Just wondering about parent-teacher conferences

I have been thinking about the way we, and many other international schools, run our parent-teacher or student-led conferences. In order to celebrate growth and learning and for parents, students and teachers to connect face to face and have meaningful conversations, we ask parents to come to us, one day or evening during the week or on a Saturday, to talk to several teachers in a limited time about their favourite topic of conversation: their child. Typically this happens after report cards have come out and those also aim at sharing students' progress with parents. If they don't... well I will talk about report cards in a later post.

Some excellent strategies are challenging this traditional approach. Students take a more active role leading the conversations. They also involve their parents in their school experience and share their learning through online platforms. Those are definitely steps in the right direction. But do we need to cancel classes to do all this? Is it necessarily the right time for all students to pause simultaneously and reflect about their learning? Why do high school parents tend to come less and less to those conferences? Why do seniors students and their parents practically do not come? Not because they feel less involved with college applications around the corner. But do they find what they need in those conferences?

Parallel to this, we, coordinators, counsellors, principals, are bringing more and more parents to discuss the academic standing of their child during the school day for longer meetings. The interesting piece is that, for those meetings, parents tend to come more. Many do not come to parent-teacher conferences but when we pick up the phone, find the right moment for them to come and talk about their child's progress, the turnout is much better.

Differentiation, or better, individualised learning should not only be about learning. It should be about all aspects of the child's educational experience. It is time to re-think those conferences to provide a more organic way to reach parents who want to hear more about their child's school experience. Let's work towards individualised schooling.

For what it's worth...

To explore further:

http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/teacher_in_a_strange_land/2012/10/seven_ideas_for_meaningful_parent-teacher_conferences.html