Parent Meetings

Overview

Each month, I invite families into our classroom for a meeting to build community and keep everyone informed about what’s happening in class. We might discuss books, show student work, or talk about important topics. I keep a record of these meetings so families can preview what we’ll be discussing and prepare any questions they might have. To make these meetings as effective as possible, I’ve created a form with success criteria, a plus-delta section for feedback, key takeaways, and space for questions. You can find that form here.

Purpose of Education Discussion

Before one of our parent meetings, I ask parents to take an anonymous survey with questions about educational philosophy, like "Is homework a good use of students' time?" During the meeting, I share a clip from a recent panel discussion about the purpose of public education, which includes different perspectives like preparing workers for the economy, preparing citizens for democracy, promoting equity, or encouraging self-actualization. I then ask parents to discuss their thoughts in small groups. Afterward, I share a summary of the survey responses, and we discuss where there is agreement, disagreement, and differing interpretations. This discussion helps parents think more deeply about their own beliefs about education and understand how teachers navigate a polarized environment.

What is the purpose of public education?
Question Only

What is the purpose of public education?
Question and Panel Responses

You might also consider using the following questions from Scott Martin's "Teaching as Soul-Craft" workshop as icebreakers.

What is a child?
What is the purpose of education?
What does it mean to be well-educated as opposed to highly-educated?
What is worth knowing? What is not? Who decides?
What is most important? Child? Subject? Curriculum?
What should teaching be? What should it do?

Book Clubs

Throughout the school year, I select books for families to read and discuss together three times. I work with a classroom volunteer to develop conversation norms and facilitate the discussions. We also prepare some guiding questions to help steer the conversation. I keep a record of these materials so families can preview them in advance and come prepared with their own questions.

Current Readings

Berger, Ron. An Ethic of Excellence: Building a Culture of Craftmanship with Students. Portsmouth: Heinemann. 2003. Print.

I believe that work of excellence is transformational. Once a student sees that he or she is capable of excellence, that student is never quite the same. There is a new self-image, a new notion of possibility. There is an appetite for excellence. After students have had a taste of excellence, they’re never quite satisfied with less; they’re always hungry. When the teachers at the Austine School for the Deaf pointed out to Sonia that many students wouldn’t obsess over their work as she does, her reply was quick: This school has ruined me for life, she said. I’m never satisfied with anything until it’s almost perfect. I have to be proud of it. (8)
How can kids be trusted with such important work?, someone asks. Let me tell you, I say. Sometimes I need to be a tyrant for accuracy and quality in my classroom. Not this time. The students were scared to death. Scared that any possible error in their math would jeopardize the safety of a real family in town. Scared that their page of the report might have a grammatical or statistical error. Scared that the school would be in legal trouble if real estate values changed or if families moved based on mistakes in their data. These students checked their math, their spelling, their language, and their reasoning twenty times over before they rested easy. They begged me to check their work over again. This was not an exercise: It was real, important work that mattered to the world. Anything short of excellence would be intolerable. (17)
My classroom has no desks. There are folding tables where students sit for lessons and work, but in this slide the tables are folded against the wall and students sit in a circle on the rug for a group meeting. The classroom is filled with furniture I designed and built with local wood, there are shelves for books and student sculptures and models, a student-built light table for drafting work, colorful student work displayed on almost every bit of wall space, hanging plants, large quartz crystal clusters and fossils on display, sculptures of turtles, a couch for reading, and near the center of the room a bathtub which has been framed in a wooden box containing rocks, plants, a waterfall, and live local turtles swimming in the current. (19)
I was raised with the message that peer pressure was something terrible, something to avoid, something negative. Peer pressure meant kids trying to talk you into smoking cigarettes or taking drugs. I realized after ten years of teaching that positive peer pressure was often the primary reason my classroom was a safe, supportive environment for student learning. Peer pressure wasn’t something to be afraid of, to be avoided, but rather to be cultivated in a positive direction. (36)

Goldstein, Dana. The Teacher Wars: A History of America's Most Embattled Profession. New York: Random House. 2014. Kindle.**

Gray, Peter. Free to Learn: Why Unleashing the Instinct to Play Will Make Our Children Happier, More Self-Reliant, and Better Students for Life. New York: Basic Books. 2013. Print.

Nothing that we do, no amount of toys we buy or "quality time" or special training we give our children, can compensate for freedom we take away. The things that children learn through their own initiatives, in free play, cannot be taught in other ways. (5)
Although adults in hunter-gatherer cultures do not attempt to control, direct, or motivate children’s education, they assist children’s self-education by responding to their wishes. They allow children to play with adult tools, even potentially dangerous ones, such as knives and axes, because they understand that children need to play with such objects to become skilled at using them. They trust children to have enough sense not to hurt themselves. (29)
The belief that children and even teenagers are incapable of rational decision-making and self-direction is a self-fulfilling prophecy. By confining children to school and other adult-directed school-like settings, and by filling their time with forced busywork, which serves no productive purpose, we deprive them of the time and opportunities they need to practice self-direction and responsibility. (70)
The free mingling of children who differ broadly in age is a key element to children’s abilities to educate themselves successfully, on their own initiatives. Children learn by observing and interacting with others who are older and younger than they are. (182)

Past Readings

Deresiewicz, William. Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life. New York: Free Press. Kindle.

