More parent-teacher interview surprises

I have written before that we seem to be constantly surprised when we go to our eldest's parent-teacher interviews; pleasantly surprised that is. Last year, it was her good behaviour and it turned out to be the incentives that did it. This year, different thing but same story.

The interview was with her two 4th grade teachers. Her main teacher and her teacher for a second language. I must admit that we think learning a second language is a good thing but not so much that we have ever encouraged it or cared less. So in parent-teacher interviews, the language teacher gets little (alright, none) of our attention.

So after much for the interview with the main teacher we came to the obligatory language assessment. Usually, our daughter is doing fine. This time we got: "she is star. She is the best. We think she is gifted." This provoked the response: "really? We had no idea. How do you know?"

Well, it turns out how they know is that they keep a posted set of rankings taking all kids in the class: 1 - 22. And it is based on the teacher's assessment in language performance. Suffice it to say, my daughter -- who had previously shown as much interest in the subject as us -- jumped straight to No.1 and has not budged since. Well, isn't that interesting?

It was then that her main teacher -- who, in many respects, had popped straight out of the 60s -- piped up:

"Hmm, I wonder why she doesn't do that for other subjects."

"Well, do you have a ranking?" I asked.

"Yes."

"Does it work the same way?"

"Well, each week a start out with each child getting a random position but after that they can move up by challenging other children. Your daughter usually climbs to about 3 or 4 and then stops,"

Ahh, so it was a muted incentive system. You can invest all week in climbing to the stop only to find yourself unceremoniously thrown back down. Turned out that our daughter realised this. "I never go down but I am only going to challenge someone above who I know I can beat easily. Otherwise, I will have to try and beat a better person only to lose the ranking in the next week."

Explicit, strong incentives don't work for all children but in our case they do in a stunning way. They think she is gifted in languages. I'm not sure about that but I do know that she can see through incentives. Now that is something I do value.

The key to compliance

This week we had the 8 year old's parent-teacher interview. As regular readers know, this is not something I look forward to. This is not because it represents bad news but more that I don't really know what to do with myself.

Anyhow, the interview began:

"I have to tell you that your child is a delight."

"Really?"

"Yes, she does everything she is told. She is always ready at the beginning of class with her diary on the table. She works hard all day at projects. And she always helps clean up."

"Umm, we are the Gans family. Take another look at your sheet. Are we talking about the same child?"

Turns out that we were talking about the same child, physically at least. At home, 'compliant' is not the word I would use for Child No.1. Sure faced with the inevitable, she is very good and does most things without being reminded. But on anything extra, well, it is a struggle where she clearly believes that if she complies she might be doing whatever distasteful activity it is for the rest of life. Actually, she is probably right about that.

Nonetheless, let's face it, we can't complain. If we are going to have compliance somewhere best that it be at school. Indeed, we rewarded that by allowing her to have more of a free reign with her time at home.

But I was curious. Why was there such a difference? We asked her:

"Well, of course I am well-behaved. They pay me there."

"What do you mean?"

"We get money. Well, not real money but bonus money. I have the most in the class."

Ah ha, so once again she proves that she is her father's daughter. At school they get the price right which is clearly not the case at home. Nonetheless, I don't think we are going to change things here, lest we upset the current happy situation at school.

Who is monitoring whom?

Apparently, Texas is considering making parent-teacher conferences mandatory. Parents who didn't show would be fined.

There are two reactions to this. First, what makes parent-teacher conferences so painful that you won't show up? Second, what use are they anyway? Emily Brazelon in Slate takes a crack at answering the latter. I'll come to that in a second. Let me start with the former.

Something that I didn't expect when becoming a parent is that I would dread parent-teacher conferences. Now, you are obviously assuming that the main reason for this is that we are greeted with a long list of problems with our children. That would make sense except it isn't true. Instead, from our perspective they are better characterised as a "love fest" (mostly). I actually don't think it is because our children are so special. It is just that there are no long standing problems that are not dealt with at other times. If there is a real issue, and we have not been free of those, the teacher does not wait until the parent-teacher conference to let us know. Usually an immediate phone call at work are straight after school is the ticket. So we go into these conferences expecting the love fest.

