I love and hate report card time. It is forced, in-depth reflection on data that I collect and see at-a-glance on my students every day. It is an experience of aggregation, disaggregation, strengths, weaknesses, academics, social-emotional growth (mine and my students), developmental acuity, rationale, justification, and goal-setting. Then multiply those activities by twenty-some kids. I don’t approach this game lightly, which makes it frustrating and rewarding. One minute I will be celebrating how far we’ve come, the next I may be irritated at myself that I do not have more than gut-level data for some superfluous category on a report card I may have overlooked or under-prioritized.
I have come so far in my data collection and analysis that I have the important information at my fingertips on a daily basis. This makes the report card frenzy less frenetic. I love this. Then, there are those tacit qualities that children present or the questions a parent provides for things I haven’t considered. I hate this, but it helps me grow. My primary strategy has been ongoing communication with parents so that there are no surprises at conference/report card time. I consider that setting expectations and managing the relationship.
I’ve been a parent of a school-aged child for as long as I’ve been a teacher, so I never really had the chance to underestimate what goes into gathering report card information or preparing for parent conferences. Still, I admit that my expectations for a conference, as a parent, are woefully absent. I have always walked in blank, to hear what the teacher has summarized about my children, but having set no agendas or goals of my own, for or with them. As a parent, I could do more. As a teacher, I’m busy summarizing and setting goals for other people’s children.
I’m curious what parents expect of me or themselves and how that might inform future conferences and report card frenzies. Do tell.
I think teachers and parents should look at a child as being a collaborative project. Parent teacher conferences should be a time to make sure that both the parent and teacher are still in sync as to the classroom goals and the child’s growth (physically, mentally, emotionally). It is a time to discuss any weaknesses or strengths and how the parents can support the child at home and how to help support the classroom learning environment (i.e. well-fed, awake, prepared children). I would rather talk about the teacher’s impressions than look at work examples, especially if the items are coming home where I can review them when not so pressed for time.
I use the numbers on the progress reports more identifying trends in overall learning or concepts instead of looking at individual scores. The only time I may be concerned about a score is if it is way out of line with other scores.
If I have a child struggling with a concept or breezing through something, I might ask for advice on how to help or challenge them. I also usually try to ask about social interaction because school isn’t just academic.
It is a progress review, not an end of project review and if there is a topic that shocks the parents or the teacher, then there has been a breakdown in communication somewhere along the way.
Finally, it helps to be able to leave the conference with a few specific future goals and have the child either help create the goals or buy into them. For example, an AR test on the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd week of each month instead of 2 a month or 2 paragraphs in the writing journal or helping one more person each week with something.
Great feedback Kim! I couldn’t agree more. I will take the collection of comments from this posting to share with our staff and other teacher friends for improvment! Thanks for sharing.
As a parent, I loved the opportunity to be able to send in three questions/ things I would like to talk about with my child’s teacher, a few days prior to the conference. It helped me prioritize my concerns and questions, so that as a parent, I could make the most of that valuable time with the teacher….As a teacher this policy always helped me have an idea about the parents concerns, what they wanted to know more about…and enabled me plan appropriately for the conference….