Checklist for productive parent teacher conference

The secret to productive parent-teacher conferences, experts say, is changing your thinking from reporting on a child to drawing out from the parents a better sense of who that child is. Taking a walk in the parents’ shoes is a first step, according to the Harvard Education Letter. Here are some questions to start the conversation:

1. What aspects of your child’s schoolwork make you proud?
2. In what ways is your child working up to his or her potential?
3. What things at school make your child happy or upset?

However well teachers handle conferences, the 10-minute model is still too much like speed dating, education researchers say arguing that the whole structure needs to change from a high-pressure, “super-brief” meeting to a more collaborative arrangement in which nothing comes as a surprise and the focus is on the future.

Source: Adapted from “Meeting of the Minds” by Laura Pappano, Harvard Education Letter, July/August 2007.