“Children grow into the intellectual life around them.”
(Vygotsky, quoted by Ron Ritchhart)
I really enjoy parent-student-teacher conferences. (I’d rather do more of these and less report writing, but that’s a different post.) Even with a limited time-slot (my last couple of schools have been 10mins), we have an opportunity to strengthen a home-school connection, build a relationship with families and really put the learner and learning front and centre.
I love being a science teacher, and parent-student-teacher conferences are a prime opportunity to share that. Just because it’s high school, doesn’t mean it needs to be too serious.
Over the last five years or so of teaching, I’ve set up recent investigations or phenomena for students to demonstrate, explain or solve for their parents.
The conference begins with a warm introduction, a check on languages used and then the student demonstrates the phenomenon to their parents. I keep some prompts and visuals around the table, to be used as the conversation develops. I don’t prep students – I want to see how they go, and how much of their learning they can make visible to the parents.
In this part of the conference, the students and parents can communicate in their most comfortable language.
It’s important to me that this is a positive experience and gives me a couple of minutes to see how they interact. If a (rare) difficult conversation needs to follow, I know better how to judge my message. In most cases, we build on the observations, and follow our own little lines of inquiry. Occasionally I pick up some new science vocab in my students’ home languages. With multilingual students we always talk about how language development is supported in the class.
Of course, parents to come to conferences to hear how their child is doing.
That’s great, and we work on the basis that if something was wrong, they’d already know; there should be no surprises in a report card or parent-teacher conference.
This means that we have the chance to have a growth-focused conversation about the learning:
- How can they use our resources and rubrics for moving up?
- Do they understand the best-fit approach and use of command terms?
- How do our “feed-back feed-forwards tables” work for focusing on what’s important and what “note to self” is there for next time?
- What are they struggling with and how can I help?
- Where to next?
As parents we want to know our child is cared for and is learning. We want to know how we can support them, and we want to trust you as their teacher.
This is how I feel as a parent-educator, and it is echoed in many interactions. Taking this opportunity to celebrate their child and their learning is more than just a little fun – it’s who we are. Occasionally I’ll provide parents with some online resources, or mention some of Ron Ritchhart’s “9 Apps for Parents” or “10 (+1) things to say to students every day” for “at home” discussions.
Next time I’ll put out some of the recent multilingual understanding map resources he shared as we reflect on the year in learning.
Wayfinder Learning Lab - Stephen Taylor 
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