I don’t.
Or, I should say, I have not up until this point.
We had parent teacher conferences for James at his high school today and all but one of his teachers expressed surprise that he was not with us, and in the case of two of his teachers, they expressed the strong opinion that he should have been in attendance with us to address some of the things that need addressing with them. They felt it would be good for him to hear.
(You know the conference might have issues when your son exclaims, “JUST REMEMBER THAT YOU LOVE ME AND THAT I AM YOUR FIRST BEGOTTEN SON, MOM!!!!!!!!!! Oh, man…this is going to suck.” as you are walking out the door to leave. It was a peach of a performance, y’all. Would bring a trear to your eye.)
Parent teacher conferences have never been on my list of awesome, if you want the truth.
My kids are very bright, smart, funny, kind and great kids, but like many families, we have some real struggles with other areas of school. Often I need to speak bluntly to the teacher about my children, and I need to be sure they are doing the same with me. And while some are of the mind that it is better for kids (over a certain age, of course) to hear that, I haven’t felt comfortable doing so before. I do address every issue and concern with them…I just prefer it to be at done at home with them after the conference.
Through the years of elementary and middle school, I saw a lot of families bringing their kids to conferences but I have never done it. For one, my parents NEVER took us with them, so a lot of it is just how I was raised. For another, James is my first child and it’s our first year of high school and I didn’t know bringing him was an expectation.
High school ticks differently, I guess.
Still, I wanted to have an extremely blunt conversation with his teachers about how James was fitting in with this challenging science and math heavy school with high expectation and it was a conversation I just didn’t feel like having in front of him. (For the record, everyone loves James. While he has some organization/time/attention issues (he is my kid after all), the work he completes is A or high B material, so everyone involved has confidence that he will be fine in the environment he is in.)
The conferences made me feel a lot better about things, I was able to say and express exactly what I needed and wanted to say. Even if I had known it was expected to take him to school, I think I still would have chosen to leave him home.
That may change in the future, but for now I’m good with my decision and have no regrets.
What about you? Do you take your kids to parent/teacher conferences or do you prefer it just be parents and teachers?
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Do you take your kids to parent teacher conferences?? http://ow.ly/6MzCC
Mine are younger, but the school explicitly indicates that parent-teacher conferences are not a place for children for the very same reasons that you give. There is no way that young children should hear anything negative at the conference. If there are things to work on, that can be dealt with at home. Kids should not hear adults talking about them and that is what a conference for. If the teacher wants to talk with the child and have you be there, that is something else altogether.
^This^ EXACTLY.
The teacher can be honest, brutally so if need be, without affecting the confidence of the child.
They can confer (like, omg! confer at a conference!) about the best steps to take, without the kid having to know what options were considered and thrown out.
And especially that last sentence of Brenna’s – exactly correct.
Do you take your kids to parent teacher conferences? http://t.co/7FhUrZYG
Take my kids to Parent/Teacher confrences? No. Meetings in which I was the one that had concerns regarding my daughter and asked the teachers to meet to discuss those concerns? Yes.
I have called meetings so that we all can be on the same page as far as homework & classwork go. I want her teachers to know the problems she is having with her work at home, so we can hopefully prevent her from getting super behind. I want to make sure *I* know how work is suppose to be done/turned in/graded so I can make sure my daughter is turning things in to get credit for it (yes, she has been known to do the homework, not turn it in the “right way”, and not get any credit for doing it.) I want to make sure the teachers know that I have no problem with them contacting me, and I want to be able to contact them directly, if there is any sort of problem. I am not one of those parents who think that their kid can do no wrong, so any problem must be the school’s fault. I know my kid isn’t perfect, I just want her to do the best she can.
I have never heard of taking your child to the parent-teacher conferences. I would have had no idea that was even done. To me, those conferences are a time for the parents to discuss issues bluntly with the teachers, issues which they then can broach more sensitively (though seriously) back at home. If the teacher wants a conference with the student there, that’s a whole other type of conference, imo.
My kids are too young for me to speak from a parent’s perspective, but from a teacher’s perspective, I think kids should be present at conferences from middle school and above. Unless either the parent or the teacher has something to discuss that they would rather the child no hear, of course. I think it’s important for kids to be able to hear either how well their doing, OR, what’s going wrong. I taught middle school students, so often I would tell the parents one thing, they would relay that to their child, and then I would get an email about all of the things that their child said was wrong about what I told them. It’s easier to have all parties present to say, okay, what are we going to do about this. (By the time they get to middle school, most conferences are only in the case of a problem, unfortunately.)
