Parental Two Step

As a line of parents and students grows outside the classroom, it becomes increasingly difficult to spend the time with parents that each deserves. Parent teacher conferences often end up more like a meet and greet, and, I'm sure for parents it feels like an assembly line, going from one teacher to another.

This year, again because of our construction, we are meeting with parents in our rooms, instead of in a large common space like our media center. Room conferences make parents travel all over the building, and certainly waste more time just finding teachers than the common room approach. But for now, it is no preference, just what we have to do.

Every teacher has a different style of conferencing, unless a school has developed a specific model, such as student led, etc. Most have the grade book strategically placed between them and the parents/student. That certainly isn't wrong, most parents are concerned about the grade and their student's performance in the class. Personally, however, I have rarely brought my gradebook to a conference. Especially, now that I use an online gradebook that is internet accessible by parents and students at any time.

The gradebook, I have found, is a crutch for getting to the point (the grade) and moving on. Like a physician's office appointment, 5 minutes in, measure, diagnose, prescribe, and out we go. I've never been comfortable with that. Having that grade book in between makes the grade the focus of education. And I have never been able to swallow that.

Usually, I talk more to the student and have a student-centered conversation. Letting the student explain their grade. If they have no idea, well, that says something too doesn't it. Also, I think it is important to talk about all the grades and classes in context. If there is a D in chemistry, but all other grades are ok (including mine), I see it as part of my responsibility to coach the student to spend more time in chemistry. I also like to have an informal conversation with the parents. Get to know them a little. It is amazing what we often discover about family situations that shed light on the student as a person, as well as the struggles they are coping with. At least I can offer some moral support to parents for that too.

This conference, I was criticized a couple of times for not having the grade book and every grade to the nearest tenth percent ready to present and defend. I can do that if necessary. But in a five minute awkward dance with parents, it hardly seems like the most important issue in their child's development and education in the broadest sense. I'm stuck in the perspective of school as a liberal, enlightenment education and not an assembly line of skills and performance grades.

I could be wrong.