Yes, Polgara. Exactly what Amych said.

ETA: DOH I was thinking one thing and typing another. Sorry for the misattribution.

Erin, good things to say,

is imprvoving -- este mejorando.
is excellent -- este sobresaliente.
has regular and punctual attendance -- tienes asitencia regular y puntual.
tries hard -- esfuerzo sincero y diligente
diligent effort.
participates in class activities -- participacion en las activadades de la clase.
has good work habits -- teine buenos habitos de trabajo.

pardon the lack of adjectives and the sentence fragments.

For bad things:

poor work---- trabajo no sastisfactorio
failing ---reprobado en (name of class)
bad study habits -- malos habitos de estudio
lacks discipline-- falta de desciplina
acts badly -- mal comporto
poor attendance -- asistencia irregular
does not participate in class -- no participa en las actividades de la clase
doesn't bring homework -- no trae tarea
doens't pay attention -- falta de atencion.

Thanks so much! It's already on my jump drive!

Kat doesn't actually know any Spanish, she flies in kat perez for the parent-teacher conferences. No one is able to tell the difference between the döppelkats.

Hey, I have a Peruvian lawyer as backup; I figure I'll be ok.

Except she works too much for me to see her much; in Peru she's a lawyer -- in the U.S., a shopgirl and waitress.

Land of opps? NSM, sometimes.

YAY! I also have a form letter I send for when kids have detention. But it's not on my computer.

Kat doesn't actually know any Spanish,

how true and how sad this is. In fact, I'm going to my spanish class right now.

she flies in kat perez for the parent-teacher conferences. No one is able to tell the difference between the döppelkats.

I WISH! I feel dread in the pit of my stomach at parent conferences in the BEST of circumstances, but when there is a language barrier and I need someone to help translate or I need to bumble along, it's even worse.

As terrible as it is, my spanish teacher gave me advice that made me feel better. I was stressing about how to talk to parents last semester and she said, "THEY should know English. Do not kill yourself over not knowing their language." I don't necessarily agree, but it makes me feel better about being a dolt in spanish when I'm trying to work with them to remember that I'm trying, that the institutional onus is not only on me.

in the U.S., a shopgirl and waitress.

Gee, how uniquely American of her! t /snarly GWB-hating bitch

(though truthfully that is a tag that I can never quite close)

THEY should know English. Do not kill yourself over not knowing their language

See, I have arguments with my dad all the time about this. Yes, this is an English speaking country, but most of my kids who are bad at English are trying so hard to get better. And their parents want them to do well in school, right? So as a teacher who is interested in their kids and them as people, it helps me to do my job to try to learn a little bit to help them out.

If I had a high population of Vietnamese speakers, or Croatians or whatever, I'd be trying to learn some of those languages, too.

I'm not obligated to do this in any "turn America bilingual" way; I'm obligated by my own curiousity about people, and wanting to help kids learn stuff.

[link]

Some speculation that life might currently exist on Mars. Inconclusive, but interesting.

Wow. That's cool. Speculative though it may be.

Totally random hivemind question, because earnest Googling has got me very very little but I have deep and abiding faith in the Buffistas:

I'm looking for someplace to buy a particular toy - a little handheld thing the name of which I do not know. It's a little tin thing with a sort of pinwheel on one end; you push a trigger/button thingie and the pinwheel spins and sparks and makes a little grindy noise.

The last time I tried Googling for it, an hour's searching led me to an online toy store in England that called them something like "spinners" and cost an arm and a leg to ship them to the U.S. Has any USian Buffista ever stumbled across these things in a local toy store? They are beautifully hypnotic to babies and toddlers and my boss adores them, but he's down to one small box of used and battered spinners and the local toy store he used to get them from has closed.

Any leads anyone could give me on tracking down a handful of new, smart and sparky spinners would be received oh so gratefully and tangibly rewarded.