5 Teacher Tips for Stress-Free Parent Conferences

Let me help you get ready to have the best parent-teacher conference season ever! 📝 While it can cause a lot of teacher stress, conferences are an important chance to connect with families. With some preparation, you can make conferences productive and positive! 

In this episode I do do a deep dive into these top 5 strategies to help everything run smoothly.

🔑 First, leverage technology to take yourself out of the scheduling drama! It will also help you meet the needs of parents with inflexible schedules.

⏰ Second, manage expectations upfront. Tell parents how long conferences will be and remind them not to be surprised - they should already know if their child is struggling. 

👩‍🏫 Third, involve students when you can with self-reflection exercises like "glow and grow." Get their perspective and involve them in the "triangle of success."

❌ Fourth, set boundaries. Have a schedule posted publicly so parents stick to their time slot. Get a witness if you anticipate tension. 👀

🤗 Fifth, imagine it's your child. Lead with the positives. Minimize jargon on forms. Make it a dialogue, not a monologue. 

Bonus: Optics matter - tidy your room, dress professionally. Prepare materials in advance so you look authoritative. 💼

So stop dreading those conferences!  With some prep, you'll crush it!

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Transcript

Okay, here we go. Five tips for a less stressful parent  teacher conference season. Okay, so, they're mandatory for most districts. They usually come up in the fall. Hopefully I always have them in November. So hopefully this is timely when you're listening. If not, just, you know, bookmark this, come back to this episode when you need it.

But there's stuff in here, I think for every, um, whether it's the mandated conferences or whether you need to be meeting with a parent.  Just because. So, okay, here we go. Gonna keep it quick, actionable. There's gonna be a bonus tip at the end that might really save you and help you out. But let's start off with, first off, tip number one is leverage technology.

Okay? Technology is your friend. in this area. Listen, back in the day, 20 something years ago, I taught a small school. There were a lot of siblings in the same school. How we scheduled the conferences. I mean, I'm just laughing. There was this folder that went around with all the kids names. And we had to highlight who had siblings in other grades and try and figure out what time they could come so that the parent only needed to come to campus once, even if they had four or five children, we would, it was.

Very competitive to pass this folder around. Then you have to send emails to the parents. Then the parents saying they couldn't come that time. You have to coordinate. You have to let the office know. It took forever. I said again and again and again. There is a better way to do this. There is a way to automate this.

Now remember that was 20 something years ago. I did not want to take it on.  But now, oh my gosh, we have so many easy ways to do it. So, for I want to say maybe the last 7 or 8 years I taught, 

signupgenius. com All one thing, signupgenius. com Or you can go  calendly. com Both have free products. So easy. Automate the whole thing. It takes about 20 minutes to set up, but then you're done. You put in all the times you're available, how many minutes you want for each slot. You're done. You give the links to the parents, the parent goes in, finds their time slot.

It will send them reminders if they need to cancel. It just takes you out of the equation. They're going to cancel and reschedule when there's that opening. Okay? So it saves you so much time. Alright, so that's the first thing. It's going to save you time. It's going to keep you organised. The most beautiful thing that I really liked about it was you get to take yourself out of it.

You get to choose your schedule. You decide. Right? They go and there's a slot or there isn't a slot. They're not going to guilt you into, I can only come this time or could you make an exception? No, here's the link. Go find a slot.  And go find it quick before your favourite slot is gone. So, obviously, you're going to need at least one night where you stay late to accommodate people who, you know, really can't get off work. 

And so want to have one late night. Other than that, you know, I used to, um, a lot of schools do this, but my particular school for conference week, we had an early release, the students would get out, let's say, at 1, and then we were supposed to do our conferences after that. You know, I would like to cram in 10 on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and then have Thursday for make ups, who couldn't make it, and Friday just to prep for myself, have a bit of time to get my life together.

