Parent-Teacher Conferences, a Time to Celebrate Strengths

It's parent-teacher conference time and you arranged your schedule three weeks in advance to attend. If you are like most parents, you feel a certain amount of anxiety around this event. You attend hoping there won't be any surprises and that you won't discover that your child is experiencing any difficulties. Unfortunately, most parent-teacher conferences focus on grades rather than children, with the primary goal of addressing a child's area of weakness. Few parents go to conferences with the main goal of discovering where and how their children excel. I know, I was a teacher for ten years and the parents of the students who were getting A's in my class rarely attended conferences, or if they came, they usually breezed by my table, winked and whispered, "Keep up the good work."

Parent-teacher conferences become an occasion to look forward to when they are viewed as prime opportunities to talk with teachers about your child's strengths. What exactly are strengths? Strength are the activities that energize and excite your child when he is doing them. This is as opposed to his weaknesses, the activities that leave him feeling depleted. There are three kinds of strengths: Activity Strengths (the things you do that energize you), Relationship Strength (the things you do with and for others that make you feel energized and proud) and Learning Strengths (the ways that learning makes the most sense to you). All of these strengths are discoverable and your child can develop them to find success.

The conversation about changing our minds, our schools, and our nation to a paradigm that focuses on strengths begins with parents and teachers. Parents, teachers, and students can begin to form a strength alliance between the home and the school. If you are a parent you can initiate strengths rather than deficits discussions with your child's teachers. Likewise, if you are a teacher and look for strengths in your students, waste no time in sharing them with your students' parents. Here is an exercise to help advance the strength alliance:

• Draft a one-page letter to your child's teacher if you are a parent, to a child's parent if you are a teacher, or to both your teacher and your parent if you are a student. In the letter, describe the Learning Strengths of the child in question in as much detail as you can. Include how he or she likes to learn, what things he enjoys doing most, what type of environment works best for him, and what he finds difficult. Share this letter with the person for whom you wrote it. If you are a parent, bring the letter to parent-teacher conferences.

For too long, we have focused on weaknesses at school. We believe that children will get ahead when we spent most time on the areas where they are most challenged. The problem with this notion is that it is a one-sided or half-baked approach to education. In the long run, children don't make their biggest contribution in their areas of weakness. Children overcome weakness, but they rarely excel in them or end up building their lives work around activities that make them feel depleted.

By looking at a child's strengths we are not failing to consider his challenges, we are merely balancing the equation that has been out of proportion for too long. So go to conferences and find the strengths. Even if your child is doing well, grades are not necessarily indicators of where your child's true passions lie.

 

 

 

Follow Jenifer Fox on Twitter: www.twitter.com/jeniferfox

Comments

[nicksiewert]

10:28 AM on 10/15/2009

Right on Jenifer. Any way we can close the gap between parents and teachers is helpful to schools. We need to cultivate a "team approach" to educating kids. What better way to do that than by engaging in empowering strengths discussions about student work in school? How nice for the child to know in advance of the meeting that it would be focused on learning strengths. Better yet, have the child at the conference serving as the "strengths guide" explaining the work. I've seen student led conferences work in schools and they can be really powerful.

[RickApple]

12:36 PM on 10/14/2009

Thanks Jenifer. You’ve come through with some very sound advice. I’ve plodded through the Parent/Teacher conference ritual for the past ten years, always feeling like I’ve just gone through a relatively gratuitous exercise, never hearing about what makes the student special, but rather identifying areas in which remedial work is needed. A bi-product for a parent enforcing these “rules” at home is to create an unpleasant parent/child relationship, as we become the “enforcers.” I like how you pointed out how young people do manage to overcome specific weakness under many circumstances, although they rarely excel in them or choose a career path that involves these areas. Parent/Teacher conferences should be joyous milestones for measuring a child’s or a young adult’s – relative strengths; sadly I find that these conferences rarely go beyond a cursory scratching of the surface of profoundly important moments in time.

[mystery815]

10:23 AM on 10/14/2009

Oh what a wonderful world where parents actually attend the parent/teacher conferences. I have been teaching high school in an urban school district for the last four years, and the most parents I've had attend conferences cumulatively through an entire school year is 8. I plead with my students to make sure their parents show up for conferences. I offer extra credit to students whose parents attend. I even promise to make sure that I always have something good to say about them (celebrating strengths, even if we identify areas for improvement). It's not just me--this is systemic in our school and district.

I think that speaks volumes about what is wrong with public education in America today: in school districts where parent involvement and concern is high, students perform better; in school districts where parent involvement is low, the entire burden is placed on the teachers' shoulders, and despite the large pools of "highly qualified" teachers in our urban districts, the students are still severely under-performing. For too many of them, just passing (that's a 60%/D in my district) is enough. Until the parents think it's important to show up and take an interest in their children's performance, how can we expect the students to improve? This is one of the ways in which public education in America is still inequitable, but it is not something that education policy is going to solve--it has to start at home.

[Colterradio1]

09:30 AM on 10/14/2009

Excellent advice, Jenifer. The letter is an easy exercise that helps both me AND the teacher see where the strengths are. I think a lot of teachers would be surprised to see such involvement from many parents. The only thing I would add to the conference would be a copy of your book, to hand to your child's educator....a true game changer for the triumvirate of success; Child/Teacher/Parent.