Parent Info Meeting Notes Handout: Fill & Download for Free

I taught high school in Canada for a few years. Here's life as a I remember it:6AM: wake up with cold sweats worrying that you didn't prepare your lesson plans and/or forgot to do something important. Assure yourself that everything is going to be okay. Try to go back to sleep.6:30AM: alarm goes off. Eat as fast as you can. Get coffee.6:35AM: Check and answer email. Review plan for the day and week. Do last minute planning.7:15AM: shower, get ready, get child ready, pack lunch, go to work8:15AM: get to work. Get coffee. Go to the office to check mailbox, check in with principal/secretary about last minute stuff, go to computer, print any last minute stuff, go to photocopy room, photocopy last minute stuff, take everything back to classroom, organize it, write info for first lesson on board, double check that you've booked computer lab if necessary8:45AM: Bus duty. Go stand outside with another teacher and say hello to students as they arrive on busses.9AM: bell rings. Make your way through chaos of hallways to find 30 teenagers waiting to be let into your room. Let them in.9:00-10:20: teach10:20-10:24: bell rings, classes switch over. If you're lucky, get coffee. Administrative minutia/students requiring social/emotional care RIGHT NOW, colleagues with burning issues they need you to address RIGHT NOW10:24-11:40: teach11:40: bell rings for lunch. Tidy classroom, erase board, write info for afternoon classes, administrative minutia/students requiring social/emotional care RIGHT NOW, colleagues with burning issues they need you to address RIGHT NOW11:50: go to staffroom, eat food as fast as humanly possible, get coffee, try to be social but the teachers who have given up on life are harshing your mellow, go to office, check mailbox, drop off any forms you've accumulated throughout the morning, respond to any messages that have been during the morning, go pee. It should be noted that these are not listed in order of priority. If something urgent comes up on your way to go eat or go to the bathroom no one cares and they'll try to persuade you that their issue is much more important than your physical needs.12:20PM: lunch is over! Go to class, teach till 1:401:40-1:44PM: bell rings, classes switch over. If you're lucky, get coffee. Administrative minutia/students requiring social/emotional care RIGHT NOW, colleagues with burning issues they need you to address RIGHT NOW1:44-3PM: teach3PM: bell rings, bus duty, watch kids get on the bus, go to office, deal with anything that's come up while you were teaching. Sometimes there's staff meetings till 5. Usually there are people who want to talk to you in person or on the phone about whatever from 3-4 so this is not time that you can get work done.4-4:30: do the bare minimum of planning (photocopy, book computer lab, ensure appropriate resources are physically in your classroom) so that you can survive tomorrow and so that if lightening hits you on the way out the door your substitute teacher can survive tomorrow.4:30-8:30PM: Go home. Take a nap. Make dinner. Eat with your family. Do chores. Put your own child to bed.8:30PM-12AM: do the stuff you didn't have time to do at school so that tomorrow will be awesome. Make plans more detailed. Look for more resources. Create handouts. Look for relevant websites and/or innovative ways of delivering instruction. Create alternate options for kids who might struggle. Answer emails that have arrived during the day but were not handled at school. Mark papers and enter grades into grading software (which is slow and crashes often).12-12:30AM: change into PJs, brush teeth, drink water, have a cigarette, pack lunches, pack your work bag, lay out clothes for tomorrow.12:30-1:30AM: worry about students, worry about anything you might have forgotten, worry about whether you'll have a job next year, worry about your student debt, worry about parent opinions, reflect on what went well during teaching and what didn't, plan the next three weeks of instruction in your head1:30-6AM: drift in and out of a restless sleepI left teaching after four years. I loved the part in the classroom when I was actually teaching. That was the best part of the day. All the other stuff (school politics, administrative minutia, extra duties you're expected to pick up, other adults who were sometimes wasting your time) was too much, though. Also, there's pressure from everyone to be perfect, and a constant unfiltered stream of opinions about whether you're doing things well enough, and if not how you should be doing things differently. It should be noted that different stakeholders (parents, administrators, students, other teachers) have different and sometimes conflicting expectations regarding what you should be doing.

