Back to School Night is just around the corner, taking place tomorrow  Wednesday, Feb. 11.  According to Spanish teacher David Bair, Back to School Night is a great way to meet parents and share expectations and goals for the class.  But for every teacher, along with every Back to School Night come the usual fears, jitters, and expectations.

“I also used to not be able to sleep the nights of Back to School Night because I would worry if I spoke English well enough for the parents to understand because they usually would not ask many questions,” said Japanese teacher Rie Tsuboi.

“The one thing about Back to School Night is that the parents are worse than the kids about cell phones. They’re always texting; they always have their phones under the table,” said English teacher Mary King.

After having been through several Back to School Nights, teachers have been through some funny and embarrassing moments.  Here are just some of the past experiences of SDA teachers, as well as their fears for future Back to School Nights.

“One night in my first year teaching I had all the books that they were going to read on the board, and one of them was High Tide in Tucson and I had misspelled Tucson, because you spell Tucson weirdly…like ‘tuk-son’. Some parent pointed it out and they were like, ‘You’re terrible! You’ll never be a good teacher, you can’t spell Tucson!” said English teacher Rob Ross.

“I guess a couple years ago I had a parent that said that I had taught their aunt which is a little freaky I didn’t consider myself that old yet,” said Bair.

“There are a couple [of stories]. One is when I used to have a couch in the back of the classroom directly across from me. Kids would just sit on the couch or the TA would sit on the couch, so I have a couch back there and probably 50 percent of the time [during Back to School Night] a dad would sit on the couch and go to sleep. Dead asleep while I was doing my [presentation]. Ten minutes. Ten minutes. I only had ten minutes and in the matter of ten minutes, they would be dead asleep. Always a dad. Every single time it would be a dad,” said Athletic Director Justin Conn.

“For my Spanish 3 class, I was in the middle of talking to the parents when my phone went off, and the ringtone was “Di me lo” by Enrique Iglesias. I ran to my desk to turn it off, and tried to play it off by using it as a transition to talk about my cell phone policy in class,” said Angela Vazquez-Herrera.

“With AP Studio Art, what I usually do, because the parents have to be totally involved with their kids and help them buy materials and support the amount of time they have to put in, I ask them to take the syllabus home and have their parents read it and sign it. So when they come to Back to School Night, I have them for 15 or 20 minutes  or so and I go ‘Look, everybody in the class has brought their syllabus back signed by you, so I’m assuming you read the syllabus. What is it about the syllabus you don’t understand?’ And they all just look at each other because they never read it,” said AP Studio Art teacher Neal Glasgow.

“I don’t really have any stories about Back to School Night because they’re always lovely and fast, but I guess there is one story. It was a couple years ago and I was talking to a group of parents in a College Prep English 11 class. I said something like, ‘Yes, and I know that I talk really fast, but I always write everything down on the overhead so that students can see what I’m saying.’ I paused, a parent raised his hand and said, ‘Excuse me, but isn’t the correct adverb form quickly instead of fast?’ First of all I didn’t know why the guy interrupted the whole thing to do that, but I was like ‘Well, no, actually fast is also an adverb, it doesn’t have the ‘ly’ at the end but it is an adverb, but let me check and I’ll get back to you.’ Then, the next day I emailed him and I gave him all this data that it was correct (see this is not a good story) and he sent this really apologetic email that said, ‘Oh I’m sorry, I’m a lawyer and I’m really picky about language’. For me, it was just an inappropriate time; I was very nice to him though. See, it’s a boring story,” said King.