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Schools

Beth Bales: Geneva Parents! Become Students for a Night

Back-to-School nights for Geneva High school and both middle schools are next week. It's a chance for parents to learn a lot about their kids' lives.

Middle and high school parents: Your kids went back to school about 10 days ago.

Now, it’s your turn.

It’s the chance to see, at least a little bit, how your kids spend their school days: where their lockers are, that perhaps their middle school schedule really does have them, despite team centers, criss-crossing the building nearly every hour on the way to lunch, or art, or choir, or band, or gym. 

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At , it’s the chance for parents to try to determine where the KK hallway is, and is it really different from the K hallway? How does one get to it, anyway? (Fortunately, as parents stumble around staring at the map they’re given at the door, there are always plenty of people, including pleasant young student ambassadors, to ask. They don’t smirk at you. Really! And after four or five years, it does start to get easier. Really, it does.) 

And it’s a chance for parents to see the teachers, to shake their hands and introduce themselves as Becca’s mom or Connor’s dad. It’s not the venue for engaging in a mini parent-teacher conference, but for introductions and putting names to faces. For parents, it represents to put a personality with a teacher’s name and to understand what a child is talking about, when he or she is talking about that class.

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It’s an opportunity to get contact information, and find out that this teacher prefers e-mail, while that one would rather converse via telephone, but after school, please. Teachers will pass out information, including their expectations, and perhaps warnings about when major projects or assignments are due. They’ll undoubtedly emphasize when they’re available to help, and that they want to help. 

And parents can also reconnect with one another. (I’ve always thought it would be great for parents to wear the dreaded name tags at these events, so they’re not left scrambling mentally for a name as they pass other parents on the stairs on in the hallway.) There are always refreshments and time for social pleasantries, not to mention picking up student directories and buying school sweatshirts, T-shirts and other spirit wear.

The elementary schools held their curriculum nights on Sept. 1. Times for the middle and high school nights are:

  • Wednesday, Sept. 7, 7 p.m. Geneva High School
  • Tuesday, Sept. 13, 7 p.m.
  • Thursday, Sept. 15, 7 p.m.,

Where else can you get lost in an alphabet soup of hallways?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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