PTC Evasion Methods
In order to prevent their parents from realizing what a disappointment they raised, students have developed several strategies to make sure their parents never even meet their teachers.
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While many parents insist on attending Parent Teacher Conferences (PTC) as an opportunity to slip a Franklin to teachers, most students dread PTC. “It’s the night my parents gossip with my teachers about why I am a disappointment,” junior Vivien Lee said.
Rather than improving their grades or talking with their teachers, many students have decided that the best way to mitigate the potential damage of PTC is simply to prevent their parents from meeting their teachers. Below are some of the evasion methods students have employed.
1) One popular strategy employed by students involves hiring a friend to pose as a fake teacher. Students convincing their parents often call these teachers “student teachers.”
Many upperclassmen use PTC as an opportunity to make some money and fund their more pricey addictions, like Supreme clothing, Yeezys, and hot food from Whole Foods. “I don’t even need the money, but I just like it when other people have even less money,” junior Holden Higgins said.
2) Another common practice is for students to cross out their names immediately after their parents sign up on the sheet. “I’ve seen my parents punch other parents because they thought their name was crossed out by a line-cutter,” sophomore William Wang said.
3) Many Stuyvesant students with parents who do not speak English employ the “alternate translation” strategy. These students simply escort their parents to PTC and claim that they will translate for them. “My teachers must think that my parents are insane since they started cheering after my teachers said I was cutting too much,” junior Gregory Zeng said. “Too bad for my parents—I guess they didn’t realize it was opposite day.”
4) One increasingly less common method is to get the teacher terribly sick right before PTC. This method, nicknamed “Sneesus Christ,” is very risky because it may not work, and it often places the student in uncomfortable and precarious situations.
“I’ve only seen one kid desperate enough to use ‘Sneesus Christ’. When he saw the teacher yawning, he ran up and sneezed directly into the teacher’s mouth,” sophomore Oliver Ripps said, shuddering. “It was disgusting and horrifying, but his teacher couldn’t come to PTC, so I guess it was worth it.”