Right? So that's how I like to do it. Maybe that's not how you want to do it. So you get to choose. Now, um, you know, maybe your district or your school has a policy, you need to do it between these hours and those hours. But I always worked for a district that had, um, a hundred percent, you had to be a hundred percent, um, That you conferenced a hundred percent of parents, you really needed to make that good effort.

And, uh, but you could do it in that week however you wanted. So that's the first thing for technology, is take yourself out of the, the scheduling, the rescheduling, all of that, right? signupgenius.com. Not an affiliate. No, nothing to do with them. I'm just telling you that's what I used. Had super cute  templates for teachers, all the things.

Alright, the other thing, now listen, this is the good thing. We gotta always look for the good, right? You know me, the lemonade stand is open most days. Um, one of the good things that came out of our little, you know, shelter in place teaching from school was that everybody knows how to use it. Use zoom now.

So if there really are some parents who are like, well, I cannot get time off work and I don't get off work till 5. 30, you know, hey, we can do it over zoom. You can screen share, you can show the report cards. Let's do it over your lunch break, their lunch break. Or can you take your lunch break after three, right?

So figure something out. I also found this very helpful. And we're going to talk about that under another tip, which is setting boundaries. Um, when, um, I had parents who wanted two Zooms, um, because they were divorced and they couldn't be in the same room.  Which doesn't sound like a big deal, but when you have 32 students,  you know, that's 32 conferences.

And if 10 parents want to, you know, both have a conference, you've just added 10 more conferences to your day. So we can use Zoom for all these things. Okay. So that's tip number one, leverage technology. You're going to automate the whole system of people scheduling, rescheduling, needing reminders. Okay?

And it's going to take yourself, the guilt factor out, right? That here are the available slots. Here are the times I have. It makes it a little less personal. Just like you were trying  to, you know, schedule something with the doctors. And here's all the times that are available, right? There's no,  um, need for us to bend over backwards to try and accommodate everybody.

I mean, we're going to be flexible if there are certain situations, but you know what I'm saying. Alright, so that's number one, leverage technology. Tip number two to have a much less stressful parent teacher conference season is manage expectations.  Right? Let people know up front what to expect  that might involve, you know,  letting them know up front, you know, it will be a  20 minute conference or if you that's I'm talking if maybe you're in the primary grades and you only have 25 to 35 parents to see if you're in the middle grades and you're all in the gymnasium and you know, you've got some ticket system or something and you've got, you know, hundreds, potentially hundreds.

Of parents coming to see you, then yes, it will be a 5 to 10 minute conference. Let them know, right? So that's number one, manage expectations that way. Let them know we're on a tight schedule. If you show up late, you may lose your spot,  right? I need to respect everybody's time.  Okay. Manage expectations. It might not be the time to drag all your little siblings with you. 

Um, I have been giving a parent teacher conference and, you know, uh, a lady not only brought her own little children, which I understand, but also she was a babysitter. She brought like four or five. They were literally tearing up my classroom. Ripping. pages out of my books  while I was trying to give the conference.

So, you know, try and set the tone for professionalism. So that's number one, manage expectations. But then the other thing is no surprises. Okay. This is a bigger issue than just your parent teacher conference week, right? There should be no surprises. No parents should show up. and find out that their child is failing, or that their child has, you know, 80 missing assignments.

This is not the time and place for them to discover that. They should have known that already. When I was in the corporate world, and I would give, um, annual performance reviews, that was a very big rule I had, like, no surprises. Like, I did not want an employee to wait to our annual performance review to find out that they were not meeting expectations that I had. 

So, no surprises, right? Make sure that you are communicating throughout the year, before the conference and that will make things go very well.  Smoothly. And if you honestly look when you're pulling together the data that you're going to present, that's the report cards, the, the test scores, the, you know, the graphs of their progress or all the things that we do, right. 

Just ask yourself, huh,  is this parent going to be surprised or even the student even worse to know this? And if they are, then you're going to make sure that you are proactive about scheduling that conference yourself. So that you leave yourself a little extra time and set yourself up for success. Okay.

