<p>What do parents expect to get from these general teacher conferences? What is privacy needed for? Yu don’t think the teachers talk? They have to. </p>
<p>Our teacher nights were follow the students schedule. Some parents were real pain the behinds. Hogging teachers attention, asking the most inane questions, and generally just being annoying.</p>
<p>And they thought their kids were gods gift to earth. I enjoyed it but did not expect personal attention on these nights. Didn’t need to have one on one ohnhow wonderful do you think my kid is conversation. </p>
<p>To those that want more time, what exactly are you looking for? And what do you expect your kids todo for the,selves?</p>
<p>The teachers probably do talk to each other, but they probably don’t talk as much about the students as you’d think. I wouldn’t expect a teacher to talk to a different parent about my student, in any case. However, the other parents can easily overhear the conversations at the “warehouse” conferences in the gym.</p>
<p>We also have the follow-the-student’s-schedule evening. No one I know expects individual attention at those.</p>
<p>With regard to having more time at the 5-minute conferences, there were a few cases where I would have liked to have more time. For example, if a teacher observed that a girl was quite during class discussions, it would have been nice to explain that permitting vulgar comments by boys during the discussions tended to make some of the girls quieter. In a university setting, remarks of the type made by the boys would be construed as creating an inappropriate, hostile environment. In a 5-minute hs conference, I found it hard to say this, especially when the remark came up at 4 min 45 sec. Since the teacher was inexperienced, I didn’t want to seem to be making excuses, or to be confrontational, though I could have offered the specifics. If I had had the chance to bracket this comment with remarks about things I liked, I would have done it, but that would have taken appreciably longer. </p>
<p>Yes, there are a lot of things that students should do for themselves. However, to take an extreme example, several years before QMP was in high school, a boy in an algebra class poured gasoline on another boy, during class. I don’t think it’s within the normal bounds of what students should be expected to do for themselves, to compel another student not to pour gasoline on them.</p>
<p>I mention this extreme example, because I think that some parents would think that the girls should stand up for themselves, when vulgar comments are being made. However, I really consider that to be the responsibility of the teacher–similarly to it being the teacher’s responsibility to prevent one student from pouring gasoline on another during class.</p>
<p>D just brought home this year’s conference info. A new feature for 2012-2013 is the principal will now announce the measly 5 minute intervals we’re allowed. Do these labor-saving ideas get published in the educational journals or something, seeing as so many schools are adopting the same practices? In my opinion, our district schools are already too dismissive of parents and their input and this just adds to the rudeness. They love to remind the middle school parents especially that they’re the professionals and we should trust them. The kids need to be responsible as well for their own education they say. Yet how quick they are to blame the parents if the child doesn’t learn! Must be the home life, must be the parents lack of education or low socio-economic status, must be the lack of parental involvement, etc. </p>
<p>I am not feeling too charitable toward our teachers at the moment because of the unprofessional way in which they attempt to lobby the children regarding contract negotiations. They all wear black to school, or they all wear ribbons. When my eldest was this age, one of his teachers told the kids that their fight for fair treatment is akin to what MLK did in civil rights movement! Can’t stand it. You would think that in a contract renewal year they’d want to go above and beyond to show the parents they deserve more money. But they do less.</p>
<p>Well, 5 minute conferences take less time than 20 minute conferences. Also, I love how we have early dismissal all week ostensibly for conferences, yet they’re cramming them all into two hours on two afternoons, and one evening for 4 hours. </p>
<p>I did hear that one reason behind putting everyone in the gym or cafeteria instead of letting parents go to the individual classrooms, is there will be less work for the custodians.</p>
<p>Well, yes, less work for the custodians, because I always left behind spilled Coke, banana peels, candy wrappers, old newspapers, McDonald’s boxes, jello, chicken wings, shredded carrots, turnip tops, Cracker Jack, and uneaten ice cream cones, whenever I went to a conference.</p>
<p>Seriously, I suppose it is true that it does limit the extra custodial work, because the custodians can do the classrooms right after school and need not do them after conferences. On the other hand, I would imagine that the parental wear and tear on the classrooms is less than first-period hs wear and tear, so the classrooms could have been cleaned at the end of the normal school day on conference days, and then left until the end of the next day.</p>
<p>Surprisingly well! One teacher said, “He is the politest person I’ve ever met.” I refrained from saying, “Are you KIDDING ME???”</p>
<p>From my many years in the schools as a volunteer, and as a parent, I’ve found that kids are either extra polite at home or at school ( predominately)
It seems to be a much healthier environment when the kids acts up/out at home, and behaves at school than the reverse.
But I know it is kinda surprising to hear it.</p>
<p>Surprisingly well! One teacher said, “He is the politest person I’ve ever met.” I refrained from saying, “Are you KIDDING ME???”</p>
<p>From my many years in the schools as a volunteer, and as a parent, I’ve found that kids are either extra polite at home or at school ( predominately)
It seems to be a much healthier environment when the kids acts up/out at home, and behaves at school than the reverse.
