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My first parent/teacher conference is this week. My son is in Kindergarten. There was a mix up on the time and I had to reschedule. When rescheduling my son's teacher told me that I should bring him with me as it's student led. I have mixed feelings on bringing him.
Have you taken your kids to your parent/teacher conferences? If so what age were they?
I always took my kids with me to parent/teacher conferences. Some teachers wanted them to sit outside in the hallway, others would tell them to go to the reading area of the classroom. If a teacher absolutely did not want my child at the conference, then she needed to schedule it during her planning/conference period during school hours. I would always tell them that when I was scheduling the conference, that I didn't have a sitter so I would need to bring my kids, or they could schedule it during the school day.
I used to bring something to keep the kids busy, either a book or later on, mp3 player or tablet.
THe teacher conferences we've had (DD is in 2nd) have never included my child. How could I be open about concerns I have or she has without the child hearing it? I think its an adult time to discuss academic/behavior achievements and concerns, and then the parent should go home and implement while the teacher does the same at school.
I always took my kids with me to parent/teacher conferences. Some teachers wanted them to sit outside in the hallway, others would tell them to go to the reading area of the classroom. If a teacher absolutely did not want my child at the conference, then she needed to schedule it during her planning/conference period during school hours. I would always tell them that when I was scheduling the conference, that I didn't have a sitter so I would need to bring my kids, or they could schedule it during the school day.
I used to bring something to keep the kids busy, either a book or later on, mp3 player or tablet.
I am bringing him at the request of the teacher. He will be included in the conference. I found out today that all conferences at the school include the kids.
I am bringing him at the request of the teacher. He will be included in the conference. I found out today that all conferences at the school include the kids.
If there are concerns you need to bring up without him there, I'm sure you could have him read in the hall for a few minutes while you bring them up.
In my school district in fifth grade the students lead the conferences. They usually prefer that parents not bring the children in younger grades as they frequently discuss academic and behavior things that some/many times it would be better that the child not hear or the child would not understand.
If you do bring your children please have them wait inside the classroom or just outside the door with a quiet toy or book. You would not believe what some parents have done in the past. There was the time that a parent had each of their three children bring a remote control car and there were three children racing cars up and down the hallways, totally unsupervised. The end of each race was when the cars hit the wall at the end of the hallway. You can imagine the noise and distraction until the teachers could stop it. I was on a different floor and it was so loud it sounded like it was just outside of my classroom.
A few parents sent their kids with balls that they would bounce in the hallways or on the walls, or with other loud toys. Imagine a couple of siblings playing "Hungry, Hungry Hippos" in the hallway while you are trying to conduct a conference. Marbles were flying everywhere and those hippos made so much noise.
Many times parents would just tell their child/children to go to the computer lab or library or gym even though their wasn't any adult supervision in those rooms on conference nights. Our school finally had to make sure that these rooms were locked so that parents didn't just "dump their kids" there. If a child would have been injured the school could have been blamed.
Of course, most parents were/are very considerate but there were always those few that caused problems for everyone else.
My son attends his as they are usually scheduled before school starts. The teacher had him sit in the reading corner and listen to a book on tape while we talked. How do student led conferences work
My son attends his as they are usually scheduled before school starts. The teacher had him sit in the reading corner and listen to a book on tape while we talked. How do student led conferences work
I'm not sure. This will be my first and most likely last. I will update this after I go on Wednesday.
Student led conferences can be very good ones if they are done correctly. The entire point of a school setting up school wide conferences is to learn where your child stands academically. They typically run 15 minutes and are set up back to back, which does not allow for in depth discussions for other things.
It is NOT for discussing behavioral problems nor is it for social or physical issues. It is also not for academic problems that need time and planning to work on. Those are to be set up individually and separately.
During a student led conference, the student may present to their parent(s) results of an assessment, a project they have done in school, what goals they have accomplished and what goals they are working towards. They may tell you about something they have learned that they are proud of and they may relate something fun they did in class. They may read to you, share something they have written or recite something they have learned.
The reasoning behind student led conferences is to have the student involved in their learning, taking ownership of their accomplishments and challenges and the added benefit of learning to communicate better. Most students are proud of the achievements and happy to share with their parents in a more formal setting. Those who have more challenges than accomplishments gain more confidence in their ability to attain those goals if they are the ones leading the discussion.
If there are mostly goals that have not been met, then you schedule an individual conference to discuss what you have learned from this first one. Going into one ready to discuss plans for improvement without knowing how your child is actually doing in the first place is wasted time.
Student led conferences for my children that I have attended have been wonderful. However, I also knew not to expect anything more than discovering where they currently stand and how the teacher expects them to stand. After that I could chose to schedule another, which I did with my son because he was so far ahead of the class that he needed something more and I needed to find out if it was going to happen. That was not something the teacher was prepared to discuss at the 15 minute initial conference. They both worked out very well.
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