But other than that, manage expectations, let people know how long the conference is going to be. Okay. So tip number one was leverage technology for scheduling. And, um, for Zooming.  Right? Number two, manage expectations. Okay, no surprises. Let people know how long they'll have to talk.  Okay, tip number three.

Involve the students wherever you can. Now, certainly if you are in the middle grade, upper grades, they're going to be student led conferences. That's probably how it's going to go. If a child has, you know,  potentially six or seven different teachers,  If they're in high school and everybody's in the gym, like, and, you know, and they're crushing it at PE and everything is good in here and there, then the student is going to lead the way where they feel they need to spend time, um, with teachers, right?

So probably your school has that  kind of set up. But I have found in the lower grades that it's very rare that teachers involve the students. And I always like to do that. So a simple way to do that is just to do a glow. and a grow sheet, a reflection sheet. Before it was always an ongoing inside my classroom that once a month, um, once every couple of weeks, students would fill out their own glow and grow kind of reflection sheet.

Where am I glowing? Like, where am I doing really well? And where do I still need to grow?  Okay, and so having the students participate, get involved in that  really helps, and I love to have that conversation with parents. Again, you know, I taught little children for a long time, and maybe this was one of their, you know, only first two or three experiences of a conference.

And I would really like to try and kind of, um,  iterate on parents. You know, we have a triangle of success, right? We have a teacher who's setting the standards, helping growing. There is the student who is participating and trying to meet the standards. And then there is the parent who is overseeing that and helping give support or communicate if something isn't working, right?

The triangle of success, it takes the teacher, The student and the parent to be  all accountable, interested, working together. And if any one piece isn't participating or working, like it's making it, it's involving a lot of stress and disconnect on the other two pieces. Okay. And so I, it was really a nice way of telling parents, you know, get involved here.

People get involved,  right? But the glow and grow piece, get the student involved too. All right, so where we at? Number one, leverage technology. Number two, manage expectation.  Number three, involve the students.  Number four, here we go. As far as logistics go, you know where I'm going to go probably. You've got to set some boundaries.

We want to bend over backwards. We want to help everybody.  That's who we are. That's why we're in education. We want people to be successful, but it cannot be at the expense of our own emotional, physical well being, putting stress on our relationships at home. All right. We've just got to set some boundaries.

Like I always say, come on, boundary up, baby, boundary up. So here are some easy things that you can do. One is set the, doing the communication, right? Set expectations before you go.  A little trick I used to do is I would always leave a list on the door, the outside of my door, of the conferences I had scheduled that day,  with a note saying please knock on the door when it's the time for your conference, so that I am sure to, you know, stay on schedule.

Now, if I did have a gap, Put someone else's name in there. Don't, I mean, is that a little white lie? Yes, it is. But don't let a parent see, especially if they're a high, um, but say they're a high maintenance parent, right, is what it is. Um, no judgment there, just a fact. Some parents... are more high maintenance than others.

Okay. And so let's say that they're, um,  they're the first one of your afternoon, one o'clock. And so you should technically have somebody else at 125, you know, 150, let's say nobody signed up for 125. Don't leave that spot open. When you put a list on the door, that parent will stay the whole 50 minutes.

They'll take their schedule time and the next person's schedule time because they know there isn't somebody right. So, um,  Go ahead and just make sure that there are no, you know, open spots there, but put the list on the door so people can see, hey, somebody is coming in 20 minutes. Right, that I need to make sure that I am  to the point and don't take up too much time, especially if that first one goes over or the first person shows up 15 minutes late and then still wants 20 minutes of your time.

You know, you just got to be able to tell them, I'm so sorry you showed up 15 minutes late. You have a 25, 20, 25 minute spot. The next person will be here 10 minutes. Um, what do you want to do? Should we go through this quickly? Or do you want to reschedule? Alright, put it back on them. But if somebody shows up 15 minutes late, you know, they're not going to get to spend 20 minutes.

