Literacy Themed Saturday School, November 6, 2008

Well another Saturday School has come and gone. Usually I get to roam around, take pictures, shoot video footage of families, and help out here and there. Today, I stayed with our visiting author, David Schwartz. He presented to the upper grades and then the lower grades and their families. I always dread family presentations at schools. I have not seen a time where parents supervise their children when teachers are present. I spent my time asking parents to quiet down, chasing small siblings of our students and then matching them with their families, and asking students to pay attention to the speaker. It was pretty exhausting. The worst part was watching parents have full conversations on cellphones and with each other while the author talked about writing, his books, presented an interactive readaloud. I will never understand the lack of empathy I witnessed today. How do we teach our students to behave in social situations when their parents are modeling a non-example?

*Exhale*. It's over.

Lessons learned/Things to consider/Reflection:
*The author speaks for no more than 20-30 minutes when families are involved.
*Students will sit on the floor in front of the author (parents in chairs behind) instead of students sitting with their families.
*Start searching for an author 6 months to a year in advance. It's impossible to book an author, in less than 2 months, who is bilingual and/or who writes about the Latino culture...oh...and for $1000 or less.
*Scratch author visits during family days/nights and save them as a school day assembly for students and teachers.
*Make an announcement at the beginning to remind parents to pay attention to the speaker stop talking on their cellphone not allow their children to run around and scream during the performance set an example for their children by listening to the speaker...sigh... I'm too frustrated to come up with a PC way to say this to a grownup. Any ideas?