The system manufactures students who are smart and talented, yes, but also anxious, timid, and lost, with little intellectual curiosity and a stunted sense of purpose: trapped in a bubble of privilege, heading meekly in the same direction, great at what they're doing but with no idea why they're doing it. (3)
Pressuring your kids to get an A in calculus when they are seventeen is essentially the same as tying their shoelaces for them whe they are eight. Both are ways of treating them as if they can't do anything for themselves. Both, in other words, are forms of infantilization. (43)
Because the child's feelings and desires are not validated or acknowledged, she learns to ignore them and eventually loses the capacity to recognize them. (55)
The problem is, the more you do, the less you do well and the less well you do everything. (66)

Shumaker, Heather. It's OK Not to Share and Other Renegade Rules for Raising Competent and Compassionate Kids. New York: Tarcher. 2012. Print.

Too often we think about preparing our kids for school in the same way we think about preparing ourselves for a job. Careful study, good work habits -- in fact, years of diligent preparation. We need to take off our adult lenses. A child's "preparation" for school success looks nothing like ours. A child's preparation for life and school comes through boisterous play., spontaneous play, running and roughhousing, playing house and playing pirates. (14)
"I me anted what I said and I said what I meant," chants Dr. Seuess's Horton the Elephant. Unfortunately, that's harder as parents. We tend to blurt out threats ("If you don't stop that, we're leaving this instant. I mean it!") Then we backpedal. Try to avoid saying "I mean it." You should always mean what you say, To get the right words out, take a breath, buy time. Talk less, and when you do talk…mean it. Saying what you mean also involves following through. (40)
If children aren't forced to play together, there's little reason for teasing or mean rejections. A child often acts that way when she doesn't know any other options. Give her some. When a child's right to choose her own playmates is protected, she will be less likely to use rejection as a weapon that hurts. (190)
When we see a child dressed up as a pirate, we smile. How cute. A skull-and-crossbones hat. A small voice growling out, "Arrrr, matey!" Somehow as adults we don't mind it when kids play pirate. Why is pirate play tolerated and considered benign? Pirates are actually violent, murderous, thieving thugs. And although we romanticize them, pirates are still active today on modern seas, waylaying boats off the shores of Asia and Africa. But no U.S. preschool parent worries that his child is going to grow up and become a pirate. We recognize pirate play as fantasy play. The same should be true of "Bang! Bang!" weapon play. (261)

Tough, Paul. How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 2012. Print.

And you proudly make your guess: “The rule is: even numbers, ascending in twos.” “No!” says the experimenter. It turns out that the rule is “any ascending numbers.” So 8-10-12 does fit the rule, it’s true, but so does 1-2-3. Or 4-23-512. The only way to win the game is to guess strings of numbers that would prove your beloved hypothesis wrong--and that is something each of us is constitutionally driven to avoid. (139)
The typical contemporary Harvard undergraduate, Kwak wrote, “is driven more by fear of not being a success than by a concrete desire to do anything in particular.” The postcollege choices of Ivy League students, he explained, “are motivated by two main decision rules: (1) close down as few options as possible; and (2) only do things that increase the possibility of future overachievement.” Recruiters for investment banks and consulting firms understand this psychology, and they exploit it perfectly: the jobs are competitive and high status, but the process of applying and being accepted is regimented and predictable. (184-185)

Wardy, Melissa Atkins. Redefining Girly: How Parents Can Fight the Stereotyping and Sexualizing of Girlhood, from Birth to Tween. Chicago: Chicago Review Press. 2014. Print.

I was coming to understand how the limited colors and hypergendered messages of the clothes and toys and products being marketed to girls, even as babies, limited Amelia and also limited how people viewed her. (7)
I intentionally focus on what she was doing and how she was doing it, rather than how she looked while doing it. I did not mention how cute she looked while crawling, instead saying I thought she demonstrated solid potential to become a ninja… You can steer talk to focus on her abilities, skills, and achievements and deepen the conversation beyond "Oh, she's so cute!" Of course she's cute, she's a little kid. Encourage people to see her for more than just a precious little face… What's wrong with that? It's our culture's standard talking-to-little-girls icebreaker, isn't it? And why not give them a sincere compliment to boost their self-esteem? Teaching girls that their appearance is the first thing you notice tells them that looks are more important than anything. (42-43)
Stop vocally giving your daughter permission to hate herself by tearing down your body or the bodies of others. (92)
One time we were being seen by a pediatrician new to our family, and he greeted my then-preschool-aged daughter by asking if she had boyfriend at school. It was the first thing he said to her. She was confused by his question, because we had been teaching her at home that boys and girls are just buddies when you are little, and boyfriend/girlfriend stuff is for teenagers. She answer that no, she did not have a boyfriend. The doctor, continuing to think he was being cute and funny, then asked if she at least had an ugly boyfriend. I was really annoyed with his antics but did not need to say anything because Amelia told him in a very direct manner, "No, I go to school to learn." (137)

Greenberg, Daniel. Free at Last: The Sudbury Valley School. Framingham: Sudbury Valley School Press. 1995. Print.

Lanza, Mike. Playborhood: Turn Your Neighborhood Into a Place for Play. Menlo Park: Free Play Press. 2012. Kindle.

Potlucks and Talent Shows

Every other month during the school year, I host a class potluck and talent show where students can perform for their families. I started this tradition at the end of my first year of teaching, and many families appreciated it so much that they suggested holding it throughout the year. This way, students can receive feedback and improve their performances over time. I keep a record of our programs and critique forms so families know about past and upcoming performances. You can find the program from our most recent talent show here and a feedback survey template here.