Day 79 -- Last Night of Conferences

Don't get me wrong.  It's not that I hate the parents of students, or that I dread meeting with them.  I actually kind of like seeing the parents of my students and getting to talk to them about what is going on in class.  What I don't care for are the seriously long days that parent-teacher conferences entail.  After a full day of teaching, we stay until 6:30 meeting with parents.  Tonight when I got home, I was starving, sleepy, and grumpy because my kids were already in bed for the night.  Oh, and I had a headache.  Call the whambulance for me, would you?

But, as I walked in the door, it hit me: this was the last night of conferences for the 2011 season. 

So, am I grateful that parent-teacher conferences are over?  Yes.  But not for the reasons you might think.  Tonight marked the end of the parent-teacher conference season which means spring and spring break are coming.  It also means that I do not have any long nights at school booked for the rest of the year.  Coaching is over, judging is over, and conferences are over.

One thing that I love about teaching is that it has natural closure at the end of every year.  I am a project-oriented person, and I love that each year brings its own unique challenges.  No matter what those challenges are, no matter how frustrating they become, I know that they will not go on indefinitely.  At the end of each year, I can celebrate what went well and reflect upon things that I could do better.  I think of parent-teacher conferences as one of the many items on a to-do list of my year-long project.  Wrapping up the last night of conferences just means I can cross one more thing out on my list and move one step closer to completing this project.

Thank God for the last night of conferences!

Lord, thank you for helping my conferences to go smoothly, and thank you that they are over.  Thank you for giving me the strength to make it through this week.  In your name I pray, Amen.

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