Zak's Weekly Musings (September 21, 2022)
Advice for Parent-Teacher Conferences
We know how important the home-school partnership is. According to Wang et al. (1994), the school-home partnership is the fourth most influential factor on student learning of the 28 factors studied in their meta-analysis. Forging the home-school partnership should be a priority for us. And, there’s no better chance to prioritize it than Parent-Teacher Conferences. When preparing for conferences, consider that these are the only formalized occasions for us to engage our parents in real-time exchanges.
So, how can we make the most of conferences? Well, it starts with us being attuned to and accepting of the very real power dynamic that exists between us and our students’ parents.
According to a 2015 study, “teachers often regard themselves as being somewhat superior to parents, because of their professional expertise, and parents often feel less adequate than teachers because parenting is something that everyone can do.” Moreover, a 2011 study report found that 52% of parents want to be more involved in supporting their child’s education, but find the prospect daunting due to their own educational experiences: “When parents enter your classroom, they become nervously aware of their own amatuer status.”
Basically, parents turn into fainting goats when it comes to speaking with us about their child. And this makes sense. Parents have so much hope, love, and anxieties wrapped up in their child. So, if we hope to have a productive, dialogic exchange it is our responsibility to help assuage their uneasiness.
Fortunately, doing so just takes a couple of questions. In fact, the Academic Principal at Tsinghua International School believes that you can defang the dynamic with just two questions:
“I care deeply about the success of your child. What should I know that may be helpful in supporting your child’s success?”
“What has been successful for your child in the past?”
As opposed to opening your conference by speaking, consider how you can open your conference by listening.
A few important reminders:
In addition to asking questions, another way for us to show that we are investing in that home-school partnership is to be candid and evidence-based. In speaking with a parent just the other day, she shared that the anonymized teacher report she read in her child’s psycho-ed was completely different from the glowing reports she had received from teachers during conferences last year. This shouldn’t be the case. This disconnect between what we’ll say to a parent vs. around a parent erodes trust and negatively impacts the home-school partnership. The strength of this partnership isn’t built on our being pollyannaish, but about being truthful and, importantly, evidence-based.
Of course, parent-teacher conferences cannot be exclusively conversational. You will need to share information about each child’s learning. With Progress Reports on the horizon, I would encourage you to structure your conferences by sharing a glow, grow, and goal, with each anchored to either your reporting outcomes or the Learning Habits. This way, when you write reports for Q.1, much of your work is already started.
Finally, and just as a reminder, there is language that needs to be avoided. This includes those things that are tangential to learning and for which we do not have evidence. An example of this would be words like “nice, ”“shy,” or “quiet.” Other language that we will want to avoid revolves around that of the fixed mindset, including words like “smart” or “bright.” Keep your language consistent with that of the growth mindset.
Not all conversations will go as we might have hoped. If you have a difficult parent interaction, be sure to alert an administrator. See the difficult interaction as a puzzle to be solved or an opportunity to grow. Even with a difficult interaction, reflect on what you might have learned from the conversation about your student.
We are all in this together for our students. I hope your conferences are productive and useful to you, the parents, and the students.