If the thought of parent or caregiver conferences makes you feel a little sweaty, you’re not alone! What is it about talking to other adults that can be so scary?
I learned a lot during my time in the classroom, mostly from making my own mistakes.
So, in this episode of Real Teacher Talk, I am sharing my favorite simple tips and tricks to make your conferences run smoothly and be a little less stressful.
I share how to make sure caregivers know you’re on the same team, ways to ensure equitable and meaningful conferences for all families, and how to help make sure families stay focused on the goals. Preparing for conferences doesn’t have to keep you up at night worrying - I promise!
Resources Mentioned:
Parent Conference Forms
Free Conference Form for Parent Feedback
Additional Resources:
Register for the 3 PM Teacher Training at www.easyteachingtools.com/3pmteacher!
I would also appreciate it if you would leave me a review on Apple and a rating on Spotify!
I read each of them, and they help me make sure I am providing the content that you love to hear! Plus, you get to pay it forward because it will allow other teachers like you to find the podcast!
Click here to review, then select “Ratings and Reviews” and “Write a Review”.
If the thought of parent or caregiver conferences makes you feel a little sweaty, you’re not alone! What is it about talking to other adults that can be so scary?
I learned a lot during my time in the classroom, mostly from making my own mistakes.
So, in this episode of Real Teacher Talk, I am sharing my favorite simple tips and tricks to make your conferences run smoothly and be a little less stressful.
I share how to make sure caregivers know you’re on the same team, ways to ensure equitable and meaningful conferences for all families, and how to help make sure families stay focused on the goals. Preparing for conferences doesn’t have to keep you up at night worrying - I promise!
Resources Mentioned:
Parent Conference Forms
Free Conference Form for Parent Feedback
Additional Resources:
Register for the 3 PM Teacher Training at www.easyteachingtools.com/3pmteacher!
I would also appreciate it if you would leave me a review on Apple and a rating on Spotify!
I read each of them, and they help me make sure I am providing the content that you love to hear! Plus, you get to pay it forward because it will allow other teachers like you to find the podcast!
Click here to review, then select “Ratings and Reviews” and “Write a Review”.
Kristen Donegan 00:00
Hey there, and welcome back to a real teacher talk. If the thought of parent or caregiver conferences makes you feel a little sweaty, this episode is for you. Because we're going to be talking about 10 things that you can be doing that are simple, that can help make your conferences run smoothly and be a little less scary. Now, what I'm sharing today are things that I've learned over the years, learn from my mistakes. Some of these came out of horribly embarrassing, just not very well run conferences, especially in my early teaching years when I wasn't as prepared. And like I always say, every time there's some sort of challenge or mistake, what lesson can you learn from it? So I'm going to share 10 lessons, things that I used, that meet things run smoothly and made me actually look forward to conferences.
What is it? Why do we get so nervous to talk to other adults, I don't get it. So here we go, I'm gonna give you my top 10. First things first, when I started teaching, we didn't really use technology. I mean, it wasn't teaching in the 80s or anything like that. But I mean, you would send home a signup page, they would send that back. And then you would try to Jigsaw all the days and times to make it work. So now let's make it simple. Signup genius, or what I love even more is Calendly. If you have the paid version of Calendly, it will send reminders. So you can send a reminder, a week in advance three days in advance a day in advance an hour in advance, and then you can send follow up emails. I love it because it automates not necessary, but it will save you a little bit of time.
Now second thing I remember a teacher teaching me was to sit next to the families, rather than sitting at your kidney table and sitting across from them. They say when you sit next to them, it's a bit more inviting. And it shows that it's a level playing field, and that you're all working for the same goal. Something I didn't start doing until later on in my teaching career. And I wish I did easier, or I wish I did sooner was getting their feedback, rather than them just showing up. And I'm telling them all the things, I want to discuss things that they also want to discuss because there's nothing worse than being in a meeting and being completely blindsided and not being prepared. So what I do is I would send a note home, because I want their input. And I want us to be working together.
