Parent Teacher Meetings

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Parent Teacher Meetings
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Parent Teacher Meetings

• Before the meeting
• During the meeting
• After the meeting

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• Parent-teacher conferences were times of great
  anxiety for me as a child. I sat at home with
  damp palms, waiting for my mother to return with
  the bad tidings. I'm not sure why I had such a
  guilty conscience. I was a good student and never
  had behavior problems. But the conference brought
  together the most powerful adults in my life my
  parents and my teacher to talk about ME. The
  attention was unnerving.

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Before the Meeting

• How can we help parents
• Have realistic goals for their children
• Know how to advocate for their children
• Know how to work productively with the education
  system

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POET

• Positive Catch kids being good
• Ongoing Report good times and bad on a regular
  basis
• EarlyTry to make contact before things go wrong
• Trusted Respect confidentiality

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Communication Strategies

• Positive and Early
• Letter of introduction to parents
• Brief introduction
• Goals for class, teaching philosophy
• Contact information
• Expectations for communication
• Parent Nights, classroom visits, email address
• Webpage of introduction?

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Positive

• Examples of childrens work throughout room
• Positive comments on work sent home
• Class averages on tests

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Ongoing and Trusted

• Regular communication
• Letters or homework home
• Post grades on web?
• Email addresses
• Parent nights

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Before the conference

• Get a better sense of parent concerns
• Childs interests
• Childs strengths
• Challenges for child
• My child learns best when .
• Parent goals
• Other information
• -see example at www.schwablearning.org/pdfs/2200_
  80_ParentTeachForm.pdf

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Before the conference

• How can we help parents
• Have realistic goals for their children
• We learn about their goals
• Know how to advocate for their children
• We provide an opportunity for communication
• Know how to work productively with the education
  system
• Evidence that we view their child as positive and
  that we respect their role as parents

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During the conference

• We want the parents to be aware of our concerns
• We want to start taking action
• We want to prepare them as advocates
• Demonstrate that their input and action is
  important
• Need to help them learn how to contibute

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During the conference

• Brief introduction to class and routine
• Goals of class, samples of student work
• Positive positive positive
• Review the information parent provided
• Confirm shared positives and shared goals

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Problem Solving The DOIT! Strategy
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D escribe goal(s) of key individuals What behaviors do we want to increase/decrease? - How will life be better if this goal is reached?
O utline lots of ways to reach goal(s)
I dentify the needed resources and impact
T ake action (pick an approach) and evaluate progress
! Celebrate success with others
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• You are a teacher at a new school. The school
  district has families from a wide variety of
  linguistic backgrounds and economic levels, and
  you have been told that it can be challenging to
  work with parents.

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• You are concerned about Mark, a new transfer
  student in your Grade 6 science class. When asked
  to take notes from a text for homework, his
  summaries typically contain at least one
  misspelled word in each sentence, the handwriting
  is poor, and the summaries are very disorganized.
  His grades on tests are very poor.

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• The parent-teacher planning form that Marks
  parents brought to the meeting was only partly
  completed, the handwriting was poor, and
  contained misspellings. Their academic goal for
  Mark was graduate HS

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Starting the meeting

• Thank them for coming and bringing the form
• Review the information
• Ask some easy questions to get conversation going
• For example, differences between new school and
  Marks old school
• Size of school
• Transportation

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During the conference

• Brief introduction to class and routine
• Goals of class, samples of student work
• Positive positive positive
• Review the information parent provided
• Confirm shared positives and shared goals

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1) Describe goal(s) of key individuals

• What behaviors do we want to increase/decrease?
• for student
• Better understanding of content
• Better performance on tests
• for parent
• Better understanding of Marks current
  performance
• Strategies to support success
• Belief in their ability to support Mark
• Become better supports and advocates

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• How will life be better if these goals are
  reached?
• Student will be successful in school
• Better chance of graduating
• Parents will be better advocates

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REVIEW Be careful not to confuse Goals and
Activities
Goal What Mark hopes to achieve Activities How Mark will reach goal
Better understanding of content - better grades do homework review notes before test ask questions in class
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2) Outline different approaches for reaching
goals

• Brainstorm lots of ideas
• Work from parent suggestions of when child learns
  best
• Quiet place to work (no TV)
• Small chunks of work ( a little each night not
  cram on weekends)
• Teacher input
• Teach note-taking and summarization strategies
• Implement peer practice activites

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3) Identify the needed resources and impact

• What do we need to do this?
• What is the likelihood we will be able to get
  needed resources?
• Quiet
• Ear plugs
• Small chunks
• Study chart
• Summarization strategy
• Teacher commitment
• What will happen if we do this?

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4) Take action (pick an approach) and evaluate
progress

• Try an approach
• Create study chart with checklist (teacher)
• Check study chart each night (parent)
• Collect data
• Study chart and quiz scores
• Make changes as needed

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5) ! Celebrate success with others

• Emphasize importance of personal effort
• Individuals with a history of poor performance
  may doubt their ability to have a positive impact
• Emphasizing the importance of personal effort can
  help them see that their behavior is important

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POET

• Positive Catch kids being good
• Ongoing Report good times and bad on a regular
  basis
• EarlyTry to make contact before things go wrong
• Trusted Respect confidentiality

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DOIT!

• Describe goals
• Outline alternatives
• Identify best choice
• Take action
• ! (Celebrate success)

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• Parent teacher meetings
• Working with another teacher
• Working with a paraprofessional

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• Is this easy? fast?
• No
• But it lays the foundation for positive
  relationships in the future, and at least if you
  are going to be busy, you are busy doing positive
  things that you are excited about, not preparing
  for high stress meetings.

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Parent Teacher Meetings