Parent Teacher Conferences11/29/12

On Thursday night, I attended Parent/Teacher Conferences or report card night as they call it. One thing that I really like about Abington (or maybe Newark in general) is that they require parents to come in in order to get their child's report card. One thing that I do not like is that conferences are only 10 minutes. What can you really get accomplished in 10 minutes?! I remember when I was in school, we would at least have 2 days of parent teacher conferences with longer time slots, but that may be indicative of the level of parental involvement and attendance that you tend to hear about in Newark. 

Thursday was an interesting day. Out of 24 students, we had 22 parents come in for conferences and out of those 22, 18 were in Spanish. I was not as lost as I thought I would be however. I actually picked  up a lot of what was being said and my mentor was really surprised when we would debrief after each conference and I would tell her I already knew. The most difficult part was not being able to directly communicate with the parents. She would turn to me at certain parts and asked me if I understood and if I did not, she would tell me what was being said and if I had anything to say, she would translate it for me, but I would have rathered to be able to do it myself. Needless to say, Rosetta Stone and/or Spanish classes are at the top of my list right now. If I ever have a class like this, then I want to be prepared. 

Besides that though, conferences ran smoothly and for the most part on time. I noticed that with higher achieving students, those conferences went quickly than the ones where the grades were lower. That helped though as we needed more time to talk to the parents of the ones who needed more help. For example, we had a longer conference with one of our failing students whose mom does not want to acknowledge or admit that he is struggling. Even with the conference being in Spanish, it was not hard to tell that she did not want to hear that. We are going to work with him more and see if he improves, but if not then we have to start taking other measures, so we will see how that goes. 

In some of the conferences, my mentor and a parent would discuss the student's struggles and how we can work on them and fix them. It was great because I saw her put them in place the next day. For example, we changed Ivelys' seat because we found out that she needs glasses, but lost them. We also changed Katie's seat around because her dad told us that she can process better when she hears from the right side. Those are the kinds of things that make conferences worthwhile because we never would have known that otherwise. 

Dinner was an interesting and fun part of the night. I love the social committee at Abington and the lunches/dinners that they put together. It really is a wonderful thing to see everybody sitting and eating together and having a good time. They even had a ring toss and a station to take pictures. The dinner was all Hispanic food and pretty amazing. The best part is that it is not just the teachers. Even the administrators come and take part in the festivities. It was a good way to relax and unwind before going back to conferences. I hope that whatever school that I get placed in has a pretty tight knit community like the one at Abington. I think that that makes the whole teaching thing easier at times. 

The sessions after dinner tended to go more quickly than the ones earlier in the afternoon. There were two parents that we specifically wanted to see that did not show up. One sent an older brother and the other just did not show up. On our down time, we talked about future lessons and past conferences and debriefed about the conferences that we just had. I felt really important because my input and feedback was valued and taken into consideration. It is great having a mentor that I can both get along with and learn from. As a whole, it was a success.