We do take our kids with us. From grade school on up. It’s worked nicely. We like getting a feel of the student/ teacher relationship between them. It helps us understand more… Our oldest son actually loves going, he’s generally the guy that reminds us that conferences are TONIGHT! All 3 of our kids are in high school this year. And they will all go. We like having everyone involved, parent, student, teacher, in their education to be together for discussions. It seems that the understanding of what’s expected comes across that much better. They know we heard what the teacher said and what our response is. So there are no “surprises”.
Well, I may be ruining my son, but I’ve always taken him since kindergarten, and will continue to do so. I think the teacher can bring up problems in a constructive way that engages the child, and helps them see they can have two way communication with their teacher whether about good things or bad. My son has never come away feeling like a failure, it has been the opposite. He comes away saying, “There are things I can work on, but my teacher wants to help me succeed.”
I started going in junior high with my parents (well, my mom, my dad was not involved). Part of my mom’s reasoning was that if there was something that needed to be said to me, the teacher should be able to do it to my face, not go through my parents. It meant I had to sit through some very tough criticism. (I’m a lot like your family) However, it helped me learn to take constructive criticism well. Something I find that some young people don’t do well. You need to “take the good & take the bad”. ;)
If part of high school is preparing kids for adulthood, I think it is a good time to have them start taking part in conferences if they haven’t before.
M does not attend her pre-school conferences, but I may ask that she be at the last one she has before Kindergarten. I will likely include her in conferences when she starts school because I want her to be an active participant and stakeholder in her education.
I took them unless I was “gunnin’ for bear” with a teacher and the teacher had dismissed my requests for a meeting. :0) not that I ever had issues with any of my kids teachers. Right now I am so glad to be done with it.
They are called Parent Teacher conferences….not Parent Student Teacher conferences…if the Teacher feels that she needs to discuss something specific with the Parent & Student, the teacher should request such a meeting.
No..and if we did, we’d have the same reaction from the teachers that you did, only in reverse! I think it’s best they are not there so both the teacher and the parents can speak frankly and not embarrass the child. You, as a parent, are perfectly capable of going home and talking with him about what was discussed without him having to be present. I totally think you did the right thing! :)
My son began to be a part of conferences when he entered high school, although I’m not sure if this was typical for other families in our district. I felt that this was an important time for him to be present to hear both the compliments and the criticisms and to have the opportunity to advocate for himself. My opinion was that anything that I felt a need to discuss with the teachers or the guidance counselor should be done with my son in the room. I think it’s empowering for kids to be able to speak up when potentially important issues regarding them are being discussed; I see it as preparing them for the more adult decisions they will soon be making. My son is blind and he is now a freshman in college, living away from home. By the time he graduated from high school, he had already found his ‘voice’ and is doing very well with his independence.
No. Way. And I think it’s weird that they expected your kid to be there. If they want to have a conference with you and your child, then that would be a whole separate event.
My daughter is a senior and I have never taken her to parent teacher conferences. However, her school has a PTO meeting and you can meet the teachers afterwards. Otherwise, there are no specific teacher conferences unless there is a problem. We go to meet the teacher because those are extra credit “100″s.
We’ve got parent-teacher conferences on Friday and I’m not planning to bring my kids. I hated listening to my mom talk about me as though I wasn’t there, so I don’t want to put my kids through that. Also, we may be having some hard conversations that they won’t understand. If we decide we need to co-counsel our kids, then we can set up a separate meeting. However, I think it’s important for parents and teachers to be on the same page first before bringing the kid in. Kids can figure out how to play teachers and parents against each other the same way they can try to play parents against each other.
For what it’s worth, I think you did the right thing for James. If you need to meet all together, then do it separately.
My wife prevents US kids from attending the PT conferences, ever since the last time that I nearly crawled across the desk at my son’s teacher (who for all the world could be Broom Hilda in real life) while my wife stepped firmly on my right foot and smiled sweetly at the dour bureaucrat.
Amazing what low standards apply to the teaching profession these days. They (the teachers) used to get respect, simply because they earned it.
Just what are you suggesting? Please don’t tar us all with the same brush.
As a teacher, I don’t *mind* the kids being there per se, but parents need to bear in mind that I will moderate how I express my opinion if the kids are there. If they want me to be 100% frank with them, they should not bring their child.
FWIW, I’m not yet a parent.
