Parent - Teacher Conferences

Unfortunately the old saying "The apple doesn't fall far from the tree" rings truer to me after completing my first round of true:
parent - teacher conferences
and in some case:
parent - teacher - student conferences...
and many times:
parent - student - teacher - translator conferences).

Well I made it out alive. I am actually pretty happy that I was busy this afternoon. We to not have students on Wednesday afternoons at Berry Elementary School, but today was different due to conferences. I had a pretty decent turnout for conferences. I would estimate that I was able to speak (or speak through a translator) to about 50% of my students' parents (or many times guardian).

I was really happy to see that the mothers of both of my two most challenging students were at conferences and I was able to discuss with them their students' behavior in my class (both of their children are currently suspended - both as the final stage out of many, many occurrences - but their last "events" were: one student stood up in class to inform me that they hated me and wanted to kill me. The other student had been tormenting and bullying other classmates to the point where some of my students no longer wanted to come to school).

Anyway, I met with the first students' mother, who informed me that the only reason their child acted up or misbehaved was because of the behavior of other students in the classroom. During the entire translated conference, the parent continued to blame other students, the school, myself, and anyone or anything else, other than the students' own actions for the way the student acted. This story sounded awful familiar to the story her daughter told myself a few days ago before being suspended by the principal. I explained to the mother that her daughters actions were a choice and that I understood that she was not at fault, but after several seating arrangement changes, adaptations, chances to refocus (glorified time-out), and other intervention steps... it was definitely her daughters' choice to misbehave that was causing the problem.

The story was about the same with the second parent, except for the son was with on this conference, oh, and the mother spoke English. They entered the room and the mother began to tell me the same story her son tells me just about everyday. About how someone else started it, and it was not his fault, ect. About 15 minutes into our conference, the mother began to realize that her little boy, might actually be acting up, and that he may not be telling her the truth at home. The next 15 minutes of this abnormally long conference went much differently... ended with the mother suggesting that he son was going to get his *#%$ whooped when he got home and that she would be checking with my to ensure that this does not happen again.

Hopefully I will be updating you later with good news regarding the behavior in my classroom, but as of right now it still leaves room to be desired. Here is the current situation:
1 student at alternative school
3 students suspended
and this is just in my homeroom. The LAST thing I want to do is have students get suspended or sent to another school. All this does is put them even further behind where they already are in there academics. The principal thinks that it works, but judging by the attitude of the student who was suspended and then ended up in alternative school... I am still not sold on the idea.

I know that some of the problems in my classroom regarding behavior may stem from my inexperience, but I honestly feel like I am doing a good job... some of these students are just very hard to control... at all.

Well... it's past my bedtime, but just wanted to share with you a little bit about conferences before bed.