Parent-Teacher Conferences

I found this awesome photo on Pinterest, and couldn't help but lead this post with this picture. Enjoy!

Cited: http://heygirlteacher.tumblr.com/

Anyone else feel this way? Worrying about scheduling siblings in other grades back-to-back with your students, parents can't make certain times, and the list goes on with the stress of scheduling Parent/Teacher Conferences.

Before I even get into my organization during conferences, don't forget to add something special up on the walls outside of your classroom so parents/guardians can see what their child has been completing in class.  I am lucky enough to have a couple large spaces outside of my classroom.  One of my bulletin boards was filled with student writing.  We did a creative writing piece to teach descriptive writing.  After reading the story I Need My Monster, students spent a day creating 3 of their own monsters and using many new and exciting words to describe them.  They then selected one monster to write a fun-filled narrative about them.  I put the writing as well as their monster picture up on the bulletin board.

The other side of the wall was filled with our personal character traits posters we made at the beginning of the school year. Parents loved seeing what traits their child used to describe themselves.  It was a great "ice breaker" for the parents and I to discuss their child's work and/or character traits before we got into the academics. 

(See that post here)

I try to stay really organized with a folder per student during this time as I know I only have 15-20 minutes with each parent. Things I include in the folder to be shared with the parent are:

• Progress Report
• Writing Sample
• Student Personal Progress Reports
• Math Fact Data (See blog post or buy on TPT)
• Any official forms from school
• Student skills evaluation report (Coming Soon!)
• Student Data of Common Core Standards Checklist (Get your grade level..here)
• Student Reading Level Goal via personal thermometer growth

Having all of these items completed, put into the folder, and ready to go makes me feel prepared.  Once all of the folders are packed, I make sure to put them in order of appointment.  That way, when one parent exits, I put that folder aside and the next one is up & ready to go.

A few more helpful hints: Always start with a positive about the child (or a few) so parents/guardians know you are on the side of helping their child.  This will help parents stay more relaxed and willing to hear the hard stuff if you start with something positive.  It is hard for many parents to see issues or problems when it comes to their child and their education.  Go at this issues carefully, and make sure you have data to back up your thoughts. If you know there will be a difficult conferences, ask one of your administrators to sit in on the conference with you. There is no shame in making sure you have "back up".

Good luck, and I know holding 25+ conferences in a short amount of time is difficult.  So continue being rock star teachers!