Change the Discussion

We just attended parent - teacher conferences and had some good discussions with our child's teachers.  I've been one one side of the table or other for going on 30 years and it occurred to me that the conversations at the middle and high school level seem to follow a familiar pattern:

• The accounting section. This is where the debits and credits get tallied and reported from the grade book. It sometimes goes like this:  "his grade is an 84, but he didn't re-take the last quiz, so if he gets at least an 80 on it, his grade should be about a 90."  It's here where we can find out about missing assignments, low or high scores, and sometimes a preview of upcoming things that are going to count a substantial portion of the quarter/semester/final grade.   Often this section of the conference is used to validate the accuracy of the reported grade.
• The student qualities section.  We get to find out about the in class attributes of our child; we find out if they participate in class, or if they turn their work in on time.  Inevitably this section turns into a discussion about what the student can do to improve their grade (see the accounting section). Recommendations might include coming in to re-take tests, pay attention in class, or ask questions if they are confused.
• Final salutations.  Generally this is the "thanks for coming in and let me know if you need anything or have questions." 

This is not an indictment on the process - believe me I followed the sections to the letter when I was in the classroom.  But it seems to me that we need to change the discussion from accounting and student work habits to one about learning.  What has the student learned well?  What are their struggles?

So an interesting thing happened at conferences - the teacher let us know what things our child did well and an area of improvement based on the content.  Now we're getting somewhere - the conversation changes when you find out your child is strong in adding and subtracting fractions, or needs to improve on solving multi-step problems.   It seems that we got a lot more of this kind of discussion at the elementary level - the teacher told us about how many sight words they had mastered, or how well they were adding and subtracting.  Maybe we need more of that in the upper grades.

You can find examples of grading scales that describe the academic expertise necessary at various levels.  If we have a descriptor of "A" through "D" grades - then the conversation can include the kinds of academic understandings a student possesses and those that need to be gained. 

Whether schools go to scales or not, we put a lot of time and effort into parent -teacher conferences - maybe we should try to change the discussion.  After all nobody should know the academic abilities of our children better than the teacher.

Toby