It's not fair to everybody else, right? Um,  if you're in a gym situation, Is there a ticket system? What kind of system do you have? Do you have a timer on your desk? Do you, um, have a little timer on your phone? That you tell somebody, Oh, okay, let me set up the timer here. We've got 10  minutes per schedule, right?

Just set some boundaries. What else? What if you feel you're going to get bullied?  Now, I know that's not,  that's not a very positive thing to say, but it is the truth. Some parents are aggressive towards teachers, um, and if you already know that you've had a couple of run ins with a parent, um, and they're going to try and bully you, or they're trying to manipulate you, then you go ahead and get a witness. 

You need to boundary up. You need to let the office know, Hey, I need the VP or I need another staff member. Um, even if they just send maybe, um, an instructional aid, somebody, anybody, somebody sitting there with a clipboard  will, um, likely, if they know there's a witness present, they will be less likely to bully you.

Okay, so make sure you boundary up that way.  What if you, they're requesting a translator? Okay, I worked in a school where 70%, 60, 70 percent of the parents actually didn't speak English. And we only had two staff members who were available to help with conferences. And so, it was really hard to get all of those scheduled, because people would say, well, I need a translator.

We made it too easy for them. We put a spot right on the conference form, where we were doing it all manually, which was craziness, asking, do you need a translator?  No! Listen, somebody in their family can translate.  Somebody can. Usually an older sibling. That's what I'd do. If I had the, the sibling, um, if the, if the, even if the student could translate, but if we didn't rely on the student to be an effective translator, then, um, I would go find them an older sibling, or I would simply ask them, who can you bring who can help translate?

Now, if there's really nobody. that they can bring, then I would try and get them a translator. But don't necessarily, there is somebody in their life, listen, they get through life, they get through life somehow, um, not being able to speak whatever language you teach in. And so there is somebody in their life, have them bring that person, okay?

It shouldn't always have to fall on us to provide all things to all people. Now I know somebody's going to give me pushback on that. You go right ahead. You come tell me that I'm being unreasonable, and I'll give you a list of all the things that the average teacher does in a day, and you tell me where the reason lies, because there is none, right?

So when all teachers are burnt out for doing all these things, and there's nobody to have a conference with, because your child doesn't have a teacher, then you let me know. So, I'm sticking hard and fast on that. That's something easy that you can take off a teacher's plate. Instead of them running around find translator, simply make the request to the parent.

Hey, is there someone you can bring along to help translate? All right, so boundary up. Okay, where are we at so far?  It's like a pop quiz. Number one, leverage technology.  Number two, manage expectations. Number three, involve the students. Number four, set some boundaries.  And number five, and this is  really  what can be impactful.

And it's to have a paradigm shift. And we know I've done numerous episodes. Go back and listen to my episodes on paradigm shifts. How this is really where the magic lies in having a better life experience. So the paradigm shift you're going to have is, imagine this is your child, not your student.  Right?

This is your child. Try and put yourself in the shoes of a parent.  First off, look at this as an opportunity to learn something. Like I've said before, maybe it's the missing piece in the puzzle. I had a student who  really had exhibited some different issues. He was a very sweet person. kid. Um, but it took him a while to settle down in the morning.

Um, he really didn't learn the first period for whatever reason. And, you know, I couldn't really figure it out. You know, was he eating breakfast? Was he tired? Was he this? Was he that? Well, when I had the parent teacher conference and his parents  I kept texting and was texting somebody and complaining to me about it.

And literally, I mean, I'm not making this up inside the conference, that parent hurled his phone across the room,  right? Um, and, and the kid quietly just went and picked it up and put it back in his. his dad's hand. He looked a little embarrassed. He didn't say anything. You know, that taught me so much.

Right. That child was dealing with trauma and it took him the first period, you know, to feel safe in class and calm down. Right. So you could learn something. Okay.  But above and beyond that, think about the parents. My, my mother, uh, my father was always at work and had two jobs. My mother was very insecure about her English. 

