Spring conferences at school

Friday we had our spring conferences for our 2 oldest boys. I showed up early, which never happens, and went to the wrong room first. Thankfully she noticed and sent me down to the other room first. So I go downstairs and wait for my turn, while I'm waiting the school psychologist walks by and says that she has finished scoring the "thing" we had to fill out about our oldest sons behavior and it will be sent somewhere to get the results and we will meet to discuss the results when they come back. Check on #2 of my conference discussion list. So here we go... We sit down we start talking about this past week, it was a 3 day week with conferences and 2 of them were very bad days. I am liking the new communication with his teacher but it is sometimes frustrating to always be asked for the answers to his behavior when I am never there when the situation happens. So we discuss what has and hasn't happened from our last meeting - feels like mostly what hasn't happened. We also have some differences of opinion on what has or hasn't happened. I feel some things have happened on our end that she hasn't seen and vice versa, but ultimately we both understand that we both see the same problems and want the same solutions it's now just a matter of finding out how to get there. So it took 40 minutes to get to that point where I was satisfied and she was satisfied that we covered everything from behavior to homework to class grades and test scores. It was supposed to take 20 minutes so I missed my other sons conference.   :(  I needed to discuss all of those things with my oldest sons teacher but I really enjoy going to conferences with the other teacher. This is the 2nd year she has taught our middle son (the yougest of our children in school) and it really has been a great experience. She taught full day kindergarten last year and moved up with the kids to first grade and we were given the option to stay in her class, all but 1 child stayed and no new kids were added. So there is a really great dynamic in the room by combining an excellent teacher and a slightly smaller class of kids who all know each other well. When my middle son started school we were worried he would get picked on, he has a birthday in late summer so he is one of the youngest and while very smart his social skills weren't the greatest. He got picked on by kids younger than him in preschool so we were concerned. I stayed and discussed my concerns with her when I met her before school started and have thankfully never had a problem. He is very happy and comfortable in her class and rarely has a "bad" day. He has his own little group of friends in class but gets along with the other kids. The biggest problem we had was when he first started kindergarten he didn't have a very good concept of time (even worse than most kids that age) so he didn't always get his work done in the time allowed and so had to miss part of playtime to get it done. She never got mad or made him feel bad about it though just explained "I'm sorry, but we have to finish our work before we can play" and would remind him if he was talking alot that he had to work while he talked. She always smiles when talking about my son and tells us how great he is doing and how she just loves having him in her class. This year because the other conference went over I got to stick my head in to collect his folder of class work examples and grades, was told that he would be placed in the advanced math class but she didn't have the details on when it started yet and that he was forgetting to leave his shoes in his back pack again... :) the shoes has been an on going problem throughout hockey season as his boots don't fit when he has his equipment on. She stated and I know that if I have any more questions to e-mail her and she will get back to me. But I feel almost like I lost something by being unable to talk face to face this spring. I knew that the conference with the second grade teacher was going to be a rough one and I had looked forward to balancing it out with the other. Both my boys are wonderful and I think they are both amazing kids... but it is nice to hear it from someone outside the family too. I think that's what I miss, the positive reinforcement from someone outside the family. Plus I feel a little like I didn't give my first grader the time he deserves to be in the spotlight. I really wasn't able to come home and tell him how great he was doing because I talked to his teacher for less than a minute. Then again I couldn't tell my second grader how great he was doing because his teacher didn't say he was doing great at anything either so maybe it's better to focus on what I see them doing so niether feels bad...