Parent Teacher Conference

Before Thursday, I was thinking that Parent Teacher Conferences would be interesting but would not be something to be apprehensive about.  Mrs. Marotta and I had discussed my role and decided she would take the lead and I could jump in as needed.  However, During the day Thursday an incident occurred that would force me to speak to a student's mother on a matter of discipline.  Now I was kind of apprehensive about the Parent Teacher Conferences.  Paul is a student that talks constantly and is very immature.  Actually, I'm a bit jealous of his gift for gab and ability to engage anyone in a conversation.  This skill will serve him well in life.   However, he is very often off task and distracting the students in his group and students in the surrounding desk groups.  When Paul first transferred in, his mom had warned us that he often got into trouble for talking.  He is definitely a social learner and we do not want to have to put his desk alone as an island.   In the past week, Paul had been disrespectful to me on a few occasions.  I had called his name to be quiet and he replied, "That's my name" and started laughing.  Nothing too severe but still inappropriate.  So when it happened again on Thursday, I informed him that I would be informing his Mom of his behavior that night.  He was not happy.  And of course, Paul's Mom was second to last on the schedule, so I had plenty of time to think about how to address the issue.

We had a full schedule with all slots full.  The first thing we had to deal with was a parent that showed up at 1pm and wanted to do his conference.  However, he was scheduled for 2:10pm.  So Mrs. Marotta informed him that he would have to wait. And he did.  From this, I learned that Teachers need to stick to the schedule, especially at the start of the afternoon.  The first scheduled parent showed up on time for her 1:10pm slot.  Her child is classified, so we ended up going for 20 minutes before ending.  At this point, Mrs. Marotta put me in charge of handing out forms that some parents still needed to sign and the new NPS Schedule.

We managed get back to original schedule when one of the parents did not show.  We were also able to take a few early when other parents did not show.  This get us on time later that evening.  In all, we had 21 out of 26 show.  So it's important to keep to schedule early but important to be flexible as the day goes on.

Four of the conference stood out as lessons to me.  First, the conference with the new transfer student from Ghana.  Her father was the parent that showed up at 1pm for 2:10pm slot.  We wanted to find out about her educational background, what she knows and doesn't know.  She has been extremely quiet and is mostly inaccurate on assignments.  She can write fairly well.  Se just doesn't write about what she is supposed to write about.  We were not very successful in getting information.  Mrs. Marotta kept stressing that maybe it was a language issue and Afua's Father kept telling us that people from Ghana spoke English.  And it kept going in a circle that I wasn't sure how to stop.  So the lesson for me was be clear with questions for parents.

The second stand-out conference was well several conferences.  These were the hard working students.  I learned how to complement and how to encourage Parents to keep their child's learning moving forward.

The third stand-out conference was for a girl that I like very much, Yaddy.  She works hard and is very sweet.  I had noticed that she didn't sometimes withdraws and doesn't interact with other students.  But sometimes she fine with other students.  However, we learned from her Mom that she is very self-conscious of her weight and looks.  She had a brain tumor and had gained a lot of weight after the operations.  Her Mom told us that she doesn't interact with other kids because she's afraid they will call her fat.  She also has eye problems but she won't wear her glasses.  We didn't even know she wore glasses.  So the lesson was a teacher can learn a lot about a student from a conference.

Finally, it was time for Paul's Mom to show up.   Mrs. Marotta and I had discussed how we were going to approach the issue.  She would begin and I would continue when she gave me the look.  When the look came, I stated, "We're becoming concerned about Paul starting to become disrespectful."  I detailed two of the incidents.  She was not defensive as I feared.  She apologized profusely and said that she would talk with him about this.  Mrs. Marotta did end the conference on a positive note.  Then Paul's Mom informed us that he had been a very, very premature birth and that he had had major health problems as a baby.  He is also an only child and graves all the affection he can get.  Again, it was good to learn context.  So here I learned how to handle discipline issues and do it in a way that doesn't pit the parent against the teacher and keeps the student's educational needs first and foremost.  Also, Paul behavior was more appropriate the next day.  We'll see how he does going forward.