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| Quote from Sarah Dessen |
When I was hired at my new school, I was told that we had parent conferences within the first few weeks of school. I was very confused how this would work since I would just be getting to know all of my students and wouldn’t have much to report on.
After asking around I quickly learned that I had nothing to worry about for these conferences. These intake conferences (that’s what we call them) are meetings where parents come in and tell the teacher all about their child. It would be my job to be an active listener and get to know my students from the people that know them best, their parents/guardians.
Parents/guardians could bring in artifacts that represent their child; pieces of old school work, pictures or just great stories to share. Of course I was a bit nervous before my first conference, as this would be the first time I was meeting many of these parents/guardians; however, once I sat down with the first parent I relaxed, sat back and listened and learned about the student.
Every conference was different and special in its own way, as every parent/guardian had a different story to share. I learned valuable information, not only relating to academics, but relating to each child as a whole.
Before coming to my new school, I had never heard of intake conferences, but I would highly recommend them to my colleagues in other schools. Parents/guardians are used to coming to conferences and listening to the teacher, but these conferences allow the parents/guardians to take the steering wheel and talk about their pride and joy. The teacher truly gets to sit back, listen, ask questions and learn a great deal of information about each child.
When I was working for a private preschool, we would do home visits for each child in our class. I found it to be an invaluable practice for not only did I get to see the environment the child came from, but the parents were eager to talk about their child as well. It started the year off on such a positive note for all of us. It opened the door to better communication and greater respect. I really believe if we did home visits with our public school kids, all the way through high school, we would see a major shift in attitude between parents, teachers, and students. The benefits of home visits far outweigh whatever negatives there may be. Visiting students at home shows the parents and students a level of care that goes a long way toward better relations. It is also hard for a parent to yell at a teacher who has sat at their table and had tea with them!
ReplyDeletePrior to reading your blog post, I had never before heard of parent intake conferences. Now that I have, I can't understand why more schools aren't doing them! When you think about it, parents don't often get the opportunity to share the concerns and insights they have about their child with their child's teacher. Sure, traditional conferences might offer up an opportunity for these types of discussions, but during traditional parent/teacher conferences, it is often the teacher doing the sharing. In my experiences with what previous teachers may have considered to be "challenging" parents, they often simply want to be heard. Parents want to know that their child's teacher understands them and values what it is they have to say. They want to share stories about what makes their child special. They want to feel part of a reciprocal relationship, one in which the main goal it the betterment of their child. As Carla stated,better relations would ensue if more parent intake conferences were conducted. And for that reason alone, parent intake conferences are certainly something worth looking into.
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