(A2A)Dear Indescribable Lintang,Here is the advice I wish someone had given me when I first entered college.Get and Stay Organized.You’ll find some excellent ideas here: 45 Tips for Staying Organized in CollegeHave a place for each course’s syllabus, reading list, and all the other handouts you’ll be given in that class. Put your name and the date on each one as it’s handed out and keep it with your notes for that course.Write down each teacher’s office hours, if that isn’t on the syllabus. Those are the hours during the week when the teacher is in his/her own office or a departmentally-shared space. Sometimes there’s a sign-up sheet on his/her office door, and sometimes there’s another method of making an appointment. Make note of how each teacher can be reached, when and where his/her office hours are held, if an appointment is necessary or if you can just drop in, etc. You’ll need this information when it’s time to discuss a research project, if you want to know how to improve your grades, or if you’ve been struggling in the class.Learn to take good college-level notes. The following website may be useful. How To Take Notes In Class: The 5 Best Systems | College Info Geek Try each of those note-taking methods, choose the one that suits you best, and stick with that method for all your classes.As often as possible, take a seat in the front row. This lets the instructor know that you plan to be a good student, and it also helps you stay focused on the teacher and the board. You’ll be able to see and hear everything without distractionBecome part of a cooperative study group. Make friends in each class or put a note on a bulletin board letting classmates know that you’re interested in forming a study group for that course. Chances are, you’ll be able to meet in the library on a regular basis. Such groups have many advantages for those who join them:You can go over your in-class notes together. You might have missed a point that someone else wrote down. Someone else might be struggling to understand a point that seemed important, and you might be able to help them understand it. (Every time you explain something to another student, you’re learning the material better for yourself. )You can study for tests together.If you’re ever sick, you’ll have people who can help you make up what you missed.You’ll be making friends, some of whom you’ll keep for the rest of your life.Keep your assignment calendar current, so you’ll always know when an assignment is due.Be prepared to do a lot of reading. If some of the material seems boring to you, read it anyway. Learn to find something to interest you in everything you read. Take notes as you read so that you don’t forget what the selection was about. If you learn to take good notes, you’ll be able to rely on them when it’s time to study for a test.Enlarge your vocabulary. Start a computer file of all the new words you meet in your reading. Then it will be easy to copy and paste their definitions and etymologies from websites like Dictionary.com - The world’s favorite online dictionary! and Online Etymology Dictionary, which I find more useful.Look up every word whose definition isn’t clear to you. If the definition given by one dictionary isn’t clear to you, try another dictionary. If you have to look up every word in a definition, then do it.Such diligence will pay off in a larger vocabulary and (if you do the etymologies as well) an increased understanding of how the English language has been put together from other languages.Knowing a word’s etymology will also give you a good way to remember its definition. In fact, each word element (root, prefix, or suffix) you learn will give you a handle on additional words. Here’s a simple example of three word-elements which give you a handle on many more words:tele- means far or at a distancephon- refers to soundgram- and graph- refer to writingArmed with just those three word elements and their meanings, a student could learn and remember the definitions of words like telephone, telephonic, telegraph, telegraphic, telegram, gramophone, graphology, phonics, phonograph, graphite, telecast, television, telescope, teleport, and many more. I encourage you to make etymology part of your vocabulary study.8. Finally, before you turn in a paper, proofread it carefully. Make sure you didn’t leave any words out, make sure subjects agree with verbs and pronouns with antecedents, etc. You might also want to have someone else proofread it after you. It’s hard to catch one’s own errors.And now, even though you did not ask for it, I have a suggestion for a writing project which will benefit you but also benefit those who will come after you —next year’s incoming freshmen.You’ve asked a good, useful question here on Quora and you’ve gotten a number of good answers. Why not put together in one booklet all the suggestions you’ve gotten, not only from Quorans, but from parents, teachers, friends, and relatives, PLUS other tips you’ll get from classmates and those you’ll discover on your own as the year goes on (making sure you keep track of who said what, so you can give credit where it’s due. Otherwise, it’s plagiarism).With all the information you’ll have by the time this year is over, I think you’ll be able to create one small booklet for next year’s incoming freshman at your school.You could call it something like How to Survive Your First Year at {name of your university} and work with one of your teachers or some classmates on what it should look like, how it might be produced (perhaps the college has printing facilities for such a booklet), etc.I think it’s a thing worth doing. And who knows? Maybe you will, too.Have a wonderful freshman year!WarmlyCarole Berlin

A very high rate of PDA (Pathological demand avoidance) teenagers, dont go to school.I think the biggest problem is daily attendance and I know for sure that something I really struggled with myself. It was never about “not enjoying learning” it was more that academia got in the way of my learning and it was mainly because I had a problem with other kids and when they disrupted lessons then I cut my losses and ran, or slowly eloped behind bushes.Then did retakes at college.I certainly found it easier when I felt like it was my choice to attend a classroom environment. But what really helped, when I took a degree was receiving backdated handouts and classroom notes. My reading log was collosal, I read a lot more than everyone else, but I still attended the least ammount to lessons. I preferred and always have preferred libraries because classrooms have surplus noise and kids who don't want to learn.A lot of autistic children prefer to sit at the front of the class.I think it would really help PDA kids with attendence issues, to have the option of self learning or “guided learning” in the form of remote communication via course notes and curriculum guidelines - to keep learning grounded and relevent because there is a high risk that we'll learn above and beyond what we need to learn in order to regurgitate the basic info which is “GCSE level” - I might be sounding over confidential but personally the A LEVEL standard of depth on a subject was easier for me, than the GCSE's.But at the same time, that also presents the risk for self learners, that they will plunge too far into one subject, whilst entirely neglecting another. So regular contact with tutors is important, for those reasons, but that's difficult for young autistic kids to realise themselves. Because subjects