Post 168: Parent-Teacher Conference should be a partnership for student success

Post 168: Parent Teacher Conference should be a partnership for student success

I think that the teacher should use the students' home life as a funds of knowledge "a body of scholarship and practice in the anthropology of education that for two decades has engaged with the knowledge and skill set available in the households of students." (Gonzalez, Wyman, O'Connor, 2011, p. 481 and Ovando, 428)  A teacher can use the students' background to teach about that students' culture in the classroom, and you can use that students' household to reinforce the students' knowledge of English and L1. I believe that parents and teachers should work as a partnership to further student success.

As a teacher, I have been to many Parent Teacher Conferences. I have found that the most successful Parent-Teacher Conferences are ones where I, as the teacher, work as a partner to help that parent's child succeed.  For instance, I would tell the parent to read aloud more to her student, or I would advise the parent on her child's strong points (parents do not object to this) and then counsel parents on their child's areas of improvement (this is where I sometimes get arguments from parents) such as, "My child always does well with other teachers", "Or last year's teacher loved how my child did XXX." implying I am not as good as teacher as last year's teacher.   And as the teacher, I try to give examples of areas of improvement and I try to tell the parent I am not trying to look down on her child, but I honestly care for that child's welfare.

Luckily 99% of my Parent Teacher conferences are positive ones where I work in tandem with the parent to improve the child's reading skills and other language arts skills. Sometimes just simply telling the parent to read aloud to the child is enough to bring the child up to speed with her grade level reading. Other times, if the child has ESL needs, I tell the parent to practice speaking English with the child doing ordinary tasks around the house, discussing a movie they saw on American TV, watch more shows in English (instead of in Chinese like my Chinese parents did to  me) and setting up play dates with more English speaking children.

However, I also encourage parents to continue to teach their children their L1 because I am a strong believer in bilingual children. I believe that the more languages a child knows, the more the child can get an international job where he can work abroad and have more job opportunities than if that child were monolingual only.  I tell ESL parents to still speak their native language to their children and to speak English some of the time and speak the L1 some of the time so the children get comprehensible input in both languages.  I do not believe that ESL parents should just switch over to English only like my Chinese parents did to me resulting in me not knowing Chinese very well up to this day.