Standard 10: Leadership and Collaboration
Parent-Teacher Conference Simulation
As an instructor, one’s relationship with a student is limited to the ways in which the student acts within the classroom. Although this is very helpful information when attempting to improve the student’s academic performance, there are other events that happen outside of the classroom that affect a student’s performance. For this reason, it’s important to collaborate with the student’s family or other outside resources that could provide useful strategies to positively impact one’s performance in school. For this artifact, a case study regarding a student struggling to focus in a high school classroom was analyzed for any possible troubling behaviors and possible solutions. Once analyzed, a group of two worked together to prepare for a simulated parent-teacher conference; determining the talking points of the meeting, the purpose of the conference, and pieces of evidence that could be brought up while speaking with the parent. After the preparation, the pairing had a ten-minute parent-teacher conference that simulated possible life struggles parents might have at home or possible feelings that might appear while talking with them, followed by a ten-minute recap of the meeting. In the meeting, the goal was to address the issues at hand with the student and build solutions with the parent that could help in improving the student’s academic performance. This connects to Standard 10, Leadership and Collaboration, because it encourages an instructor to be humble and open to different perspectives. As a teacher, it is easy to believe that one knows everything about the student and that everything is under control. Simulating a parent-teacher conference makes it evident the amount of a student’s life that you don’t know about and brings to light the ways home life can affect classroom performance. Only through collaboration with the family can obtain the full picture of a student and completely understand the most effective methods for student growth.
While in middle school, I remember dreading the time of year when parent-teacher conferences came around. I would fear the things teachers might say, what they think of me, and be afraid that I wasn’t performing well as a student. On the other hand, my parents were never scared and went into the conferences knowing that they had absolutely nothing to worry about. As a student I didn’t see parent-teacher conferences as a collaboration between the parents and teacher to facilitate academic growth because I saw nothing change as a result and every teacher said the same thing. Parent-teacher conferences when I was growing up seemed to be a required event that stressed out everybody involved. When I am a teacher conducting conferences, it’s my goal to make sure that each conference is individualized for each student and create a trusting relationship with them. It’s important for parents to know that they can reach out any time with potential issues that are arising and come to me with updates about how they feel their child is doing. Even when there is very little the child can work to improve on, my goal is to make the conference productive and form a relationship that facilitates the student’s growth. From this experience, I have taken away the importance of conferences and the importance of the preparation for these conferences. A lot of effort goes into a singular conference, but all that efforts pays off when you can see growth in the student and when you see the student succeed. As long as everybody goes in with the mindset of creating a better learning experience for the student, a conference can be productive and worth the effort put into it.
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