Twitterchat #ntchat

I attended the Twitterchat #ntchat. Our Topic for tonight is Parent Conference Tips. It is a “structured chat” like Question 1, Q2, with Answer 1, A2. I followed four questions of this chat.

Q1: What is the first thing you do to prepare? The answers said about reviewing student grades, paperwork, and students’ performance in the school. Also, one mentioned that she made magnets for parents to take home with website/blog/grades websites and my email/twitter. This is a good tip for me because connected with education technology I can get in touch with parents out of the school in this way.

Q2:  How can you include student reflections in the conference? What role does the student play in team meetings/conferences? Some schools have students run the conference. There are some hints given by the participants on working with Ps and parent conferences.

Q3: There will be times when you'll need to defuse an UPSET parent. What are some good strategies to do this? To conclude, they said they try to understand why they are upset and talk with them about the concerns. Try to talk about some positive things about students at first.

Q4: How can you monitor time so that parents have the chance to ask all questions? Do you use a timer? Some of them mentioned that they will write a schedule or use a timer.

I find Twitterchat is great to share opinions. For me, because I do not have much experience, I can get many tips from their chat. I think this will be a good form of professional development for me. Actually I never thought about how I will run the parent conference. I realized that it is important to get connected with parents because I can get information about students from their parents. Students spend a lot of time home with parents. From this chat I learned a lot of tips about how to manage the conference, how to balance parents’ and students’ reflection. During the chat some participants gave resources link which I can use in my future teaching experience. For example, one great resource is 12 ConversationStarters on What Parents Want You (Teachers) to Know. I also notice that they have class website or blog so that they can meet online. I think this is a development as technology is used more and more in both learning and teaching.