Skip to main content

Parent Teacher Conferences

Parent teacher conferences are an interesting point in time for transfer high schools. Last year, my school only had a 20% turn out rate for parents (based on less than 120 students). Last night, we had about a 25% turn out rate, but now we're at nearly 200 students. Still a pretty shitty turn out, I must say. Supposedly though, this is "okay" for transfer schools because our students' parents might:
  1. ...not be as involved in the student's life.
  2. ...not be present everyday in the student's life.
  3. ...not have time because they are working.
  4. ...have better things to do (this relates to #1).
  5. ...be dead.
For the parents that do actually come, their son/daughter is usually performing well or they have the capacity to perform well, but aren't pushing themselves. Either way, these students aren't the ones in danger of failing. The fact they even have a parent coming to discuss their performance is telling. I briefly talked about this yesterday with a few of my colleagues, who like me, only had positive things to say to the parents that came. These parents will then reward their children or continue supporting them, at least.

I suppose you've already figured out the problem: the students who have parents attending parent teacher conferences generally don't really need to come because their children are doing what they are supposed to be doing anyway. The question is, what can we do about the nearly 75% of parents that didn't show up? We were even offering free Italian food for God's sake! Ah, transfer schools...

On a completely unrelated, but positive note, I'm supremely excited to attend the Rally to Restore Sanity this weekend in Washington D.C. I think this event has the potential to be one of those super cool moments only our generation will get to speak about. "Yeah man, I was there."

And no, I am not dressing up as a slutty teacher for Halloween. Who goes dressed up as themselves anyway..?
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

We Need to Talk About Tenure

The idea and privilege of "tenure" in public education has garnered a lot of attention as of late. Most people who have never worked in education a single day in their lives seem to feel that tenure is unfair and teachers should work under the same expectations that other "regular" and hard-working Americans work under. At least, that's the narrative being presented in the media. Three years ago, I would have agreed, but I didn't know any better. At the college and university level,  tenure  is difficult to obtain and can take 4-8 years. Correct me if I'm wrong here, but from what I think I know, the candidate usually needs to have published some sort of research and have demonstrated a strong teaching record, among other things. Before becoming a high school teacher, I understood why tenure was necessary at the college and university level as it protected academics when they published work that went against the mainstream, and thereby prevented profes...
16 comments
Read more

The Two Brothers

Two years ago, two brothers enrolled at the alternative school where I worked. Colin and Ken, at 16 and 15 years old respectively, had just come back from spending two years in the Dominican Republic. They were now living in a foster home in the Bronx away from their birth parents. During the years they spent in the Dominican Republic, Colin and Ken were in and out of school, but mostly out, working on their family's farm as free labor. Beyond the trauma of separation  from  their birth parents, Colin and Ken experienced a significant amount of trauma  with  their birth parents. They were two teenagers who had already lived a lifetime. Silent with a dark sense of humor, Colin kept quiet during the school day during most of his first year. His entrance test scores placed him in classes at about (or slightly under) grade level. In those classes, Colin excelled. During his first year in this alternative school, Colin accumulated credits, earned rewards based on academ...
2 comments
Read more

Teach for Pakistan

I've been visiting Karachi every other year since I was six months old. My parents were both born there. The bulk of my extended family still lives there. It's strange how my perspective and investment in the country has changed over the years. I hated going to Pakistan when I was younger. My mother dragged me there for two, sometimes three months at a time over the summer. The heat was miserable and the humidity was unbearable. My family wasn't well off, so it's not like I was in a huge mansion of sorts living in the tropics, eating cold mangoes. That would've been nice. The only things I enjoyed were the company of my cousins, the food and the taste of Coca-Cola made from real sugar. Besides that, I really never did anything else. I was pretty quiet: my aunts would compliment me on my lack of communication. Heh. It was not until I was a teenager that I truly began to appreciate my experiences in Pakistan. I started engaging in the family functions, weddings an...
15 comments
Read more