And, um, found it very stressful to go to the school for anything. And I would ask her, are you coming to the conferences? And she said, are you struggling? You know, she didn't use those words. She was all, do I have to? Are you in trouble? And I said, no. And then she said, then I don't need to go. So imagine if a parent was kind of in a, You know, it used to annoy me as a child that she showed no interest.

But, you know, as an adult now, I know that that was just something that she was insecure about, right? So maybe put yourself in their seat. Maybe it's taken a lot for them to come. Um, there are all kinds of parents we have, right? I, uh, that same day that I had the phone thrower, you know, I had a custodial grandparent come, um, who didn't speak a lot of English, but I'm going to tell you, he put on a suit and a tie.

Before he came to sit down and learn about his little granddaughter and how she was doing, um, and you know, I got to think he felt very uncomfortable firstly, you know, he was probably in the 70s and we're talking third grade. So, you know, this. This little girl's story was not good. Um, that this is who her custodial parent was, was her grandparent.

He didn't speak much English, but he went to such big lengths, right, to, to be there. Um, and so you're going to have both ends of the spectrum. Okay.  So now this should be obvious, but just in case it isn't. You know, start with the positives, start with the positives,  like writing a report card, come on, we know this, you know, even if it's just like they have, I remember one little boy I had and I just really struggled to think, and I said, oh, he had beautiful penmanship, now you can see how long ago that was, because now kids don't have beautiful penmanship. 

But he always came to school dressed so lovely, like his shirt was always ironed, like a button down shirt, ironed, his hair done nice, and you know, my own children, gosh, my son went to school, he liked to choose his own t shirt, basketball shorts, you know, we live in California, it's all he ever wore, it just looked like he slept in the car sometimes, be like, really, that's what you're wearing?

But no, this little boy came to school so lovely. So there was always something positive to say, like, Oh my gosh, I appreciate it. Right. You know, he's always here and, you know, prepared me. It's beautiful handwriting. And, you know,  unfortunately, academically,  he really struggled, but start with the positives, right?

Minimize the jargon, right? Really? Those report cards. I gotta tell a parent of a third grader, Oh, you know, their child isn't doing well in inferencing and citing text evidence. And like those benchmarks, like those those standards that are on the report cards. Parents just don't understand. Just minimize the jargon.

If there's anything you can do to have a printout that is graphic. Like, um, like, um, like a chart that's showing progress over time. That's going to be so much better. Especially, I would make those efforts if a student is not meeting standards. Um, it's very hard to be a parent and look there and see that your child is academically deficient.

And so maybe the standard, you know, for some kids is really high and maybe they came in two grades behind. It's happened to me a lot. A child would come in two grades behind. And, you know, they weren't meeting the standard. And in the course of like the first three, four months of school, they'd, they'd improved a grade and a half, like phenomenal growth.

Guess what? On the report card, they're still not meeting standards. Right. And so I would make sure I always printed out something that showed, you know, luckily we had computer programs for whatever, you know, assessments and stuff we were doing that showed their progress. So there was something positive to see.

Okay. So minimizing the jargon and having graphic kind of evidence really helps more for teach, uh, for parents to understand.  And then the other thing is, Okay. Ideally, we want a conference, this goes back to, you know, student led conferences, our triangle of success, it should be a dialogue, not a monologue,  right?

Sometimes I felt the pressure, we had so much to cover in 20 minutes, going through all the standard assessments, and really, what a parent would have appreciated more was really just some open ended questions, like, how do you feel your child is doing? How do you, what areas do you see them struggling in?

What areas do you feel they enjoy? Right? Having some kind of dialogue that isn't just, you know, numbers on a report card, pass, fail, one, two, three, not meeting standards, A, B, C, D, whatever. I mean, this is a child. I always took a very holistic  view of how a child was doing. They are not just a number on a page.

