American culture in daily life : Back-to-School Night

At the begining of New School year, the first important event is The Back-to-School Night. In Korea, we don't have this kind of program, but parent's conference meeting. Also, every meeting for parents  usually helds during the day, mostly not night. Most parent are mothers because the time of the meeting, and usually only mother attends. Even if mother is working, most moms get day off for the meeting. Moveover, If the child has single parent, father, instead him, aunt, aunt-in-law or other female adult attends the meeting. 

                            

                          [ 2 English8(for 8th grade)teachers in Pyle Middle School]

    

             [ Innovative Promethean Active Board]
    The day is about what the child supposed to learn and who the teacher is for each subject. All parents were going back and forth from this class to that class holding a paper that was written about child schedule and class teacher' name every 15 minutes. 

[Mrs.Rosen in ESOL class]

In American School system in Maryland, hour for one class is called "Period", and there are 7 periods in middle school and 8 periods including lunch time in high school. The Back-to-School Night started at 7 pm. There were much more parents than actual number of students so they went by each others, not minding happening to possiblely hitting some one's shoulder or be hit  by others passing by every crowded hallways.

Actually each class meeting was too short. Parents just found who the teacher is  and listen his or her class plan, class rule, rubric for test, and other information briefly. Parents and teacher just noticed each other, saying who belonged to them as a child or what his or her name was.  with respect to quality of meeting, it was pretty formal setting. In addition, for teachers it seemed to be stressful. For the day, teacher had made some presentation material and  hand out prints. Most teachers did not go home until finishing the meeting even though their classes could be finished by 3 o'clock pm.

Compared with Korean School, there are largely similarity and difference between two. The similrity is  that both they are formal meeting. The difference is that US school is more considerable, and   Korean school meeting is time for meeting with homeroom teacher.

 ( revise needed later)