Parent Conferences

I spent all day (until 6:45) having parent conferences and I'm all "niced" out. I always dress up a little for this event, so I look professional. I want to be in charge, but I try to make it comfortable for the family, too. I was taken aback the first year I was on the "teacher" side of the table at how stressed some of my parents looked and acted. I realized that I was The Teacher, and it was a little startling. I felt like me still, but when it is school, and people are talking about their children, there is a lot more involved than just grades. People can be very upset when they hear unpleasant news about their child. They can personalize it and be very resentful of the power that you (the teacher) hold over their lives. If they didn't have a good experience in elementary school, then just walking into the building is a stressful event.

Our school has a wonderful tool we use for parent/student conferences: the data binder. Each student has one, and we store all their work in it for the first trimester. It also has little charts or graphs or tables (each grade level has one that we create for our students to use) that tracks their progress through the standards that we cover. So, when we have the conferences, the students get their data binder from the shelf to present their work to their parents, and what their status is with the standards. If they are only approaching a standard, then they will have the work right there to show why that is so. They also explain what it takes to meet the standards, too. The theory is that the students will be aware of where they stand so the report card isn't a surprise.

It actually works really well, and today and this evening, students sat with their parents and showed them their work and chatted away knowledgably about what they'd been doing in math, writing, reading, science and social studies. It was pretty cool to watch. We all discussed ways that the student could do better, or offered compliments on their fine work so far and every conference was a team effort. It was nice.

But, I am exhausted. Weird how all that instensity just drains your energy away. Unlike a normal school day, I sat in a chair most of the day, and I'm dead. Time for the hot tub.