But I know it is kinda surprising to hear it.
One of the Ds friends parents went on so much about how she appreciated Ds thoughtful conversations and cheerful attitude in their home that if I didn’t know better I would have thought she had gotten her mixed up with someone else.</p>
<p>If there is a serious issue in a classroom, why wait till the conference? Why not if it’s that important not email the teacher, or counselor? At the beginning of the year each student was given a syllabus with preferred method of communication with a teacher, ie email, note etc. If the nasty boys were causing problems, why wait? Even an anonymous note to the teacher would let them know it’s an issue</p>
<p>The thing is that the boys weren’t “nasty” (I knew some of them), although they were saying nasty things. The teacher was in his first year, and I had no sense of what he was like–whether he would over-react, become defensive, or what. I didn’t want to set off a reaction when I did not know what the reaction would be. Also, I knew about the boys’ comments ahead of the conference, but I did not know that some of the girls were thought to be “quiet” in discussions.</p>
<p>Ed’s school did report card night in the way you described. If I want to talk to a teacher in for a more extended time, I have had great success with emailing them and saying. "Hi, I have a concern to discuss. Is there a time that I could bring you a cups of Starbucks…perhaps at your prep time? Everyone loves Starbucks, and it is a bit more relaxed. I will say that high school teachers are usually more reluctant, believing that students should self advocate. Never had an issue though!</p>
<p>My younger son’s HS has parent-teacher conferences, but few parents attend. Why? Truthfully, many do not care about their kids’ grades. I know that sounds awful, but it’s true. Only a handful will attend conferences. My son always asks that I stop and see his teachers (I teach in the same building). I generally know what his grades are, but he feels it is important that I say hello and chat a moment with each teacher. That way, if an issue does flare, we can work together with the teacher to solve it.</p>
<p>In 5 minutes with the teacher you can learn if your child is doing well or not. I guess I just don’t understand the problem. If your child has more issues than that, schedule a conference to go into more depth. </p>
<p>When our kids were in middle school we had “student led conferences”. Basically your child put together a portfolio of their work and showed it to you. Given we had online gradebooks, we knew all of it going into the conference. We wanted to talk to the teachers. We can talk to our kids every day at home :D. As a result, we found some things during 8th grade that SHOULD have been caught in 6th grade, class placement, etc. that we were unaware of, as were our kids–mainly they got put into the wrong math classes which caused some issues down the road.</p>
<p>Hmm, large urban public, with magnet program for our son. Just had optional conferences a while ago – school corp had done away with them a few years ago, and brought them back more recently. No prior sign-up, an “honor” system that you will take just a few minutes, parents wait outside the class room for their “turn.” Really an opportunity for both to get a reality check.</p>
<p>Very interesting for us, as the one class where our son has a lower grade, the teacher reported that he is quite talkative and not a great listener. No other teacher described anything like this. We realized that, after 2 periods of arts-related class, this is his first academic class of the day and he seems to have a harder time transitioning. So, now our freshman understands that he needs to shift gears at the beginning of that class. Very useful, and I would not have known this but for the conference.</p>
<p>Here’s what those of you with great teachers and well-run schools don’t get: the online grade reporting program is only as good as the teachers’ input. I check it regularly, but D currently has several classes where the teacher has not yet graded things from late Sept. Am I, or is my child, the teacher’s boss, such that I/she should bug him or her to grade the papers already? (Not that we haven’t attempted that strategy, and learned it was a really bad idea… ) Once those tests and assignments are graded and the scores are inputted–which happens exactly a day before conferences because the teacher knows he’ll need them to show parents–suddenly a child whose parent thought he was doing well, isn’t doing well. This revelation comes out at conferences, when the teacher consults the online gradebook in front of the parent. That is why problems still get discussed at conferences even when the parent is on top of things. </p>
<p>Secondly, if I am aware of a serious issue before conferences, then of course I will contact the teacher to discuss it. But last year my D had A’s in every class, yet at conferences I was made aware of a couple of issues. It would have been nice to have been able to explore them privately and in greater depth at the moment they were raised, but with only a short time allowed, that was impossible. So the time frame was just enough to allow the teacher to tell me, me to get upset, and then me to humiliate myself by crying in front of roomful of parents. When parents have “perfect” kids, they only get good news at conferences and can’t fathom the privacy issse.</p>
<p>Of course I KNEW before conferences that my D has some issues. She was in special ed for years, after all. But that’s not to say hearing about a new instance of the impact of her disability didn’t upset me. The teacher, in turn, should have scheduled a private conference if he knew he was going to bring up a personal problem like that. He didn’t do that–probably because with all those kids he wasn’t organized enough.</p>