Parent – Teacher Reflection
This week we will be having parent/teacher conferences at my
school. As a parent I have been
attending these types of conferences for 10 years now with my oldest son. I have always sort of feared going to these conferences
as I was never quite sure what exactly I was going to learn about my first
born. In all of these years though,
these conferences have always been consistent.
I now know that my son is intelligent (okay so I knew that fairly early)
but I also know that he is a procrastinator and tends to rush through his work
instead of worrying about getting it right, he was rather just get it
done. I now have the chance to see these
conferences through the lenses of a teacher.
I was intrigued when my cooperating teacher asked me to come to the conferences. My first thought was, “oh my, is she going to
want me to talk to the parents?” As I
have had time to contemplate this, I do not think it will be that bad. I surely have enough experience on the other
side of the table.
We sat down this week and went over all the student’s grades
and talked about why they were either excelling or struggling. When we finished our conversation, my
cooperating teacher commented that I really seem to be very good at observing
and understanding the students. Okay, I
admit that I grinned from ear-to-ear. I
am glad that she noticed that skill as I have been trying to perfect it for
years on my own children. After the
compliment that I received from her, I am now ready to step up and take my part
in the conferences and I find that I am looking forward it. I will definitely remember that parents want
to hear the good things their children do and to always try to share more
positives than negatives. I hope that my
experience in my personal life will help guide me through this process. I will have to update this after the
conferences and let you all know how it went.
I definitely like your comment about sharing more positives than negatives. With my four kids, there is a wide range of conference comments I can expect. By the time my sweet, easygoing son was in third grade, I had learned to dread going to his conferences. It seemed like all I ever heard from his teachers was how spacey he was and how he would fail to turn in work they knew he did. His fourth grade teacher told me the same things, but followed it up with, "He is a wonderful, sweet, easygoing boy who always takes the time to help his classmates and makes sure everyone feels included." I wanted to cry. That's the boy I knew, and it was nice to hear that his teacher saw him as something more than just another spacey kid. I have made this concept of positive interaction with parents one of my goals, as well.
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