13 hours

Whew! Yesterday was quite the day.  It was Parent-Teacher Conferences, so I spent about 13 hours at school yesterday.  What's really interesting was that only family came on time to their appointment; the rest were early and because I wasn't meeting with anyone we could get started right away.  Of course, the people who actually came at their appointed time were my last conference, so I didn't get get to sneak out early.

Everything went fine.  The parents were cordial and didn't have a whole lot of questions for me.  The principal checked on me a few times, to make sure I wasn't having any trouble.  Then afterwards, one by one the rest of the teachers came in: some to check on me, some to congratulate me on finishing my first Parent Teacher Conferences.  When the last teacher to come in saw all the other teachers standing around my desk, she said, "Oh, is this the after party?"

One funny story from 7th and 8th grade geography...  I had asked to see everyone's eyes up front so I would know they were ready to go.  One boy (who hadn't done his notes for the day) was scrambling to open his book to the right page.  Being a smartaleck, he had his head turned to me and had his eyes flipping back and forth between me and the pages of his book, trying to follow my directions and figure out where we were.  I couldn't help smiling because he looked so goofy!  All the other students (who were looking at me like they were supposed to) saw me smiling and wanted to know why.  Some figured out who I was looking at, so they tried to see what was so funny.  And then the people in the front turned around to see.  And then no one was ready to start class.  But then they calmed down (somewhat) and we started class.  They had some really good questions too!