We finished our first round of parent conferences this week.

[LWolf]

We didn't conference with every family. Some declined because they keep up with what we are doing, know how their kids are doing, and don't feel the need for a private appointment. Others just didn't respond to our requests to schedule a conference. So we conferenced with about 2/3 of our families. Our schedule included two evenings so that working parents could attend without taking off of work. I did 13 hours Tuesday, and 12.5 hours Wednesday and Thursday.

The conferences went really well. We like to establish a good working team with parents during conferences, and those that attended were all open to that, so we were able to plan together how to address students having problems of any kind.

I like working in a small community school.

[FirstLight]

1. interesting to get a teacher's POV

how do you feel about the families that are too stressed with working to make ends meet, are the kids stressed too?

i just feel like my unemployment screws us all up...but it really isn't the kids are getting all a's & b's ...

I am wondering if the new teachers will be a help or hindrance this school year. I am not sure how i feel about the youngest son's teacher. she seems nice but has a rep of being super strict. my son seem to like her. (but she pissed me off this week when she she didn't let him go to the office when he was obviously sick (it was almost the end of the day anyway, she says) and he was put on the bus and came home with a 102+ fever...not cool)
so ya, that's my rant today ...

[LWolf]

7. I worry about families that are in any kind of crisis,

and our little community school does what it can to reach out to them. We have a FAN coordinator who will hook them up with medical care, supplies, clothing, and food, and give them rides when necessary. We have a dedicated staff that will go out of their way to help where ever possible. We have kept homeless students on our rosters, when they no longer had a local address, and organized car pools to pick them up from the various places they are staying temporarily and get them to school each day. We run a food bank once a week for the local community. Just yesterday, we were working with one family who just moved 300 yards from the school zone boundary and lost their school bus to come up with other options so that the student could stay with us; he's a special needs student who is currently thriving in our care, and his parents want him to stay. We can do an intra-district transfer and keep him, but the district won't transport. So we're going to find a way to transport him ourselves.

The best way to make sure your new teachers are a help is to meet with them in a positive way, and help build that partnership, that collaborative climate that will ensure that every conversation is focused, not on the adults involved, but the best interests of the students. Does your school set time aside for conferences?

[FirstLight]

11. yes...

we are set for next week.
I look forward to making sure they know our issues and needs,

it's hard because i hate having to 'tell our sob story' to the teacher. i feel so naked and like they are burdened with knowing.
see, we ran from an abusive husband when the kids were really little, but we have been struggling and dealing with added things as the last 6 years have gone by... daughter diagnosed with a birth defect (blind in left eye and pituitary gland stuff, and my subsequent loss of job because i had to do the tests and dr appts...son has something like adhd, but he was also abused in-utero and born with ptsd, so we are dealing with meds and his emotional communication issues too...

then i end up crying while telling it all, and feeling like a loser in front of the teachers...

shit...i'm crying now just *writing* it...

so ya, i hope it goes well and they can deal with the fact that we're poor, i'm unemployed,(have my own chronic health issues)and we do the best we can...sometimes papers and assignments fall through the cracks, but the kids are testing excellent and behaviorally pretty great too...

so far so good i guess

[LWolf]

12. They can and will deal with it.

You don't have to go into detail, but teachers need to know when there is a crisis. We know that stress affects school performance. Standardized tests don't recognize that, and neither do laws and mandates surrounding test scores, but we are people, and our students are people, and when there are factors affecting their experience and performance at school, we want to know. Maybe we can help a little, maybe not, but at least we can be understanding.

[frazzled]

2. I always appreciated our parent-teacher conferences

So thank you for your attention and good work.

There were only a few times when I thought, does this teacher have my kid mixed up with someone else? (mostly during the teen years, when I'd get a teacher saying what a "pleasure" my daughter was to have in their class. You mean the same kid who was screaming at me half the time, and using the other half to lock herself in her room?).