Okay, so I’m not a parent, but I have never heard of kids being expected to come to parent/teacher conferences. We never went when we were kids, nor was it expected of us. I think it would not only make the child feel uncomfortable but the teacher too. I agree, you just discuss the conference with your children afterwards. But bringing them WITH? That’s just weird…
My son is only 5, but he went to a special ed preschool where we had conferences. We took him with us only out of necessity because we didn’t have a babysitter. Luckily, there were assistants who could play with him while we talked to the teacher. I don’t believe in taking him with us because I want to be able to talk about him without worrying about what he’s hearing or how it makes him feel – his teachers are our allies and sometimes stuff isn’t always going to be pleasant, and I’d rather he not hear that part.
As a high school teacher, I definitely dislike when kids come along to the conferences. I make sure that there are no surprises from my end of things – if I have seen any problems, then the student and I have already talked about it. He/she knows what the issue is. He/she and I have come up with a plan for addressing the problem. I’ve likely already communicated it to you, too…so the conference is really more of a “check-up” in my mind of how things are going and an opportunity to make sure we (parents/teacher) are on the same page. I find conferences to be 99% a really positive and fun thing, and I think it’s really healthy for parents to hear great things about their kids from me and then to be able to go home and have a really positive and encouraging conversation with their kid about what they heard. Parent/teacher conferences really aren’t the time or place for a serious, head-to-head combat argument between teacher and parent…if parents see a serious problem, they need to address that in a formal conference, and the same with a teacher. The 10 minutes you get for conferences, with other parents waiting a few steps away, is not the time.
The school district where my son attends states on every piece of information sent that the conference is for both the parent(s) and the child. The school my son goes to even provides childcare for other children so the conference can be teacher, parent(s), and child.
Interestingly enough our Parent Teacher conference is Thursday. Our son will not be going. He’s in 1st grade. I don’t think the 15 mins allocated is enough time to get into any real issues or problems. Like others have said, I think those should be separate meetings with the child present.
We took our kids to the parent/teacher conferences once they were in high school, mainly because that was common at their school and because we wanted them to know exactly what we discussed. The real shame of all this is that there were not many parents that showed up for any conference at all. Now my son is 24 years old and is in his first year as an 8th grade math teacher. He just said to me a few days ago, “Mom, when I was in high school, I never dreamed I would be a teacher. Now that I am, I never dreamed that my first parent-teacher conference as a teacher would require an interpreter.” Guess both sides of the desk can be challenging!
To be honest, I don’t have kids yet. But I can tell you that I’m pretty sure my parents never had to go to a parent/teacher conference for me or my sister. O.o Kind of a weird concept to me. Up until high school though, all report cards gave grades and had codes for behavior, so I’m guessing if there was a problem, something could be arranged.
Anyways, I think I would want a mix. I would want my kid there to hear what they needed to hear, but also I would want a chance to speak to the teachers without my kid hearing. And if that wasn’t a choice, I’d probably do as you and leave my child at home for it. Sometimes when a teacher corrects you, it doesn’t always go through the way it does when a parent does. I think that most parents are more effective at communicating with their offspring than a teacher who deals with anywhere from 30 to 120 kids on average. Just my thoughts on the matter.
I went with my parents when I was a kid. I wasn’t damaged by it, and I wasn’t a perfect student. I was aware enough of any issues I was having that a discussion between my teacher and my parents of any problems wasn’t a surprise at all. I wasn’t ever blind-sided.
And it was cool sitting and listening to my teachers say all the good things I was doing, too, that maybe I didn’t think about. Because let’s face it, most of the time teachers are correcting problem behaviors, not praising good behaviors. Those are “quietly appreciated” and parent/teacher conferences are a good time to bring them to the child’s attention.
I don’t think it’s quite the big issue, either way. Whether or not you take your kids, I don’t think they’re going to be scarred.
Off topic, but I had to share (or maybe inflict):
http://blogs.babble.com/family-kitchen/2011/03/15/nutella-mug-cake/
http://www.recipegirl.com/2011/03/01/cinnamon-roll-pancakes/
http://www.recipegirl.com/2011/09/22/pumpkin-cinnamon-roll-pancakes/
Ii stumbled across your blog address while reading Where Women Cook and just got to laughing out loud at your post (reminds me a lot of one of my best girl friends and myself). Taking students to conferences is a feakish new thing in my unsolicited opinion and as a former teacher I say Amen to you for not putting your student thru the scrutiny of a conference where you want honest answers. I homeschool now so I am on a different playing field, I just have the conference by myself while running and then let my husband know how it went! I love your writing style…..
Here in Provo, they are SEP Conferences — Student, Educator, Parent. So going without the student is not really the goal.
As a side note, my stepkids’ elementary school had Open House night, where they set aside a little time for individual parent-teacher-kid chats, plus the kids could show off their desk, you could see them interacting with the teacher, and so on. But that was a separate thing from actual PT conferences.