Most Colorado schools are back in full swing from the holidays and pretty soon, parent/teacher conferences will be upon us. While you may be groaning in the back of your mind, parent/teacher conferences are a great way to see if your child is headed in the right direction or if your child is needing to be redirected. Conversing one on one with your child’s teacher is a very important time, because it allows you to see into their world and how your child is doing in it. Meeting face to face with your child’s teacher allows you to have more clarity about strengths, opportunities, threats and weaknesses that your child faces in their classroom. Teachers often will provide examples of your student’s work to help with their explanations – work that your student might not be telling you about. Lastly, attending student/teacher conferences shows their teacher that you are prioritizing their schoolwork and that you care not just about their activities at home, but their work and behavior in their classroom.
With as important as parent/teacher conferences are, you might want a little help navigating how to get the best out of conferences and make the most efficient use your time, as well as your child’s teachers. While there isn’t necessarily a how-to operating manual for parent/teacher conferences, we do have some tips for making the most of your visit.
Talk with your child about their perception of how school is going, what they found hard in the last semester and what they might be finding challenging in the second semester. Here are some good questions to ask them: Do you raise your hand in class? Do you volunteer when the teacher asks for help? Do you ask questions when you’re confused? Do you understand everything that goes on when you work in groups?
Observe any changes in work habits or mindsets from your child and bring them up at the conferences to see if there should be concern or awareness about shifts that also might be happening in the classroom. Things like avoiding talking about certain subjects, outbursts when working on homework, lack of persistent when trying to solve problems and confusion around any subject or homework assignment are specific examples.
Prepare a list of topics with your student that you might want more clarification on so you can help them with homework if they need it.
Ask to see work samples from your student and ask to see examples from other students who are considered to be producing standard and excellent work.
Bring up all items on your list of topics/questions that you worked on with your student, particularly if they aren’t touched on in the organic process of reviewing your student. Teachers typically have a schedule packed full of meetings with other parents during parent/teacher conferences and noting topics you want to touch on at the beginning can help them delineate what you find important, as well as things they might not need to mention in effort to stay on track during the conference.
Talking about your child can be emotional, especially if your child is needing help. Nobody wants to see their child struggle. Stay calm during the conference, even if you don’t agree with everything being said by your child’s teacher. Try to provide examples of why you disagree – remember you each see your child in very different settings. The idea is to bridge a gap to help the child in all settings.
Know that your child’s teacher is your partner and they want to see your child succeed too. You are both invested in your child and their future and you both should be working toward similar goals.
End the meeting on time to avoid cutting into other parents’ time.
Thank your child’s teacher! They have put a lot of extra hours in the week to prepare to update all their students’ families and they spend a lot of time with your student.
Take time to collect and organize the info you have been given and review how you are going to deliver it to your child.
Share what you have found in a constructive and concise manner with your child. Start by sharing the strong points and positive notes their teacher shared with you. Acknowledging and sometimes rewarding positive contributions and achievements is important – especially if it was in an area where improvement was needed in prior parent/teacher conferences – can continue to encourage kids to improve in needed areas. After talking about highlights, inform your student of any problem areas and things that were discussed to improve them. This can also be a chance for the student to help brainstorm changes they can make to become more successful in the areas needing improvement.
Follow up with your child’s teacher several weeks or a month or so after the conference to see if the areas of improvement discussed are improving. If the plan isn’t working, further changes might need to be implemented, but make sure there is follow-through.
If your child is specifically struggling in math and you are having problems implementing or seeing improvement with their performance plan after parent/teacher conferences, give us a call at Mathnasium of Cherry Creek. You can schedule an assessment to see specific areas needing improvement. Helping them understand math will improve classroom performance, but more importantly to help them really understand relationships with numbers and numerical fluency. It will also help them immensely with confidence.