One conference I remember with fondness was with my son's second-grade teacher. She broke it to us that he was (long pause) "a very linear thinker." She posed this in such a way as to suggest that we needed to do something about the problem. We read him all kinds of fiction stories, we protested! We take him to museums and plays and concerts, give him art supplies to draw with, he's signed up for soccer and T-ball -- he just loves numbers and statistics, and we can't help it! It seemed to bother her a lot that all his creative writing assignments contained some sort of math plot, and that he was quick to point out logical flaws in statements made during class discussion. Yeah, it was a bit weird and annoying, but we were helpless to change any of this. He's finishing up a Ph.D. in pure mathematics now (and is a pretty well-rounded guy in the end). Celebrate difference!

[exboyfil]

5. At our elementary the kid next door and his friend

basically told the 6th grade teacher to get out of their way and did math on their own. He got placed two grades ahead in math going into 7th grade. Good for him. The kid loves math.

[LWolf]

8. I had to laugh reading about your 2nd grade teacher.

She, of course, needed to recognize and value his individual talents and ways of thinking. As a former librarian, a Language Arts teacher, and a confirmed bibliophile, I have sometimes felt irritated by those who see the world through a mathematical lens, even though, logically, I recognize the merits of such a view. We benefit by nurturing ALL the different ways to understand and interact with our world.

Teaching middle school, I sometimes get that response: "Are we talking about the same kid?" Parents are usually gratified to know that the manners they've spent years trying to instill in their children are there, and are applied in public, if not in the "safe zone" at home.

[woodsprite]

3. Sounds like you're a great teacher. Communication with parents is a huge part of the picture.

We had a wonderful dedicated 4th grade teacher last year for our son who was an excellent communicator and let the kids and parents know that she had high (but level-appropriate) expectations for each of her students.

We're having a problem with my son's 5th grade teacher this year. He brings home about 1 to 2 math worksheet pages a week, no spelling, no reading, no science or social studies. When parents asked at open house, she said she's not assigning homework because they work so hard during the day and this is the last year they're going to get to play much after school and just be kids.

He was throwing up on Monday and I didn't send him, but sent him in with a parent's note on Tuesday. She refused to accept it, so I sent email asking why she refused to accept it and what classwork did he have to make up for being out. She hasn't answered that either. When I had my son ask her, she told him if there were any work, she would have given it to him. I called the office yesterday and told them that I had written an excused absence note for my son but the teacher wouldn't take it. I was told to have my son take it directly to the office, the teacher should be the one to turn it into them, but considering who he had, have him bring it down directly.

I can't wait for our parent/teacher conference to see what surprises await us.

[LWolf]

9. Sounds like there will be some surprises.

My suggestion, even though you didn't ask: ;) At conference time, let her know that home/school communication is important to you, and that you need regular communication about what your child is learning, and what you can support at home. If she's not assigning homework, but you know what he's studying, you can discuss the learning with him, and sometimes offer some enrichment opportunities.

Of course, whether she assigns it or not, your son should be reading every day outside of school.

[murielm99]

4. I have seen it from both sides.

I was so glad the first year that I had to do parent/teacher conferences that I was in a middle school where there was a team approach and the team leader helped me. I had one high school block of students, and an experienced Spanish teacher helped me there.

I taught in a small community school too.

I spent part of yesterday with a neighbor who has second graders, twins. She is involved with her kids, but not a helicopter parent. She tells me that the parents in the local parent/teacher association make the most trouble. They act like a clique of high school girls and make things difficult for both the teachers and other parents. I don't know if I want to teach again, if I regain my health. It might be easier to sub, or to be an aide.

[exboyfil]

6. I have been blessed with two fantastic daughters

Conference time is always a treat. My daughters have had a few sub par teachers (one unfortunately for two years in a row for my older daughter in English). It will be a little weird this year because both daughters have some teachers in common. I always try to separate evaluations of my two girls because I do not think it is fair to compare the two.