So I had to send a note home asking what's their social goal for their child? What's an academic goal? Do you have any concerns right now? Is there anything specific you want to discuss? That way I can pull any of the assessments I need any data or anything like that, so that I can really go over that with the families. Now, next step four thing is to be prepared. Like I said that that horrible conference I had, where I wasn't prepared, I was kind of caught off guard, I thought I had their dibbles booklet in there. And I did it and I was looking for things. It was just, it was just a bad conference, let's be honest. But from there, I'm like never again. So what I like to do to be prepared, is I always would file student work, you know what the hanging file, students were a number order. In there goes though, important benchmark assessments from our district. Any notes that maybe the PE teacher left, any notes that I have?
When we were using fmps, that would be in there dibbles whatever it was, I'd have all my data in there. Then what I would do is I would have a printout for myself of everything that I knew that I wanted to discuss or go over at the conference. So what I mean by that is it was kind of like a conference checklist. What did I need in there? I needed that parent questionnaire that I talked about. Some classroom observations, assessment results, any sort of data forms, some grow in glows, student goals, student self reflection, maybe a report card, whatever it was, I had everything all in there and when it came time for conference day, maybe I had a chunk of time, I would make sure to have those folders in order I have the time I was meeting with family so that I could easily grab the folder and then go over it.
So being prepared is really important. If you're going to be discussing areas where maybe the student needs more support, with their writing, have those writing examples, if you're discussing reading scores, have those examples so that you can go over them, and show them exactly what you mean. And without overwhelming families, right with all the acronyms, and things like that. But just be prepared, have everything that you need, if there's a goal that you want to discuss, have the materials that you need to show them with you. If there's a behavior concern, or maybe on the parent questionnaire, there's something they want to talk about. And maybe you need an admin there, have all of that ready to go.
Same thing goes to if the families you're meeting with, don't speak English, have a translator there if your school provides them. So that one is equitable, and two, you can have a really meaningful conference. Now, the fifth thing I tried to do, and maybe it's a little bit different here in California, but I typically don't want this kids or the students to be inside, depending on what it is, right? If it's a student who's really struggling academically, I don't want them to be hearing all of this. They know how they're feeling. And I don't want to add any more. If there's some sort of behavior, issue or challenge, sometimes I will have them in there so we can discuss.
But typically, I like to have students be playing Outside at the playground, or I'll put a chair outside the door, and they can sit and wait until the conference is over. Now what about little kids. So sixth thing I'd suggest is have a little area in your room with maybe your unfix cubes, or something for smaller kiddos to kind of keep them busy, and to play with so that they don't destroy your classroom. I've been there before too. So try to be prepared if you can. No, seven is an important tip. And I really want to urge you not to wait until the conference to bring up any concerns because parents don't want to be blindsided either. So our conferences would get pushed back. So typically, it was a November. I've already been with those students for several months. And if this is the first time they're hearing about a concern, they may be thinking, Well, my goodness, you've had three months, why are you just telling me now when I could have been being proactive at home. So I love to make contact with families that first week.
And I've shared before how I send a friendly email to each student's family every month. But if there's a concern that I'm noticing, I like to address it quickly. So that we by the time we're meeting, at our conference in October or November, I've already started developing that relationship with families. Now the next tip is to show them how to help. So we can just say, hey, they're scoring here with their fluency. Our families don't know what that means. So I'm going to explicitly show them, hey, here are some ideas, here are some things that you can be doing in the classroom are things that I'm doing in the classroom that you can be doing at home to support this. And I'll leave a few links in the show notes of things that I used in my classroom, that made it really easy, and it was a tangible piece that families can go away with feeling like okay, I have a bit of a game plan.
All right, tip number eight. Now, I don't know what your schedule looks like when you plan out your conferences. And I know it's different everywhere. Typically, in all the schools I've been at here in California, we'd have one day that was a non student day, dedicated to conferences. And then the rest of the week was minimum day, where we'd have conferences as well. Now I know some teachers like to power it out and get all those conferences done on Monday. Not my style. So what worked really well for me is to when I would send out my signup genius, I would block out maybe the afternoon. So that was time I would use to prep maybe get ready for conferences, whatever it was. And then what I like to do is I like to spread my conferences out throughout the week, but I did not schedule them out on Fridays.
