P-T Conferences

     On Thursday, November 29th we had Parent-Teacher Conferences and distributed the student's report cards. Of the twenty-two students in my class, 18 parents or other family members (grandparents, siblings, etc.) came to talk with me and my teacher. Three of the students parents had let us know ahead of time that they couldn't make it to see us, and unfortunately, one students' parents have been impossible to contact.

    Looking at the schedule for our P-T conferences, I thought that there was no possible way to keep them on time. In a way the conferences are designed to fail time-wise. If every session is 10 minutes, which is not enough time to begin with, there needs to be time in between session for parents to get settled at the beginning and collect their belongings at the end. A five-minute grace period between session would be helpful to allow for transitions and help ease parental wait time. In my Vertical Level Meeting we discussed changing the structure of the P-T Conferences, but extending the conferences to another day is something that has to be negotiated through contracts.

    Despite falling about 10 minutes behind in the first hour of conferences, we were able to catch-up at the start of every hour due to gaps in our conference schedule. The breaks allowed us to get back on schedule, and sometimes reorganize ourselves and our paperwork before the next parent can in. I was surprised that we were able to stay so close to schedule and to have so little wait time for parents outside of the classroom. 

     Most of our conferences were structured the same way. As parents came in we started a 10-minute timer and let them know that we only have 10-minutes, but if we need to continue the conversation after the timer goes off, we would schedule an appointment to continue to conversation. (We had a calendar on the table for easy scheduling.) We had the parents sign-in and sign the cut out paper saying they received their child's report card.  Then my teacher explained that the report cards look similar to the report cards from Kindergarten and went over the grading key (S, E, D, NE, NA). She explained that it doesn't correspond to letter grades and that right now we would be looking for students to be in the D to E ranges. She also pointed out that she wrote a comment about the student on the back page. Next we shared with the parents the positives of their child's social-emotional development, and moved into areas that need to be worked on (if there were any).

     After that we shared with parents their students DRA2 level from October. We told parents that a level 4 is on grade level at this point in the year and that by the end of the year the goal is for the student to be reading at a level 16. We showed parents book samples of the child's current reading level, a level 4 and a level 16. We let them know what we are doing in the classroom to get their child to a level 16 or higher by the end of the year, and how they also need to work with their child to increase their reading skills. We reminded them to read to their child every day, even the weekends, but also talked about how comprehension is important. We asked them to ask their children questions about characters, setting, plot, to retell the story, etc. We let them know that they can ask these questions about movies, television shows, etc. We also gave the parents a copy of their child's DRA2 summary (the one we printed out on Tuesday) for their own records.

     If there was any time left, we let the parents ask us questions and tell us their concerns. In our VLM we also discussed having a form for parents to fill out before the conferences in the future so teachers can know how to structure each conference and how best to address parents concerns and topic they would like to discuss. We are hoping to have this ready for the second set of P-T Conferences this year.

     Most of the conferences were in English, so I was able to dully participate in them. However, a handful were in Spanish and since I don't speak much Spanish (or understand much), my teacher took the lead on them. Even so, I was able to read parents faces and the emotion in their voices, allowing me to follow the conversations.

    The most touching moment of the conferences for me was one with a mother we have gotten to know very well over the past few months. Her son has had some difficulty in our classroom and she has been concerned about his performance and behavior in school. Before she left the conference, I read to her something her son wrote for one of my lessons. The students were asked to write one thing they were thankful for and put them on turkey feathers. Her son worked on it independently, and wrote "I am thankful for my school. I am getting better at listening." When I read his work the mother started to cry. She told me hearing that made her so proud and happy. It was a touching moment that will stay with me.