The issue is this. As a University lecturer, I symphathise with teachers and their dealings with students. As a lecturer to MBAs, I sympathise with teachers and their dealings with parents. For them, having to deal with parents is a route to criticism. They face all the issues I do. First and foremost, trying to work out who the student is and whether there have been any past issues. How can they expect to know this?

Actually, at pre- and early-school, teachers do pretty well remembering who students are. For specialist classes that drops off and I have sat in discussions with a music teacher and they are clearly winging it. That actually amuses me and so those are fine but ultimately useless.

So when we go to these meetings, both of us sit there mute. I feel like we are drooling and I definitely get the impression that the teacher is thinking, "are these really this child's parents?" I just do not know what to say. I don't want to be pushy. I happy to hear good things. And rarely do I have some sort of agenda.

The teacher doesn't know what to do with us. They look for a fight. They expect to have to write down some action list. But in the end there is nothing. We go away thinking how awkward that all was and wondering if we should have an agenda. Indeed, we come up with a list of at least trivial concerns. Things like: child no.1 is having trouble finishing her lunch on time, can you allocate a few more minutes to that? Child no. 2 thinks there is too much time for lunch and he bored sitting there. Then we can really achieve something.

So I can understand why parents might not like to turn up to these things at all. But that is a different thing from making them show up.

The question is: what is the purpose of this conference? With more continuous communication between parents and teachers throughout the semester, the real problems are addressed elsewhere. Brazelon gets interested in the "three way conference."

The parent-teacher conference can serve to reinforce the enmity, especially if it takes parents back to their own miserable school days. (Those little chairs are nothing if not infantilizing.) The conference can also cut through the adversarial posturing—especially, perhaps, if it takes the form of a three-way conversation: teacher, parent, and kid. Lawrence-Lightfoot thinks this should be the rule, not the exception. And not just for older students. She has seen 6-year-olds talk about themselves at a conference with "insight and discernment."

I ran this idea by my sister, a doctoral student in education at the University of Pennsylvania who taught for five years at a public school in the Bronx and at a charter school in Los Angeles. She liked it. From a teacher's perspective, conferences are useful because they push you to reflect on each kid and her schoolwork. To go through a child's portfolio with her, and talk together about her academic progress and behavior, would be all the more meaningful. And if the teacher needs the parents' help with an unruly child, "It's definitely better for the student to be there," my sister said. There's no confusion about who's saying what. Plus, the only people who know what the child is like both at school and at home are present, not absent.

One study of four schools with conferences that included students, by Diana Hiatt-Michael of Pepperdine University, found close to 100 percent parent participation.

Our school instituted this last year for our 5 year old in Prep. Suffice it to say, I couldn't make it (first time ever, so much for participation). Anyhow, by all accounts, it didn't really serve any function at that age. Everyone talked about what child No.2 needed to improve including child No.2 but there was no information really exchanged. Maybe it will be more useful for older children.

The key issue is: who is supposed to be learning what? The parent learns little about the children at these things (that is dealt with by other means). The parent learns a bit about the teacher but the bilateral nature of these conferences suggests that that is less efficient than a group session where a bunch of parents meet the teacher.

No, the only thing left is for the teacher to learn more about the parents. And there are good reasons for this to be important. Let's face it, the parents and perhaps siblings would be the best way for a teacher to understand the circumstances of the child; especially for younger children. However, our conferences are not ideal for that.

First, they take place in the teacher's domain -- the classroom. With the parents out of context, not much can be learned. From us, by the way, we give away nothing but the impression that little conversation goes on in our household except that we do lots of smiling and nodding.

Second, the teachers are not interrogating the parents. They are usually reporting to them. The flow of information is not in the right direction.

Finally, parents clearly would not expect an interrogation.

Let's face it: this isn't going to increase participation if we take these conferences for what they should be rather than what they are. However, they might prove more useful is the conferences take the form of home visits by the teacher. Then again, I am pretty sure we will have a new issue -- getting teachers to participate! It is like 'wack a mole' but then again so is much that comes with performance evaluation.