we enjoy can eat us alive and occupy our.minds constantly - GCSE'S just require kids to write what they've been taught and independent research can count against them if it isn't made clear that they remember every thing else as per “the curriculum”I do think it would really help if local education authorities allowed greater flexibility for autistic children who show competence and an ongoing ability to self teach, on certain subjects then I think library time is a good reward system. If we could say “look, if you like this subject, then let's give you a reading list, a regular meeting with a tutor and if you enjoy it so much then we'll give you the option of taking it at a higher level” - i think that would be a good option because one typical trait of PDA. Is that tend to be competitive.That's a very useful tool for educators that can help channel that or add to it with extra curricular activities.From a parental viewpoint, if you want to help your kids with their GCSE'S then field trips have proven to be very successful in adding to the enthusiasm for learning in a certain subject.For example, the Native American Indians have featured in the national curriculum for history, since when I was school (nearly thirty years ago) my daughter learnt it, my son is 9 and he is learning it. As part of my method for enriching their learning, I looked at the theme of “wood and hand tools” and took them to see birch trees, showed them the bark and made things with it “native American Indian style” - which roles onto other subjects like “biology” and so on, but it's practical and hands on and my daughter passed her GCSEs without issue.One of the most powerful tools for parents is when we manage to succeed in helping our kids feel confident in themselves. The best way to do that is to open up avenues for experiences and then they will get to see what they are good at. They have to see the results of what they can do, because praise isn't enough… most of our kids think that parents are biased and will tell them they are good at things because we love them or don't know how good other kids are at whatever it is you compliment them for.Self confidence comes from within - it's not something that we can just give them by telling them that we know they can do it. They need to know that the things they have achevied things that looked difficult to them.It stands for a lot - when PDA kids realise they don't fit into classrooms, the temptation is to forsake learning. I'm a big believer in the words of RD Laing “don't let education get in the way of learning” a psychologist specialising in human behaviour and learning.If you can trigger enough interest in topics, then it can override all of the other barriers to learning, such as sensory sensitivity and overload - when the interest is piqued, the autist is more likely to persevere “with love for a subject" - of course the problem with autists and learning is that we tend not to be all rounders when if comes to the levels of skills and how they can fluctuate - the problem specifically with PDA Is that we arent motivated by punishments or incentives in the same way as other kids, telling us we HAVE to do something, can almost guarantee that we won't do it and we will spend massive ammounts of time, plotting and scheming ways to avoid doing that thing.And we are obsessive in that, it's not within conscious control so much when we are teenaged and have exactly the same hormones and other shit that kids have during adolescence. And learning to deal with that has to come before learning because otherwise we are prone to absconding and that's where the danger lies for kids who don't go to school, because nobody knows where they are. I put myself at risk from that, because I was so absent from school and had so little contact with responsibile adults that It could of gone bad for me, If I had let myself be influenced by other people, who were older, wiser and more street wise.But it didn't because i was too paranoid that somebody would “grass” on me and dob me in to the school authorities and so I stayed aloof and hid in libraries outside school, when I was supposed to be at school. I went to massive extremes to avoid school, I wrote fake letters from my Mum and pretended to be her, on the telephone to my Head Master! And then I shop lifted clothes and food so that I could use my dinner money as bus money because my school was in a tiny village, miles away from where I lived. I couldn't get buses regularly, I generally chose to spend the days walking back home, via the back fields - occasionally stopping for naps or to read a book.So I'd rather spend six hours trying not to walk too fast - seven miles. I know that seven miles like the back of my hand because I explored every last bit of it, I travelled in ditches…along river banks and even fields with cows and nettles up to my armpits rather than face school. That's how much anxiety it gave me, I even got “hives” in schook because it stressed me so badly; the lighting was too bright for my sensory sensitivity and there weren't any proceedures for bullying.So maybe PDA kids don't have to suffer quite the same level of stress as I did; but I honestly do wonder - because just not wanting to go, was bad in itself - even without bullying, I hated how teachers wasted time repeating themselves and I resented the other kids for not shutting up and letting the teacher talk. I remember feeling irate about that and obsessively angry about how I felt my time at school wasn't worth anything because I couldn't learn in that environment.Multiple people talking also didn't help with my sensory processing issues - my hearing is hyposensitive, I am bad with auditory processing and understanding what people mean often requires questions on my part - I think this is perhaps where the need to be in control comes from in PDA autists - it's easier to understand words that seem to form part of a script, and so if we can control the parameters of a conversation or put.somebody into a role - it's easier for us to interact.Whereas any perceived lack of control could render us open for being misunderstood or worse “been seen to misunderstand” - that's a massive source of angst for most autists at some point in our lives, we sense the potential and implications for being completely understood and worse than that, completely misunderstanding other people and its difficult to not view that as a source for anxiety.I definitely think that some autists really struggle with classroom environments, because they are loud and bright places and sometimes that makes it difficult for us - I remember falling asleep in more than one lesson because the room was warm and I was sat down.Insomnia also common amongst autists, doesn't help with getting up in the mornings - and it really didn't help me feel like I wanted to spend the day in confinement with other people. I'm not an advocate for medicating young people, but I suspect that in some cases it is absolutely necessary - because sleep deprivation is a terrible thing and not conducive for learning. So that's definitely something that needs looking out for with young people,because it can cause extra problems.I think those are some of the most useful things worth mentioning when it comes to helping autists through school and exams.And be assured - I hated school and I missed most of my secondary school education BUT I went on to do retakes at college (for my GCSE's) and passed everything at “C” And above in just one year.