Right? So that's the paradigm shift. What if this was your child? Right? Cultural sensitivity.  Right? Keep in mind that cultural backgrounds might influence a parent's approach to education, communication. Some may be very rigid and formal. Um, others, you know, might not be. Or in the case of my parent, my mother,  she wasn't educated past third grade, right?

She was never uncomfortable in a school environment. Um, so just be sensitive to that. And try, I always try to be welcoming. Even though I'm saying, you know, boundary up, have your list on the door. Okay, well I did have my list on the door, but you know what I had outside? Was some chairs, so parents had somewhere to wait.

Right. Some bottles of water. It was very hot.  Um,  not always, but it could be very warm. Just, you know, try and be a little bit welcoming. Thank them for coming. Sincerely. Hey, you know what? I appreciate  you.  You know, being here. Okay.  All right. So that's number five. This paradigm shift. Imagine it's your child, not your student.

What would you want to hear and to feel? And, um, you know, I always found on report cards, you know, they were standards based and then they might have work habits on there.  But very few had anything like, you know, are they, not that you want to like make a judgment on it, are they a decent human being? What do I mean by that?

You know, are they helpful?  Are they kind? Do they maintain good social? Relationships. Are they a good friend? Right? These are all things that we can incorporate into, um,  into a  conference, especially if we're looking for some positives and maybe the academics aren't there. All right, so there's our five tips.

I'm going to give you a bonus tip. All  right, let me recap the five first. Number one, leverage technology. Like I said,  signupgenius. com. I'll put the link in the show notes. Calendly. com. It's a little bit more businessy like. I use it actually for my business. Also free. Also fabulous. Right? YouZoom.  YouZoom.

Oh, I meant to say about the... I forgot that. Hold on. We'll get to it. Manage two. Number two, manage expectations. Number three, involve the  students. Number four, set the boundaries. So here's where I wanted to mention that. Okay, as well as putting the onus on the parents to bring a translator,  or just simply asking them, hey, who do you know who can translate?

What about those parents who like, well, we need two conferences, we need two sets of report cards, all those things. Hey, that's great. You know what, let's do it over Zoom. I understand they don't want to be in the same. room together, they can be on the same Zoom call together. I, like, I don't, you know, I just... 

One year I had like five parents want your duplicate conferences, and I bent over backwards to make that happen. And in three of those cases, the non custodial parent did not appear. And, um, it, it was just, um, it wasn't good. So I had made that rule for the last, um,  for the last year that I did conferences.

Hey, if you need two conferences, let's do it over Zoom. One of you can keep the camera off. It's going to bother you to look at each other. I don't know what else to say. I don't want to get involved in your drama. Just do my job. My obligation is to provide the conference. It's not to do it twice.

Certainly two sets of report cards, two sets of everything, but don't drag me into your drama. Okay.  So, uh, number five, paradigm shift, imagine it's your child, not your student. So here's a bonus tip,  and this is just literally  20 plus years of conferencing, any type of meeting with parents. I've got to tell you,  just be more prepared than you think you need to be, and really recognize optics. 

I know they shouldn't.  I know it shouldn't matter what you're wearing and how tidy your room looks. And whether or not you have all the documentation you need to handle that parent already in a pile, paper clipped together so you just hand it to them and you're not left scrambling looking for papers, right?

Should it matter? Should that be a reflection of you as a teacher? Um, and how passionate you are about meeting the needs of their students? No, it shouldn't. But we live in the real world, and it does,  so optics matter. You are gonna get judged. So don't give people, don't give people the reason to do it. Put on your best outfit. 

Right? It may be when you are teaching, and especially, you know, you're sitting on the floor with the kids, or you, whatever you're doing, and you, you know, maybe your dress code at your school isn't terribly strict, and you do show up, you know, sometimes with athleisure wear, let's just say, or jeans. When it's parent teacher conference week, come on, put your best foot forward. 

