh my God, I have to be here again at 7:30 in the morning.”
The day after Back to School Night is usually a haze. Not just because you are tired and you can’t help but feel like you never really left the building, but because now you have to try to teach the children of the parents you met in 10 minute blips the night before and all they want to talk about is what you thought of their parents.
In my ideal world, I would actually be able to answer this barrage of questions with more detail that I am actually able.
In my ideal world, the parents would come in during the day, and be a figurative fly on the wall of my class. They would actually watch what I help their daughters and sons do, not just hear about it. In my ideal world, I wouldn’t have to rush through a 10 minute spiel about my class and show them exactly what makes my class great and enjoyable for the kids. I would not have to answer my students’ questions with a generic, “Oh, they were very nice.” I would actually be able to say something of significance because I would have actually had the opportunity to talk with their parents and forge a collaborative relationship. Of course this only the stuff of my summer blockbuster about teaching because I am not administration and I would never be able to implement this kind of idea. So I accept my role, say the requisit nice thing to each child that asks and begin one of the five shows a day I put on that the parents never get to see - the actually entertaining one that my captive audience of kids gets to see everyday in the classroom.
Rafaela
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