We had a back to school night earlier, and I got to spend important time with some of my daughters' teachers. In particular my older daughter's English teacher who is a gem. She came down from the 10th grade in High School to teach 9th grade.

[LWolf]

10. One of the things I like about our small community school is that

we are connected with families for several years, ushering all their children through. Since I've had their older siblings, too, for many families we already know each other, already have a good working relationship, and it keeps the year running smoothly for their kids. I also get frequent updates to be sure my former students are doing okay in high school. :)

That can be hard, sometimes, too. Two years ago we had a boy in crisis; we met with parents, we hooked him up with counselors, we tried everything we could think of to put him in a positive place, but he had a massive chip on his shoulder, some really severe anger issues, and we, his parents and the school staff, knew his first year in high school was going to present challenges. It did. He's currently in a live-in rehab program. I taught his older brother, who's fine, and am currently in my 2nd year with his younger sister, who is also doing well. Mom cried at the conference, though. We didn't mention the boy, but I think she needed to talk about him with people who knew, and would understand. The sister's conference was fine; she's doing very well, there are no concerns, and we talked about a couple of future scheduling conflicts for her. She was patient with her mom's need to talk about her brother.

I had two conferences yesterday in which there was some sibling comparison happening; it was a good opportunity to clear the air. In the first, the older brother was comparing himself negatively to his younger brother; both are my students. Both of them are highly intelligent, friendly, polite, and just great people. The older boy, though, has unmedicated ADHD and the organizational and focus issues that go along with that. He's generally successful anyway, since we have support systems in place for him. He commented that he wished he were "smart" like his brother. It was actually a good opportunity to clear that misconception up. His parents, of course, have told him over and over how smart he is, but he didn't believe them, because he struggles with some things while others don't. When his teacher told him, though, he was surprised. Apparently hearing it from the "expert," instead of from parents who love you anyway, made a difference.

The second was with a younger brother whose older brother has moved on to high school. His older brother is a model student. A voracious reader, always a 4.0, never had trouble getting assignments in on time, etc.. A golden boy. That's not why I loved him; I loved his humility and kindness to others. His younger brother, though...is smart, kind, and less driven to succeed. He often let's things slide, and then gets overwhelmed trying to catch up. At his conference, his parents were updating me on his brother's successes in high school. They weren't upset about the younger brother's "okay, but not great" progress report. But he was. I saw on his face, when they were talking about his brother, that it bothered him. So I stepped in with a story about MY younger son; about how he went out of his way to keep people from comparing him to his brilliant older brother, which is true. When I did, I saw his parents nod, and he sat up and looked more alert. Then I looked him in the eye and told him that, while I loved his brother, that didn't mean he was perfect, and that there were some things that HE was better at than his brother. He actually said, "You're kidding, right?" I wasn't. I listed them for him, and reminded him that he didn't have to be his brother; he just needed to be himself; that we all loved him that way.

I guess it's not really common for teachers to tell their students that they love them, lol, but they understand it in context, when their teacher has been a partner with their family for several years.

[exboyfil]

13. You sound like a wonderful teacher

I am surprised you have conferences with the students present. We don't do it that way.

One thing that really bothered me was when I was trying to get my oldest into the Gifted program, the teacher started talking about my younger child and her limitations. They are two different people - similiar in some ways but very different in other ways. I could never understand what she was getting at. I could never imagine talking about my other child during a conference - we can do it in hallway discussions but the time is set aside to discuss the child in question. Since both my children have the same Math teacher (Math being their weakest subject), I am trying to figure out in my mind how to handle the conference. I have two entirely different sets of expectations for my children this year in their respective Maths (Geometry and Pre-Algebra).

[LWolf]

14. We generally do have students at conferences; they are an integral part.

They talk about their classroom experiences, what is hard, what is going well, and what they need help with. Of course, parents often bring the whole family. When we want to talk about personal or sensitive things, we have the sibling step outside for that part.