Community

I think community involvement is very important in schools. At the kindergarten I went to they had different high school students  come in and student teach and help out in the room just like Ball State students do at Burris. I think thats a good opportunity for the high school to have a partnership with the  pre-school/kindergarten.  I also remember we would have community readers once a month at Crestview Elementary,  my grade school in Indianapolis. Different people from the community would take their time to come read to us. I thought it was neat to have someone different in the room. I think its important for students to be able to interact with different people throughout the community, and this gives the students the opportunity to do so when the community reader comes. At the other grade school I went to Saint Pius seventh and eighth grade,  we got to be an  elective class that would meet every friday, and most of those elective class would have something to do with the community. I remember a few of them one was going out into the community around the school and picking up trash. Another one was going to a nursing home and visiting with the elderly people. There was also a group of students who went to other schools to help tutor students. The final way I can remember having the community and school involved together was when I was in HIgh School. We had to do community service, through out all four years of high school. I think this was something very neat that our high school did, to get the students involved in the community and community getting involved with school.  I think its important to get the community involved in school activities, like I was able to be part of through out my elementary and high school years. 

I thought doing the parent teacher conference was pretty helpful. By doing the difficult situation one it just shows there is actually parents that are going to be like that, and I'm going to have to know how to handle the situation calmly. This assignment taught me how to actually write out a good agenda. I learned that you open and close the conference with something positive about the child. I hope by me getting a little practice now, that it will help me in the future either while I'm student teaching and I have to deal with parents, or when I become a teacher myself.