So Tuesday I would do to before school, same thing Wednesday and Thursday. And then I'd have several after school. I love doing the couple before school because that meant I had less in the afternoon. And for some reason with my brain, it made me think, but I didn't have as many. So that helped. And it helps kind of break up the monotony of talking so much, or just being in a conference. So that's what I did. So if you can do something like that, and pop in a few before school, by all means, do it. Something else I did is that I didn't have conferences late at night. And I know as a parent now I'm like, Well, how would that work for everybody.
But I also have to go back to my values and my boundaries. And I knew what our school hours were. But I also just didn't want to be meeting at 7pm. So I don't I don't know, when this changes, but I feel like growing up, my parents went to conferences later in the evenings. Now things are different with technology and things. So maybe if you have to do something like that, or you get to maybe it can be something virtual, I don't know how safe it is to be staying on campus by yourself. So those are some options, but do what you can to make a schedule that also works for your families, but for you as well. All right, step number nine.
I'm looking now do I have a 912345678. I don't know where I went wrong. There we go. At the end of the conference day, each day, I would send a thank you email to families. And I would Blind Carbon, copy it. To all of them saying it was so great to meet with you today look forward, you know, to continue in our relationship throughout the year, whatever it could be. Or you can personalize it. Let's say you meet with five families send out five emails, hey, it was really great meeting with you today. I'm so glad you know we're able to discuss blah, blah, blah, their progress. Can't wait to see the next steps. You can list what the steps are. And thank them there. Whatever it may be, don't spend a ton of time on it because you just met with them.
Right. But just a follow up I think really says a lot about you and just kind of helps that connection. Now a couple other things I want to include I mentioned having that questionnaire getting that feedback from families, I also like to do the same thing with my students. So this is a little a little bonus tip. I like to do a self reflection, I have an editable resource with parent conference forms in my Teachers Pay teacher's store, I'll link for you. But I like the self reflection piece. And it has a question where the student fills in, I'm good at, I want to get better at. And then it was important for me, for them to have a clean desk, if that's not important, by all means edit this section. But there is a section with five different statements. And then there's an emoji with a happy face, kind of like in the middle face, and then kind of a sad face. And they color in which smiley or emoji matches the statement. And I think it's important to self reflect. And I think it's important to share this information with caregivers. So I will also go over that at our conference.
You know this because you're already a great teacher, but like those grows and glows, or the I forget what it's called the something sandwich, you know, where it's a positive, something to work on. And then another positive, you know how to do this, you're a pro, it's just a matter of just getting it all organized, getting all your info out there, and really, really collaborating. So you can take a peek at this resource if you want to see how it can help streamline conference scheduling, and all the paperwork and then just making it be a little bit easier. One more thing I do want to add, I do have like a gross and glows sheet or you know, things that can be worked on next step, something like that. I always would leave that empty at conference time.
And what I would have families do is use that to take any notes. I used to type it all up and then nothing else would really come of it. So having something like that where they can do that I found it's helpful, especially for families maybe who are a little bit nervous. But it really just helps them write any notes, any things that they want to be doing at home, talking points, whatever it may be. They can do that here. So rather than filling it all out myself, I let them do it. And that's really, really helpful. One final tip When you are sending home, these important notes for families to fill out that questionnaire, put it on a really bright piece of paper. That way when it comes back to you, you can spot it a mile away. And then you can make sure as you're going through your conference folders, that you have exactly everything that you need.
And it just makes it really, really easy because conference times quick, you know, we had 15-20 minute conferences to get so much done. All right, I appreciate you being here today. I hope you enjoyed 10 easy tips to help make conferences a little less scary. Let's recap real quick. Number one, use some sort of technology to schedule them out whether it's signup genius or Calendly. To sit next to them. Three, get their feedback ahead of time for be prepared. Five, keep those big kids outside. Six, set up an area for little kids so that families can focus on you. Seven, show them explicitly how to help. Eight. Don't wait until conference time to bring up big concerns or even little concerns. Nine, try to schedule a few before school to break it up and 10 Send a thank you email. Like always, I really appreciate you being here and taking time out of your busy day. Now it's time for you to go do something for yourself. That is fun and brings you enjoyment because you deserve it. I'll see you next week.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
conference, families, student, discuss, prepared, work, self-reflection, important, concerns, talk, glows, parent, questionnaire, notes, schedule, goal, meeting, week, teacher, sit