Week 11: Reflecting on Parent Conferences
Just in time for parent conference season, Thomas Friedman does a piece in the NY Times on the role of parents in improving schools and their own children.
How does that fit in with my parent conferences? Most of my parents are communicating with their kids, and seem to be on track with the recommendations that Friedman suggests help students do better (reading with their child, asking questions, rewarding their efforts, monitoring homework).
My biggest “problem” this parent conference season has not been with adults, but some of my student’s inability to share the sign up forms with their parents, or to return the completed forms to me. While I’m sure that in some cases, this was deliberate, I’m guessing that in most cases, it was an “organizational” issue for my students. I started the week of conferences with only about 17 of 26 parents signed up for a conference.
One tool that helped break this impasse, email. It’s the only way I hear about my son’s parent conferences, and that seemed to hold true for many of my students. By the time it was all over, I had only about 3 students who I didn’t have a parent conference for, and one of those had been in touch with me, we just couldn’t settle on a time.
In addition, I checked to see who among my parents I could send SMS messages to. I’m using that for daily reports on some of my students. For years, my husband and I have used SMS to “chat” about parenting issues when my son is in the room. It’s nice because it ensures we are a “united front”. My biggest issue during parent conferences was that I was not keeping up with daily reports to the handful of parents I send those out to, due to schedule craziness.
Between Back to School, and other chance meetings, I have now met all of my parents except for a child who was placed in my class in the last 2 weeks. My takeaway? Technology is a great tool for building relationships, but meeting face-to-face really cements things. I wouldn’t want to do one without the other. If I was only seeing parents at conference time, that would be too far between meetings, but having a face to go with the emails and texts makes both of us more human.
Photo Credit: Number 11 by gusset, on Flickr
I used a Google Docs Spreadsheet to schedule conferences this year. Worked great and got many ooohs and ahhhs for ease of use and its slick look.
Emails, smart phones and the like are great for communicating with parents for a couple reasons. First, it’s instaneous. Second, you don’t have to go through the students. Last, it saves trees.