Especially for some cultures that I taught in, they're very judgmental about how a teacher presented themselves. So, you know. Bring out your best, your best outfit that week, right? Make sure your room's tidy. I mean, by November, we were like, you know, elbow deep in projects and other stuff, and I literally would get two crates, cram all the clutter in there, take the crates out to my car, do my conferences, and at the end of the week just bring the crates back in. 

I mean, literally, but the room looked nice and tidy and organized, and people judge. Again, I know that we don't want to talk about that in education, and say why are parents judging us? It should be based on, you know, what we do for those students, not how we dress, how our room looks, and all the things.

Yes, um, you are going to get judged. Don't, don't give people room. Right? Just don't give them, don't, don't give them any leeway to do that. Make sure you're prepared. I would spend, yeah, I would spend me one whole lunch hour, two whole lunch hours printing out all the um, documentation I needed, putting them in neat piles, paperclip,  so that when a parent came in I just picked up the file and put it in front of them.

I wasn't scrambling looking for papers. I had the curriculum.  I had student, um, books and everything out on one table in case a parent asked questions about that. It was all readily available. Like, I wanted to make sure I didn't need to scramble for anything. Um, and while I was definitely, you know, opening and welcoming and smiley and whatever, um, you know, I didn't do the power play.

I always went and got big chairs. Now, you're going to laugh about that, but when you teach first grade,  those chairs are really little and some teachers do pull a power play. They're going to sit behind their desk and the parent is going to be sitting in these teeny little chairs. Um, you know, I didn't do that.

I always went out of my way to go get nice, you know, big chairs so parents could feel comfortable. Um, but I would, you know, just have an air of  You know, I'm the expert here. I am the person who knows the subject matter, who knows the curriculum, who knows the standards your child needs to reach, and knows how to get them there.

And, um, it was just an air of professionalism that I had, and consequently I had very few, um,  You know, issues with parents and I think partly it was because, you know, optics matter, you know, and I've said this before. I came to teaching later in life. I'd already had children. I mean, they were still little, but I did have them and I was almost 40 by the time I had my own classroom and I saw that parents reacted to me very differently than they did to some, you know, 25 year old who literally got out the teacher credentialing program or was still getting their credential and they, they were very, um, Um,  You know, some parents would boss them around or just, you know, just take advantage of them.

And, um, I never kind of had that air of vulnerability about me, I suppose. I was very lucky about that. But I do know that optics matter. You know, when a, when a, a staff member would tell me, Oh, parents just don't respect me. And I look at them and they were standing there wearing ripped jeans and  a sweatshirt. 

Well,  you know, optics matter.  You're gonna call me old fashioned. That's okay.  It worked for me. Alright, that's it. I want to reiterate that you have got this. Um, I always looked at parent teacher conferences as, um, yes, was it exhausting? Sure. But I also found it exhilarating. I loved meeting the parents. I, I felt we made, um, positive, you know, connections.

Again, in the times where students were really some mysteries around students, I felt it gave me another piece of the puzzle. Um, I know that there is a very  you know, real frustration that the parents you most need to come to conference  are the hardest to come  or the hardest to get to come. Right? The kids who are doing fantastic and their parents are involved, you know, their parents are signing up right away. 

the parents who really there are issues and you haven't been able to communicate with them and your phone calls and emails go unanswered, you know, are they showing up to conference? You know, maybe not so much.  And so, um, you have to really try and, gosh, I would hate to say it, I had to incentivize sometimes um, with the students, you know, hey, you know, you get this X, Y, Z.

If you're, um, you know, if you're, once your parent signs up, like, get put in a drawing or I would make, you know, a class award, hey, if we have everybody signed up for conferences, we'll have a pizza party or something, right? You hate to think you'd have to gamify or incentivize, but, um, but we do. That's the reality in which we, um, teach, but I want to assure you, it can be a really positive experience. 

The more prepared you are,  the smoother it'll go.  And, um, I know that you have got this. Just the paradigm shift might be, you know, the piece that maybe you're missing.  Okay. So crush those conferences and until next time, remember  create your own path and bring your own sunshine.