5420B - PARENT-TEACHER CONFERENCES

The parent-teacher conference can play a significant role in the education of our students in three (3) important ways:

1. providing the teacher with vital information from parents that will strengthen the plans and strategies the teacher uses with a student

2. helping parents understand more clearly what the school and the teacher are trying to accomplish with a student, what is required for students to accomplish such results, and what the parent can do to facilitate the process

3. building a strong home-school partnership that has implications for support of school programs beyond particular classroom or grade

Each principal, in collaboration with the school staff should incorporate a parent-teacher conference plan as part of the educational plan that each building is to design and implement each year. Among the strategies contained in such a conference plan should be:

1. providing opportunities for parents to ask questions regarding both the ends and the means and to suggest additions and modifications to both;

2. ensuring that at any special conferences with parents, the parents leave with a clear understanding of what progress reports and report cards will contain; how they should be interpreted and how they should be used by parents in supporting their child's learning efforts;

3. correlating the first conference with subsequent conferences by linking observations, comments, suggestions, etc. to the learning ends and means discussed at the first conference.