“NEXT!” Sometimes it feels like a cold doctor’s office rotating its patients on a 20-minute assembly line. The heat in the school is always turned off because students are not in attendance.  Some school districts have built-in parent-teacher conference days (PTCs) in their school calendar where students do not attend school so teachers could meet with parents during their contractual hours. But then there are the teachers who work a full teaching day and have to stay for evening conferences and then put in another full day of teaching the following day.  Or how about the half-day kindergarten in my son’s school district, which has about 19 students in the a.m. class and 19 students in the p.m. class, a grand total of 38 conferences which is scheduled on 3 student days.  Now that’s a lot of conferences and a lot of planning. No wonder teachers spend days, if not weeks in advance planning and preparing for parent-teacher conferences and are utterly exhausted.

Scheduling and preparing for conferences is extremely time-consuming. There was a time when I didn’t spend an extreme amount of time preparing for PTCs. I had a portfolio of signed and returned student work and graded assignments and assessments. Most of what I had to share was already in my head and I wrote a simple page of conference notes just for myself to refer to. There was no need to make fancy spreadsheets or conference forms. I reviewed important pieces of the student’s portfolio, shared what was in my notes, answered parent questions, addressed any concerns that I or the parent had and called it a day.

So why are teachers spending so much time preparing for PTCs? I checked in with my colleagues to find out more about how they prepared for PTCs and I was blown away by the weeks of time that many teachers put into preparing. Some teachers had a detailed write up on every student, some teachers had fancy conference forms with a copy for the parent with test data and grades, on all assignments, notes on social skills and behaviors and some even had a parting gift for each family. Boy, was I impressed! I thought I could step up my game a bit by creating a one-page conference form. A form that was simple, yet functional, but nothing fancy. Perhaps just adding onto my basic note-taking sheet to have documentation of what was shared at the conference for myself and for the parents would be an effective tool for both parent and teacher. The parent would then have documentation of what was discussed during the conference and a snapshot of where their child was at that time of the year. It would also serve as documentation in the student’s file and for me to refer back to if I needed to meet with the parents again to review academics, behaviors, goals or to give this documentation to the student’s next year’s teacher.

In preparing for conferences, I learned to remain focused on what is important and valuable to share with both parents and students in a short amount of time. Think about what is a priority and necessary to discuss. This cuts down unnecessary time in planning and preparing.

5 Tips for Planning Parent-Teacher Conferences

1. Be prepared – collect student work samples and a few valuable pieces of student data that really reflects the student’s strengths and/or weaknesses. I use the SWOT framework to help me analyze my students in different content areas and found it very useful in planning and preparing for my parent-teacher conferences.

What is SWOT?

SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) is a framework for identifying and analyzing the internal and external factors that can have an impact on the viability of a project, product, place or person. I use a SWOT organizer for my PTCS, which you can get FREE here. I use this organizer as a simple conference form. It could be solely just for you, the teacher, in recording data and other information about each student. You could use it as documentation for each student and use it to drive your conferences. You could choose to send a copy of it home with the parent or not. It’s really up to you with how you feel most comfortable using it. You could use this organizer for any grade or subject(s) you teach. To learn more about SWOT, check out this article from Educationworld.com Analyzing a Situation: A SWOT Analysis.

2. Be specific  – list any specific concerns in academic, social, and emotional to discuss during the conference. You want to make sure you discuss what is a priority in these areas being as specific as possible with examples to support both strengths and weaknesses.

3. Be positive and focused– have some goals in mind to help the student so you guide this part of the conference to help the parent and child create realistic goals together. Be sure to communicate using parent-friendly language. Most parents do not understand standard-based grading so try to break it down for them as best as you can with supporting facts and examples.

4. Prepare documentation– Have some kind of conference form for both you and the parent as documentation. Keep it simple but meaningful.

5. Reach Out – Don’t be afraid to invite an administrator or support person, like the guidance counselor, speech pathologist, reading specialist or any other support personnel, to assist you in conferring with parents. It takes a village to teach in today’s world so be sure to reach out for all the support you need to meet the needs of your students and to communicate it effectively to parents.

There’s no doubt about it that planning and preparing for parent-teacher conferences take a lot of additional time outside of the school day. Hopefully, these simple tips will help you plan smarter, and not harder for conferences. How do you plan for parent-teacher conferences? What are your tips and tricks?

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