Dear MS Parents,
Our Middle School Parent-Student-Teacher Conferences will be taking place during the school day, in place of classes, on Thursday and Friday, March 28 and 29, 2013. Following, you will find some information about the conferences and what to expect.
There were some problems with our conferences in October in terms of equity of access to appointments with some teachers, as many parents were unable to gain appointments (or appointments on the same day) with teachers particularly in the areas of Math, Science, and World Languages. Therefore we are going to try a new model for parents signing up for appointments, which will hopefully improve equity of access for parents to meet with teachers.
If you are attending the conferences, your child is expected to also attend (in school uniform) with you, as he/she plays the most important role in the process! Our goal is that your son or daughter plays an integral part of the conversation rather than sitting quietly as an observer.
We will use the individual family student-led conversation format as we did in the October conferences. Based upon feedback received about our October conferences, over 90% of parents found this individual conversation format “Valuable” or “Extremely Valuable” for informing them of their child(ren)’s learning and areas for continued improvement, with 98% percent of parents preferring to continue with this format. In addition to the conferences, teachers may be asking students to review their portfolio items and/or reflective pieces at home with their parents in advance of conferences.
You can sign up for conferences using our online scheduler, Pick-a-Time. We will be sending directions on how to do this via the MS eNews on Friday, March 15th. You will be able to access Pick-a-Time anytime between 5:00pm on Friday, March 15th to 12:00pm on Wednesday, March 27th.
You can sign up for conferences using our online scheduler for a 90 minute, block of time. Sign up on Pick-a-Time will be based upon your child’s Humanities teacher. You will not schedule a specific time with your child’s Humanities teacher or any other teacher; rather you will schedule a 90-minute block of time where you will drop by and conference with teachers during that block of time. Signing up by Humanities teacher will randomly spread out students over the course of the two days so that all teachers should have no more than 12 students maximum per time block.
On conference day, you can move from room to room to meet teachers as needed, so there will be an equitable opportunity to see every teacher. This should be more efficient and allow more parents to see teachers given that there is no time wasted with built-in passing times.
Humanities conferences may last up to 15 minutes given that they cover both Language Arts and Social Studies subjects. Other subject areas should target 5-7 minutes per conference.
Teachers will be sending an email invitation to parents of students who they really need to meet; however, it is at the discretion of the teacher to pre-book a specific time during the parent’s conference block of time.
If you would feel more comfortable with having a translator present during your conferences, you are encouraged to bring someone along with you to the conferences.
We are looking forward to seeing you at our upcoming MS Parent-Student-Teacher Conferences where we hope many meaningful conversations take place of not only where your child is at presently in his or her learning, but of where their learning could go next!