Parent-Teacher Conferences: Are They Obsolete?

The school district I'm currently placed in for my student teaching semester has quite the interesting approach to parent-teacher conferences. On Monday and Tuesday this week, all schools (elementary, middle, and high) had two hour early dismissals. The reason for this is the bussing- there is only one set of busses for the district, so the schedules must match for all the schools. Monday the elementary and middle schools has parent-teacher conferences, and the high school conferences were Tuesday. With the two hour early out, school is dismissed at 1:10pm. Both days parent-teacher conferences ran from 1:30pm-9:00pm with an hour dinner break. For those who aren't math superstars (like myself), that is SEVEN AND A HALF HOURS OF CONFERENCES. Talk about a long day!!! 

However, I will say it was eye-opening to experience conferences from a teacher's perspective. I encountered parents who were supportive and encouraging, and then parents who were downright condescending and quarrelsome. Of course, the majority of the parents who come to conferences are those that have fabulous grades, do not misbehave, and are a joy to have in class. Few of the "problem" students bring their parents, which makes me wonder how effective conferences really are... In the teachers' lounge yesterday and today during lunch, we discussed the pros and cons. What do you think?

Pros:

• Face to face communication between parents and teachers
• Opportunity to get home-support to improve student success
• Eye-opening about possible outside influences on a student

Cons:

• All grades are online for parents and students to view
• Students who should be there aren't, and students who are there don't need to be
• Opportunity to play the blame game,  in public
• Conflicts between parents and teachers about what students have "said"/"not said"

Though I did not have any absolutely horrible conferences, there were a number of unpleasant ones where I felt rather like the attacked. Parents now, and students, have a sense of entitlement about what they "should" receive or what teachers "should" be doing. The hard fact stands that unless you're in the classroom, you don't have all the information. Some suggestions to phase out conferences (at least at the high school level) centered around having parents contact the teachers to set up a time to chat. Throughout the whole evening, I saw maybe forty parents. That may sound like a lot, but out of my over 150 students, that's not a particularly high turnout! I suppose that's another problem for another day...