How to Prepare for a Successful Parent-Teacher Meeting

Even though it's early in the school year, now is actually a great time to start thinking about parent-teacher interviews.

Connecting with your child's teacher one-on-one is a great way to:

• share concerns, challenges, or important life changes (i.e moving, new sibling, death in the family)
• get specific feedback about your child's life at school - academic, social, emotional, etc
• offer support where possible - i.e. if you already know about behavioural or academic challenges at school, you can share how you're currently supporting improvement in these areas at home

And because teacher's are often so busy, you want to make good use of this time.

So one of our staff teachers, Katie, a 20-year veteran of the classroom, has listed three steps you can take to prepare.

Preparing For Parent-Teacher Interviews

Step 1. Be Mindful About The Time Limit.

Go into the meeting knowing you only have 15 minutes (or however much time is allotted) - do not expect the teacher to be able to go over your scheduled time.

However, you can request a follow-up meeting at a later date if you feel you there's more to discuss or need to follow-up on.   

Trust me, the teachers are equally stressed about the short window of time they have with you and don’t want it to feel rushed, but they have to stay on time or else it throws off the entire schedule.

Step 2. Pick Your Top Three

Before the meeting, think about what you most want to understand about your child.

It’s wonderful when parents are inquisitive and interested in their child’s experiences at school, but the teachers aren’t going to be able to answer a long list of questions or go into lengthy details about every area of development.

Come up with your top 3 most important questions or concerns.

And know that you may not get through all three, so prioritize the one you most want answered. 

The teachers also have a plan for what they’d like to talk to you about, so there won’t be a ton of time for questions.

Suggestions for questions:

1. What are my child's strengths?
2. What is my child currently working on in school?
3. How does my child approach challenges or difficult tasks?
4. How is my child doing socially in the classroom?
5. How independent is my child during the school day?
6. How does my child participate during lessons and classroom activities?
7. What can we do at home to support their learning and development?
8. How does my child handle transitions and changes throughout the day?
9. Is there anything you think I should know that we haven't discussed yet?

Depending on the age of your child, it can also be helpful to talk to them about their experiences at school prior to the meeting. 

This gives you a sense of what is meaningful to them at school and can help guide the questions you bring to the conference. 

Then after the meeting, talk to your child about what was discussed in an age-appropriate way. Focus on the key takeaways, their strengths and any next steps to help reinforce the connection between home and school.

Doing so will help your child to see that the adults in their life are working together to support them.