Paretn(s) - Teacher conference

Today class was about a matter that, as teaching, will require our best in the future, but is usually less treated as if it weren't so important (and actually it is); how to run a good parent-teacher conference. This is a meeting between the parents and the teacher to discuss and exchange any information about the children educational, behavioral and personal progress and development, and to try to solve any problem in the most effective and rapid way.

We started showing a video selected by the teacher, where we could see an American perfect run  parent-teacher conference, that gave us some tips about how to do it:

- Welcome the parents.

- Talk about the positive aspects of the student first, then the bad ones. 

-Have material ready to show.

- Improve the success of the student with homework.

- Let the parents know what are exactly the materials their child usually uses.

- Bring a portfolio of the student's work.

- Send home-sheets with questions for the parents.

- Know very well your objectives.

- Prepare students for conference. 

-It is good that parent takes notes.

- State the purpose and the time for the conference.

- Describe the child's progress in major areas and ask how they feel about child's progress.

- Set mutual goals and establish timelines for goals.

- Summarize (thanks for coming, set another meeting day...).

- Evaluate conference: follow up with students and follow up with parents.

We made a last participative activity, which consisted on recreating (with some of the people in the class) some typical and common parent-teacher conference situations, so some roles were: the counselor, divorced parents, a child with an abuse problem, a mother worried about her child... That required some imagination from those actuating.

This class has been very useful in order to teach us how to do a future task in an appropriate way. Also, with the information shown and the last activity we have completely realized about its importance and it's difficulty, something that has encouraged most of us.