Parent-Teacher Conferences

Student's Skills Summary

Today in class, we practiced parent-teacher conferences.  To prepare for the conference, I prepared a progress report in the form of a Student Skills Summary.  While creating this progress report, I kept in mind an actual student I am working with in my placement.  In the practice conference, I met with a mother and father who did not demonstrate interest in their child's work.  The mother works long hours and is not able to be very involved in her daughter's education and the father was not interested in helping his daughter, especially because he felt that he was incapable of doing so.

I learned a number of things from this practice conference.  Firstly, setting an agenda for the conference and being prepared is essential.  While reviewing my Student Skills Summary, I felt it addressed the right areas; it discussed the standards we are using in my unit, actual work the student used to demonstrate meeting these standards, and comments.  I felt the comment section was most helpful because it was less generic and more personal.  To improve my Student Skills Summary, I need to explain the grading scale I'm using (exceeds, meets, and working towards expectations). I need to be more specific on what exceeding, meeting, and working towards expectations actually means. Secondly, I realized not all parents are going to be patient and want to hear about how their child is doing.  I struggled with how to react to the "mock" parents when they demonstrated boredom and an anxiousness to leave.  In reflection afterwards, my peers suggested that I just highlight my main points instead of continuing to read through my entire progress report.  I thought this was a good suggestion.  However, I thought I handled the issue of the parents not being able to work with their child on school work well.  I said I can schedule extra time to work with their child or send home a guide to assist the parents when trying to help their daughter.

 Furthermore, if this was a real conference, I would have put together a portfolio of student work.  I think parents would appreciate seeing evidence of their child's performance.  Also, I would include a student self-assessment.  I think it is important for students to be able to explain where they think they are and why.  This is one reason why I really like the idea of student-led conferences.  This connects to my goal as a future educator to encourage independence in my students by taking responsibility for their own work and behavior.