Blog #5

"Reflect on your participation in a parent-teacher conference."

At this point I have participated in both parent-teacher conferences and an open-house night for all parents come by and discuss the plans for the semester.  The open-house night was first and I had just taken over full responsibility with the 10th graders, although I had been teaching the 11th graders full-time since the beginning of the year.  Very few parents came to the 11th grade open-house, we had 2 sets of parents total and I have 75+ students.  I was actually really disappointed because there were several parents who I really wanted to meet from each class.  The 10th graders had a few more parents show up for each class and I was able to share with them my plans for their students for the rest of the semester.  Most of them just listened to what I had to say and left it at that, a few had questions about the final project (a multigenre project) because they had never heard of one before.  I explained the basic process and that I had actually completed two myself, and they thought it was going to be a really cool idea.  I felt that it was a pretty successful first open-house!  

A week later we had parent-teacher conferences (this week), and I only had THREE conferences!  I was again very disappointed as I want so badly to have parent involvement, though I am very used to having no parental support from my jobs at Boys and Girls Club in Charleston.  One student's mother came in and asked what his grade was, and we told her an A, and I thought was going to faint.  She was so happy and relieved.  Her son has an IEP and is extremely unorganized, however because I already knew this, I have really tried to help his organization and work with him when he wants it as far as reading assignments aloud, and he has not needed nor wanted the help most of the time.  He has been succeeding in our class, and once given this information, she couldn't have been happier.  I have another student who has autism and his mother came with him and had a few questions about the class as a whole and her major question was regarding whether or not I could read her sons handwriting, and although sometimes difficult, I have yet to be unable to read it.  I had one 10th grade mother come in and that was very interesting because her son had a 100% in class and is one of my best students out of the 150 or so that I have.  She was so kind and it was apparent to me why her son is such as good person.  Again, these were a success but I am still disappointed that I did not have more parents.