I just had my first round of parent-teacher conferences, and I saw the above cartoon just prior to it. Coincidence? *gulp*
Oak Park and River Forest High School is a place where there's lots of parental involvement in general, so I expected some pretty intense discussions during the conferences. But the conferences were actually quite nice and constructive. Two of the things that I noticed right away is that the parents seemed very reasonable (quite unlike those in the cartoon panel on the right above) and understood their kids' strengths, weaknesses and tendencies in school. In most cases, the only point on which we ever really differed in our views was on how vocal their kids tend to be: I would say something like, "my only concern is that Xxxxx speak up for herself more in class and not be so shy about contributing," and the parent reaction would be something along the lines of, "wow! I can't get Xxxxx to be quiet for anything at home!"
Also helping to avoid any surprises (which tend to put people on the defensive) is the online system we use to record grades. All parents have viewing access to their students' grades at all times via a web interface. So for the most part, nothing I said was news to them.
Maybe it's because I have mostly Jr's and Sr's: their parents had probably heard the same things many times over the years, and they seemed to know their kids situations well and there weren't many surprises.
One last observation - the conferences aren't compulsory for anyone. So parents can skip them altogether if they like. Looking at the list of parents that signed up, it seemed the kids that I felt most needed a parent-teacher conference were the kids whose parents didn't sign up. There were some of course, but the general trend over two days was that I talked to parents whose kids were doing pretty well already. Conclusions are left to the reader as an exercise. :)
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