5 Tips for Parent Teacher Conferences

Back to school season is in full swing, teachers!

While we settle into the first few weeks of school and get to know our new students, there is another to-do waiting around the corner: parent teacher conferences.

Parent teacher conferences are brief meetings meant for reviewing each student’s progress with their parents or guardians. These conferences can get tricky, especially if you are new to them. Lots of teachers find it difficult to fit everything they need to say about a student into a short time frame. Add to the equation a parent’s questions, frustrations, or other roadblocks, and a conference can quickly become a headache.

A successful round of parent teacher conferences takes thoughtful planning and prepping. I’ve gathered 5 of my best tips for parent teacher conferences to make your meetings go as smoothly as possible. Whether you are a new teacher or have sat through your fair share of conferences, there’s something helpful for every teacher in this list!

1. Have parents submit questions ahead of time

When it comes to conferences, you want to be as prepared as possible. One of the things that can easily catch teachers off guard are questions from parents that they aren’t fully equipped to answer or didn’t expect. On the form that you distribute to parents to choose their conference time, include a spot for any questions that they know they want to ask during your meeting. This will help you be prepared for the discussion and gather the necessary information to answer their questions to the best of your ability!

2. Give parents a printed photo of their child

In this day and age, parents don’t have many printed photos of their child. Any photos they have are usually on their phone. My favorite tip for parent teacher conferences is to print out a photo of each child to give to their parents during your meeting. When you start your conference by giving them a photo, their mood is instantly lifted. It’s an amazing personal touch that every parent and guardian appreciates so much! Not only will this improve their mood for your discussion, but it will give them something special to carry out with them.

3. Use the Hamburger Method

Parent teacher conferences can sometimes go sour, especially when sharing something that a child needs to work on. As teachers, we want to be transparent to parents about their child, but we also want to give off the best impression and keep things positive. I swear by the Hamburger Method when delivering feedback to parents! It goes like this: start with a positive comment, add something we’re working on, and end with another positive comment. This framework really helps soften the delivery of what a student needs to improve on in class. It’s a great way to add in as much positive feedback as possible while giving parents a clear picture of how their child is doing.

4. Use a door sign to stay on time

Time really flies by in a parent teacher conference. These meetings should be fairly brief and pack a lot of information into a short period of time, ranging from 10 to 30 minutes. However, if you’ve held a conference before, you know that some parents could go on and on talking about their child and asking a million questions. While we want to help them as much as we can, if one meeting runs long, our whole schedule falls apart.

I like to use this free Door Sign to keep my meetings on track! This sign instructs parents to knock on your door at their scheduled meeting time. It helps prevent the awkwardness of needing to end a meeting, but not knowing how to do it. A knock on the door gives you a stress-free way to welcome the next parent into your room and stay right on schedule.

5. Include stories about each student with their work

I love including a post-it note on each of my student’s files with a personal story about them. This could be a funny story, a breakthrough they experienced, or an anecdote about them being a good friend. Stories always make a parent smile, but it can be hard to recount their best moments on the spot. Thinking about which stories you want to tell ahead of time and jotting them down on a note will help you remember to bring it up and keep the conversation flowing!

Conclusion

When it comes to parent teacher conferences, good planning is essential for keeping the experience positive and productive. These tips for parent teacher conferences have saved me from several headaches during conference time, and I hope you found them helpful too. Be sure to grab your free Door Sign before your next round of conferences!

What’s your favorite way to prep for parent teacher conferences?