Parent/Teacher Interviews
I have Parent/Teacher interviews tomorrow night. It's pretty much a ritual at the end of November for me now, pass out report cards, and then two days of Parent interviews. It's funny that after 17 years of teaching I still look ahead to the night with a fair amount of anxiety. It's partly because such days are oh so very long, being that I teach from 8 to 3 and then do interviews from 4:30 to 9 (thankfully, Friday is a PA Day, but that's because we spend most of that day in parent interviews, too). Mainly, though, parent interviews are stressful because they are so unpredictable. In a full evening of interviews you rarely have a conflict or problem with a parent, but when you do that's the interview that not only stays with you for the next day, but for the next ten years. I can probably count on one hand the number of truly difficult interviews that I've had to do, but they still stand out in my memory vividly.
The other thing that makes interviews unpredictable I've discovered through the years is that you can't predict a difficult interview based on the achievement on the report card. I once thought that C and D report cards would generate more difficult interviews than A and B report cards, but I have learned that isn't necessarily so. Often the parent of a D student is used to such interviews and supports you completely whereas you can get a parent of a B student extremely irate because their child doesn't have A's. It's always impossible to know what you might face in such an evening.
Still, I try hard to remember that for every stressful interview I've conducted I've had 20 good interviews. I try to remember the parent's perspective, too. Saw a great "For Better Or For Worse" cartoon years ago showing a teacher and Ellie facing each other pleasantly for an interview with the same thought balloon over their heads, "I wonder if she has any idea how stressful I find these meetings.", so part of my job tomorrow night is to help the parent through that process, as we both have the best of intentions in mind for their child. I also find that meeting the parents, even just for ten minutes, is tremendously insightful to me as far as the personalities of the students in my classroom. Often the phrase "the apple never falls far from the tree" never rings more true for me than on Parent/Teacher interview night :).
It makes for a long couple of days and it's always a relief to put them behind me. There's anticipation in knowing that once report cards and interviews are done I can relax and spend a couple of weeks doing Christmas activities with my class. Not to mention continue my final countdown to "The Two Towers" on December 17 for which John and I already have our first showing tickets :).
The other thing that makes interviews unpredictable I've discovered through the years is that you can't predict a difficult interview based on the achievement on the report card. I once thought that C and D report cards would generate more difficult interviews than A and B report cards, but I have learned that isn't necessarily so. Often the parent of a D student is used to such interviews and supports you completely whereas you can get a parent of a B student extremely irate because their child doesn't have A's. It's always impossible to know what you might face in such an evening.
Still, I try hard to remember that for every stressful interview I've conducted I've had 20 good interviews. I try to remember the parent's perspective, too. Saw a great "For Better Or For Worse" cartoon years ago showing a teacher and Ellie facing each other pleasantly for an interview with the same thought balloon over their heads, "I wonder if she has any idea how stressful I find these meetings.", so part of my job tomorrow night is to help the parent through that process, as we both have the best of intentions in mind for their child. I also find that meeting the parents, even just for ten minutes, is tremendously insightful to me as far as the personalities of the students in my classroom. Often the phrase "the apple never falls far from the tree" never rings more true for me than on Parent/Teacher interview night :).
It makes for a long couple of days and it's always a relief to put them behind me. There's anticipation in knowing that once report cards and interviews are done I can relax and spend a couple of weeks doing Christmas activities with my class. Not to mention continue my final countdown to "The Two Towers" on December 17 for which John and I already have our first showing tickets :).