It is coming. The dreaded parents’ evening. Tonight (as I write) I have a parents’ evening for year 9. Having a year 9 tutor group means that parents can come in to see how their children are getting on now that they have moved to “big” school (we are a 13 to 18 school).
I feel this is a difficult parents’ evening. Before the summer parents had a similar evening to come into school and meet their child’s tutor. However, since that initial meeting not much has changed. I have been back at school with my form for just over two weeks now. And, while I do teach a handful of my tutees, there are a majority that I don’t see all that often.
The contact time with my form is five minutes in the morning and 20 minutes after period one for our personal and social development and/or citizenship sessions. However, this time can also be taken up by admin, assemblies and students working independently. So, this means in the two weeks we have been back I haven’t had a massive amount of time with some of the students in my tutor group.
Of course, this parents’ evening is completely optional. Typically, the students in my form group who have had initial teething issues in the school have not made an appointment with me.
So I am asking myself: “What am I going to say to these parents?”
However, I have been pro-actively planning for the evening. First things first, I will obviously introduce myself. No news may be considered good news, but still I have got a notebook (the trusty meeting notebook I talked about last week, to be precise) and I have made a note of each appointment I have and the student. Here I have added any information that I can.
Using the school’s behaviour tracker I have been able to add notes about any house points, homework issues or even detentions. This arms me with a response to the generic question “How is he/she getting on?” Also, it shows parents that I do know about my tutees and their school-wide behaviour, even though I may only have minimal contact with them.
Additionally, I have printed out a slip for each parent that has my school email on it. I feel this opens the door for contact (hopefully not too much!). I am giving this because I would always prefer an email instead of a note in my planner or a letter. That way if there is an email saying that “little Johnny” needs to miss PE this week then I can easily forward that to the powers that be.
Finally, in the short two weeks we have had together as a form tutor, I have learned something about every student in my class. That could be anything from that they have a pet, to they play for a sports team outside of school.
I know we all aim to teach, and teaching is the main part of our job, but sometimes I think that we forget to take the time out to really get to know our students. It’s so easy to see a room full of 30 faces as target grades, the naughty one or the star student.
I know it makes a real difference to students and to how they see you when you take the time to talk to them. I also hope that knowing something about the students will highlight to the parents that I have gotten to know their child and that I am doing my best to make sure they are achieving their very best in school. Let’s hope all the preparation pays off!
- SecEd’s NQT diarist this year is a teacher of science from a school in the Midlands.