Parent Teacher Conferences

Well, it was just on Friday that the big day happened. Anticipation was in the air. An extra pot of coffee was brewing in the staff room. Ties adorned the chests of every male teacher in the hopes of a professional display.
But theses weren't just any old Parent Teacher Conferences - many were meetings with parents of very different cultures. Anne met with an animated Nigerian father. Chris met with a father, whose children have Indian decent but have been raised in Austria. But what made this meeting that Chris had so interesting, was the non-verbal communication between Chris and the Indian man. He was asking some great questions about how I try to make the Bible interesting since he finds it hard to communicate that to his kids. As I was explaining, he was shaking his head no. The more I spoke, he would verbally affirm that he understood and agreed, and then proceeded to shake his head no.
After a few minutes of me trying to ignore his mixed up verbal and nonverbal cues, I remembered something: shaking the head from side to side meant "YES" for his culture! Oh duh, Chris. I should have remembered that from when I spoke with refugees from that part of the world. So then I found myself nodding my head up and down in agreement as he was speaking. I thought, OH NO! I'm saying "NO" to him. So I tried to stop but it was so hard. :)

Anyhow, it was really funny in my head, but the father probably had no idea what was going on for me. :)