2010.11.17

Parent Conference

Last Wednesday, I attended the parent conference hosted by Cayuga Height Elementary School. Mimi’s teacher, Mrs. Patterson is a very experienced teacher. She has taught 5th grade for decades.

I feel very lucky that Jordan is in her class. Mrs. Patterson is always energetic and friendly. At the same time, she holds high expectations to her students. She takes time understanding the level of each of her student. She will push the children to reach their potential. Mrs. Patterson not only grades homework herself (I realize that sometimes the homework is graded by the parent volunteers), she also asked children to show the thought process to make sure that he/she understands the concept.

At the begining of the school’s open house, Mrs. Patterson already told all parents to “expect to see grade 2” at your child’s report card. In New York State, school will not send out grading in A, B, C. Instead, children are graded from 1 to 4 (being exceeding the grade level). Level two means that the student still needs to improve on the particular skills (math, reading, spelling, social studies, etc, etc) to match the grade level. She wanted to “warn” parents so we are not alert when seeing the grade that might be lower than what we are used to.

The night before the parent conference, Mimi brought home her report card. In reading that together, Mimi was a little concerned that she didn’t get any “2”. Instead, hers were mostly 3 and 4. I was not sure what happened. I thought it is possible that Mrs. Patterson might have elevated her grading scales.

When meeting with Mrs. Patterson, she first complimented Mimi as an enthusiastic learner with a great sense of humor (of course, it’s from her mother’s gene!! ). She was giving me an example that there was a special presentation for veteran’s day that morning. The presenter was trying to strike a joke at the beginning by asking who is the smartest child in the classroom. There was only one child who raised her hand — Jordan. (I am not sure if this is an indication that she loses touch of the reality????)

Mrs. Patterson said that Mimi has a strong understanding of math concept. She especially pointed out that Mimi is a strong writer. Of course, Mimi still needs to work on her grammer and punctuation to be fluent. However, Mrs. Patterson said that her story will attract people’s attention quickly to make you want to keep reading to know what happened. I saw her writing sample and was also impressed with the level of details she was able to fabricate in the story (and the vocabulary she uses in the story). She went on saying that there were 4 children in the classroom that she couldn’t find “2” for improvement. Mimi was one of them.

Mommy was so proud of Mimi that I didn’t remember how I exited the classroom. In US, teachers tend to see the positive side of children. However, I thought getting the feedback from an experienced teacher with a high expectation like Mrs. Patterson is something to note for.

I didn’t want to “celebrate” the outcome of the conference (because I think Mimi should know she should always do good at school). I still took her out for dinner (and the excuse is that Mommy hasn’t made dinner yet).

We went to her favoriate place, Applebee.

To Mimi, Mommy really is really proud of you. Keep the great work!!

The last time we ate the Asian wonton from Applebee, it was with daddy. We just made the offer to our new house. Mommy was so worry about the new commitment that I didn’t ate any piece of it. I remember the two of them were happily dividing up the wonton and enjoyed it a lot.

Mommy found a piece of pasta in our wonton (which is one ingredient that shouldn’t show up). I told the store manager. He came to explain and apologize. We ended up getting this appetizer free. (After that, we carefully checked everything hoping to get another “free pass”. What a foolish duo).