Parent teacher conferences are always fraught, not with peril, but with the potential for high emotion. Sometimes I enter with worries and exit with new reassurance and confidence. Other times I have no particular concerns going in, but leave reeling from how much more that child needs than they have been getting. It is my chance to speak with teachers who have alternate viewpoints upon my child’s development. They see things that I don’t, not because I’m unobservant, but because school is different than home and different aspects of my children rise to the surface.
Last week I had conferences for my older two kids. Today I had conferences for the younger two. I now have a laundry list of needs which require me to adjust the family schedule (yet again) so that they fit. The adjustments are minor, but time and energy must be spent on them. Mostly the things which turned up in the conferences are not surprising. We’re having new iterations of familiar problems, nothing new or baffling. This means that the solutions are new iterations of old solutions. In a way the familiarity of it all is reassuring. The kids are all exactly where they need to be for steady growth.
I’ve never seen parent teacher conferences from the teacher side of the desk. I know how tired it makes me, even when there’s no major issue to address. I marvel at the stamina of those teachers, who have 25-30 conferences in two days and a laundry list of issues they hope to address. They must face varying levels of indifference, anxiousness, over-protectiveness, and outright bewilderment from the parents who show up. Teachers are expected to find all the trouble spots and provide solutions, often when no easy solutions are to be had. I am constantly impressed by the efforts of the dedicated teachers who work with me for the benefit of my children.