Sitting in on Quirky Conferences

October 14, 2009
When I was little, I hated Barbies. To this day, they’re pretty close to pond scum. But I used to love playing “house,” or pretending I was the teacher in a school and Liesl was my student (along with some of our neighbor kids... fitting, right?! it’s the bossiness in me!) or making my American doll go to school. Today, I felt as though I was playing dress up once again. Auntie’s officially made me the guardian as far as school goes, so I got to sit through 15 conferences today. Exciting, right?

So, to start off, 8 of the 15 kids are passing everything. Not a great percentage. Of the 7 who are failing, 7 are failing math. Yep, it’s the most commonly failed subject around here :\. Then, you add to that 12 other failed classes between my failing students, and you have a LOT of catching up to do. Well, this was enough for a lengthy conversation, but to my utter confusion, about halfway through the conference, the principal (aka my boss) looks at me and says, “What is your weight?” Through his thick accent and my assumption that his question had something to do with me helping the students pass, I looked at him and asked him to repeat the question. Still not comprehending, I finally asked him to spell it. “W-e-i-g-h-t.” So I told him, but I added that I only know my weight in pounds, so he’d have to convert it. He jotted it down on a piece of paper, and then went right back into the conference. Strange and slightly unnerving to say the least!

Then, when the older kids were in for their conference, he suddenly says, “Where is my Bible?” Well, we all looked confused, as we’re all pretty sure he’s Hindu. He knows the children are Christians, though, and he wanted them to swear on a Bible that they would do better next term. The kids jumped in and said, “No, we cannot swear on the Bible because God has told us not to take oaths.” Which led into a discussion of Catholicism vs. Protestants. Explain that difference to a Hindu in a nation where Catholics don’t exist! I don’t even know how he knew there were two branches! So finally, he tells the children to pray to their God that they will do better next term. Well, let me tell you that I’ll be praying, because then he looked at me and said “With you at home with them, they should all be passing next term!” Now, I’m not saying it isn’t possible, but I have one girl failing SIX classes, one boy failing four, and another failing three. The other four are just failing the one or two. That’s a LOT of catch-up work to do, and there’s only one of me and 15 of them! But I just smiled and said, “We’ll do our best!”