We all know horror stories of parent teacher conferences gone wrong– but what does it look like when they go right? How do teachers pull it off? This post looks at some of the research on what goes right in conferences.
This is a back to the basics post. Teachers are woefully underprepared to engage with families, which is freaking hard and complicated (D’Haem & Griswold, 2017; De Bruine et al., 2014; Epstein, 2018). One area where teachers are unprepared is pretty basic– just understanding why we bother with family engagement and what it even means. I mean there is a moral argument for family engagement and a legal argument– but there is also a rock bottom, fundamental evidence for family engagement. You do it because you want your students to learn.
