Phone Calls Home

I made my first real batch of phone calls home today.

But these are not the type of phone calls that most people think of. These are my positive calls. This is one of my most favorite things to do.

I only had to make one negative call today. I have one student who is failing my class because he does no work, but he got an 85% on his quiz last week. If he would only do his work, he would have no problems passing and probably would pass with a B.

But because I had to make that one call, I decided to even it out by making a good phone call home. As I looked at my list of students, I just couldn't pick one. I kept seeing more and more students who have done great work in my classes and couldn't stop with one. So I picked two from every class even though it was still hard to pick just two. Since I teach four blocks, I made eight phone calls. I only have 40 students, so that was almost 10% of my students' parents that I tried to contact tonight.

And I love it.

Almost every time I tell them who I am I can hear them cringe on the other end of the phone - waiting for me to drop the bomb and tell them what terrible thing their child did that day. But instead, I get to tell them something great.

I called almost all of my Students of the Month and several others. I heard from almost every parent the same thing.

"This is the first time I have ever had this kind of phone call from a teacher."

I even had one mother who told me, "I never thought I would see the day when I would get a phone call like this."

What a good feeling and what a way to end the day.