(Vol. 1, No. 2 - Spring/Summer 1997)

Building Better Parent Partnerships

"One of the essential building blocks of home-school communication is the parent-teacher conference," says the Colorado Parent Information and Resource Center. Conferences are successful when teachers and the school system create a climate that invites collaboration with parents. Creating this climate involves planning and effort.

The Center includes these ideas in a lengthy list of ways schools and parents can improve conferences. (You can find the complete list at the Center's World Wide Web site.)

What the system and school can do:

Use in-service meetings to orient teachers to the system's goals for conferences.
Help teachers examine their attitudes about conferences and parents.
Provide teachers with skills for dealing with a range of parent-related issues.
Provide parents with information on how to help make the conference productive. Send to parents a conference planning sheet which outlines a set of questions they may want to ask teachers about what students are learning.
Provide child care and transportation services for parents and communicate their availability.
Ask parent volunteers to telephone parents to confirm appointments and encourage them to attend conferences.

What the teacher can do:

Send a personal letter or make a phone call outlining a specific agenda that will interest the parents.
Provide a conference schedule that will provide options for working parents and parents who have more than one child in the school.
Provide enough time for productive conferences.
Prepare a folder with samples of the child's work and information about what the child is expected to learn and how the child is progressing.
Develop a relationship with parents by asking them about their work or about an interest you may know they have.
Provide parents with opportunities to speak about their children.
Do not interpret a parent's advocacy as belligerence or as a criticism of the teacher.
Indicate appreciation of the unique qualities of the child. Research suggests that parents use a teacher's knowledge of a particular child's personality or interests as a screening device. They are more willing to hear a range of feedback about a child if they feel the teacher knows what is special about the child.
Pick one or two areas for growth and improvement so that parents are not overwhelmed.
Involve parents in creating solutions to problem areas. Devote at least half the conference to parents' concerns, ideas, and questions. Close the conference with some action steps.
Follow-up the conference with a phone call or a note.

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