A Three Olive Week

As I walked past the easels on my way to the coat closet on Wednesday, I saw Zoe's painting and thought: "I'll have one of those!" I did not watch her paint this picture and I am sure she has a story to go along with it that does NOT include a martini but that was my frazzled brain's interpretation. The 3 olives are significant; one for each day of this short (blessedly so) week. Twenty six conferences are done and the twenty six report cards are close to being behind me too. We had conferences for seven school days. The kids get dismissed at 1:05 on those days and granted, it makes for a challenging day care scenario for some families but I'm not sure I want to change the system. First of all, eight conferences in any one day is the maximum I can effectively hold. More than eight and I'm talking about Suzy when it is Sally's parents sitting in front of me, and I begin to wonder if I can give genuine enthusiasm for Johnny's stick figures in his journal, or concern for Jill's ability to stick her fingers three inches up her nose. If I did three days in a row of eight conferences I would be a basket case, not to mention my vocal cords would probably be stretched beyond capacity and I would only be able to whisper at the Thanksgiving table. AND for those of you who think we sit in the staff lounge and eat bonbons on the days when we have a light conference load, you are SO wrong. The spare hours created in the conference schedule are used to catch up with a myriad of tasks; report card writing, talking to specialists about the kids we both serve, writing our Data Team goals (a recent years' addition to our work load), planning for December, and tidying up closets. Even with all the so called 'extra time' one might think is within the conference days, my teammate and I never left the room before 5:00 and most days it was 6:30. So Wednesday evening it wasn't a martini but a bottle of wine I uncorked to sip as I zipped around the kitchen prepping for Thanksgiving.