This week was extremely interesting. I attended Parent-Teacher conferences for the school that I am currently student teaching. I have attended conferences as a parent, as an assistant in the classroom, but this was my first time purely observing. I noticed that it was not only a stressful experience for the parent and student, but also for the teacher. I noticed that at times there was a struggle to balance the negative with the positive. I do not think that any teacher wants to deliver all bad news to a parent. We do not want to tell parents that their child is struggling academically as well as socially in the classroom. Somehow, teachers do this without making parents feel like all hope is lost. They balance the positive with the negative, they highlight all of the wonderful attributes of a student, while still instilling in a parent the needs of the student.
It was equally as stressful, if not more so, for the parent. You can see the built up stress in parents' faces as they walk into the conference, praying that their child is ahead of the class. They pray that all that they have worked on at home, has translated well into the classroom. For most parents, this seems to be the case, but for some you can see the devastation in their eyes we you deliver the message that their child is struggling.
As a teacher, I hope to impart in my parents that we are a team. They are not walking into a conference of judgement or disappointment. Rather, we are always working together to make their child is the best student and thinker that they can be.
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