It’s my second week officially in to my placement and it’s feeling great! This week there was a lot of focus during “team planning” regarding parent teacher conferences and how to tackle them this semester. Team planning is a 30-45 minute time teachers get to meet with the rest of the teachers in their grade level and discuss any student issues, conflicts, and assist to keep everyone in the loop. Parent teacher conferences are coming up at the end of February and the issue arising is that each teacher only gets 15 minutes with any parent that shows up, not allotting much time to discuss any of the high flyers and students who are at risk. It is unclear what the turnout will be each year during the conferences and which parents will be attending. The 6th grade team came up with an organized method to help plan which student(s)/families the team feels need to be met with by creating a shared spread sheet and listing off the students and reason(s) to be met with. Since the team meets everyday during team planning period (2nd period) they have arranged time to include a team parent teacher conference to meet and discuss with more time and detail each Wednesday and Thursday. This allows them to meet on Monday’s, Tuesday’s and Friday’s to discuss anything regarding the classrooms, conflicts, and agendas and allows for parent meeting time as a team two days of the week. I really liked this idea because when meeting with certain students, more time needs to be allotted to go into more detail, concerns, and make plans for the at-risk students. Additionally, it’s important for the parents of those students to meet with the students teachers, all together, so more information can be discussed, more ideas for success can be implemented, and all concerns can be addressed in one meeting.
I also had the opportunity to go with my cooperating teacher to one of her assessment and grading committees that she is a part of. I have to say that this was one of the most eye opening meetings I had been to. The committee had asked all teachers, anonymously, to break down how their classes were graded. The teachers all had to mark whether their students grades were weighted or based on total points, and how much percent they planned to have each category worth, and then calculate how much each category was actually worth. The committee looked at all the answers together on a spreadsheet, and I was appalled to see how inconsistent and unfair some teachers were (and most did not realize it until really creating that anonymous sheet). Some teachers we saw had their grades based on total points, and 70% of the points were coming from tests/quizzes. What this meant was if any student failed one test, they already dug themselves in a hole pretty hard to come out of. We also had some teachers whose grades were 80% based on homework. The issue we saw with this was that those students were receiving grades not entirely based off their performance, because tests and quizzes only accounted for 10%. Overall, it really showed me how important it is for teachers to keep their students grading procedures consistent and fair in order to see the most student growth, needs, and to get the most deserved grade.
Ms. P