Parent, teacher meetings crucial

Like the other teachers in my district, I am preparing for parent-teacher conferences. This involves many steps. First, we have to schedule the time. This is not as easy as it sounds.

We try to collect the time preferences of parents and find out if divorced parents need two separate meetings or can meet together, then we coordinate the times with other teachers who have siblings of children we have; next we coordinate the times with other teachers who want or need to join the conference; then we try to make sure we have spaced the conferences out as evenly as possible and given ourselves a bathroom break or two. Finally, we send the times out to parents only to discover that a boss has scheduled an essential meeting during that time. Then we attempt to reschedule.

Teachers really do want to meet with all parents; scheduling it just gets tricky. And the scheduling of conferences gets even trickier if you are a teacher and a parent like me.

Besides scheduling the time, my colleagues and I spend time organizing the information we have about each child. This includes assessments, daily work samples, long-term projects, behavior and discipline notes, and our professional observations. We need to be prepared to present this to parents in a concise, easily understood format.

The demand for conciseness because of time constraints, (my school allows 20-minute conferences) often leads to the heavy use of jargon. Jargon has its place, but that place is not in a parent-teacher conference. What parent really wants to hear statements such as, “Your child is fluent with computational skills but is having difficulty with mathematical concepts”? Translation: Your kid has memorized the basic number facts but he doesn’t know how to figure it out. “Your child’s writing is rich with topic development but weak in conventions.” Translation: Your kid has a great imagination when she writes. I just wish I could read it because the spelling and grammar are terrible.

I like to think of parent-teacher conferences as a kind of show and tell. I’ll show parents representative samples of their child’s work. I’ll tell them how that work compares with grade-level expectations. I’ll tell them how their child behaves at school. I expect the parents to be good listeners and to realize that I am a professional with valid information to give them about their child’s performance in school.

I also expect the parents to tell me if my information matches what they observe at home. If it does, it makes it easier for all of us to understand what the next steps are for that child’s learning. If my perspective of a child is different than what the parents see, the situation is more challenging.

Together, we need to identify the factors for the differences. This could be something simple, such as an only child needing to learn to share one adult with 18 or so other children. It could be a matter of semantics – we are saying the same thing with different words. It could be that as a professional I see some issues that a parent can’t see, or vice versa.

A parent may not be able to recognize that a child is having difficulty learning because the child’s brain is wired differently and requires something different than or beyond what is available in the average classroom. It is not that the child is good or bad. The child, as a learner, has different needs than the majority of the other learners. As a teacher, I can’t see that the reason a child is constantly demanding adult attention is that the adults in his life are taking care of older relatives and are working outside the home. Both the parents and I need to realize that each of us wants what’s going to help the child both academically and socially.

Often, other school professionals join a parent-teacher conference. The music, art or physical education teacher might participate in the conference to give another perspective on a child. A student could be hesitant to try something new in my classroom but be at the top of the class in music. A child could be easily distracted in physical education but focused during reading class.

This is all valuable information because it gives us clues on how to maximize the student’s learning. The student who excels in music could be encouraged to write songs during a writing workshop. The distracted physical education student could be assigned to read how to play basketball, then given some specific instruction and practice in the skills to play basketball.

The principal, guidance counselor, Title I teacher, librarian, reading recovery teacher, resource room teacher, English as a second language teacher, or gifted and talented teacher may also join us for the parent-teacher conference. Understand that all these school people are there to make efficient use of your time as we discuss your child’s educational progress. They are not there to intimidate you or overwhelm you. Just as many hands make light work, many minds make an engaging, effective educational program.

Parents and teachers: Let me know how your parent-teacher conference goes. Was it informative? Was it a waste of time? Tell me an example of the best, the worst and the funniest parent-teacher conference you have experienced. E-mail me at conversationswithateacher@gmail.com.