Parent Teacher Conferences

Today is Parent Teacher conference. It's not really a parent teacher conference, though. It's a "Celebration of Learning!" (don't forget the exclamation point). What this means to me as a teacher is that a. I don't have to talk to parents if I don't want to, b. we don't actually talk about the kid at all, the kid has to just go around and show-and-tell his projects etc. to his mom/dad and explained what he learned this year, and c. nobody shows up because of a. and b. In the past 2 hours 6 parents have shown up- Denzel's mom, Leo's mom, Chandler's mom, Brenda's parents, and Brandan's dad. Usually by now I've had at least 15-20 conferences. The other difference is that due to the nature of the PTC tonight we are not meeting together as a team. Normally all the other teachers on my 7th grade team get together and meet in one teacher's classroom. That means that Social Studies, Art, Math, ESL, and English are all grouped together in one convenient place- usually on the first floor. This also increases our attendance. Since I am in a VERY obscure back corner room on the 2nd floor, my attendance is down even more so than originally planned.
So I have taken the opportunity to clean up my stink hole of a room and I have photographed it here for your viewing pleasure. Welcome to room 212, Mrs. Farias's ESL classroom. Feel free to stay a while. People usually do. While you're here, pick up an interesting looking book or get on line and do some research. Perhaps you'll even be inspired to write a poem or a newspaper article. You never know what will happen inside these walls...

Hi! I'm Mrs. Farias. You might remember me from that time I stopped you in the hall and told you to stop pushing that other kid into the drinking fountain. I'll be your teacher for ESL this year. If you're lucky, you might get to be in my Spanish Language Journalism class. We get a little rowdy, but you'll learn a lot of cool stuff.

This is the vestibule to our classroom. I am somewhat obsessed with having a vestibule (ever since I saw the Seinfeld episode about the vestibule in his apartment building). Don't forget to get your writer's notebooks out of the shelf by the door because you have to write something in here every day. Also, don't be messing around over here when the bell rings, or else I'll count you tardy because I am a really mean teacher. Probably the meanest teacher in the school.


This is a 360 degree tour of the room. You'll notice that there are lots of books to read and things to look at in here. This is very different from most of the teacher's classrooms in this building (except for the art teachers, one of the science teachers, and the Spanish teacher most of the rooms are pretty bare except for that one stupid picture of the cat saying "Hang in there!" and a really old dusty map of the world that very likely still has the USSR if not Rhodesia on it). Even the ceiling has pictures and quotes on it, because there's nothing worse than being in the middle of a PowerPoint lecture and having nothing to do except stare at a boring old ceiling with no pictures or quotes on it.

Here's a close up of some of the art in my room. The Periodic Table of World Literature is one of my fave's. It has famous authors listed by genre and interesting facts about them. The Johnny Depp poster is a personal joke between myself and the French teacher who was here my first year. My old room had really lame looking cartoon pirates permanently painted on the walls. I couldn't really hang anything over them because the walls were cinderblock which is IMPOSSIBLE to stick anything to, so I tried to play them down by puting up awesome pirate stuff, such as this cool treasure map I drew on a drop cloth with a magic marker and my beloved Johnny. The French teacher suggested I turn Johnny into something more literate so as to not encourage my students to speak in bad pirate-y grammar, so he has now wised up to the importance of correct syntax. Syntax is cool.


Here are a few of the books you might read while you're sitting in my classroom. Don't think you're getting out of it either because if you don't read, you don't pass. Period. See? I wasn't kidding when I said that I am mean.


This is my personal bulletin board. If you really suck up to me and give me something pretty, you might get extra credit. If not, your cool artwork and gifts will probably end up here anyways along with my GIANT quote from Ulysses.


This is the door to my office. The "No Parking" and "Keep Out" signs are not there because I am afraid of people disturbing my personal space. They are actually warning signs for your own protection. What dwells behind that door is truly disturbing and somewhat terrifying. Let's put it this way- I suck at filing stuff. I teach English. I pass out and pick up about 100 sheets of paper a day. Sprinkle in a cart for the overhead and the video projectors, about a million and a half official memos, the kids' posters from our classroom presentations, dioramas, hastily stashed art supplies, a mini fridge and a microwave, and I'll let you fill in the rest with your imagination...

Anyway, thanks for taking the tour. See you later. Stay out of trouble in the meantime.