Every teacher is aware of the responsibility to communicate with parents as part of his or her job. This responsibility can be expressed in many different forms; such as, weekly newsletters, emails/phone calls home, online class website, and of course, parent-teacher conferences. Many teachers stress over this practice as parents are unpredictable. Going into the experience, you truly have no idea how parents are going to react to their students’ work/grades/behaviors. There are some parents that you have been in recent or even constant communication with so you have an idea of what is going to discussed but in the grand scheme of things, you have to be prepared for anything.
Going into my conferences, I had one parent that my cooperating teacher had been in recent communication with that we felt was going to be a difficult conference. Yet, the conferences are limited to 5 minutes each, that is if you stay on schedule, so while it could be difficult, it would be done and over with before we knew it. I had never experienced parent-teacher conferences prior to my student teaching and had little to no experience with parent communication to back it up. I was pretty nervous, but excited to jumpstart that part of my career and gain experience in that part of the job that I had yet to take part in.
My conferences, again only being 5 minutes each, were relatively painless. There were only a couple difficult conversations that appeared to stem from a lack of understanding of where his or her child was at in our class so when the grade conversation came about, they were in complete shock of his or her child’s poor grade in the class. I think the largest challenge came down to the differences already known to me between my cooperating teacher’s teaching philosophy and mine. I was jumping at the gun to tell the parents how much of an improvement the student had made as of recently; however, my cooperating teacher was quick to change that conversation to all of the work that needs to still be seen from that student.
Overall, I would say parent-teacher conferences were no where near as painful as I had been warned about. I am eager to approach them on my own with my teaching philosophy being the focus of the conversation. I would say that the experience definitely demonstrated the importance of parent communication throughout the school year and not just twice a year for conferences, if possible.
Until next time,
Miss C