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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..?
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