Teachers! I have an excellent parents' evening tip for you.

[OoozingCervix]

1. If you have a 10 minute slot and you are still talking after 25 minutes to a parent there is quite obviously an issue that needs to be discussed further at a later date.

1. May I suggest you get a timer? Put it on your table. Set it for 9 minutes. If after the allotted time you are still talking, hand over a card with your email on it and suggest the parent book a further appointment to see you.

IANBU.

tiggy and how do you know about those big issues that need to be discussed??

Because as I said, unfortunately for us, parents evening IS the time when, as parents, we learnt about those issues. We don't learn bout them through the reports etc... (very little in them)
If parents evening isn't the right time, is it not also the responsibility from the teacher to say 'well this is actually a big issue with Fred. Do you think it will be OK to meet up at another time and discuss that together in a less hurried way?'

danyella I actually have all my dcs teachers email addresses. Their PRODESSIONSL emails, that all the children can use to contact their teachers if they have an issue.
Surely that's the email we are all talking about.
What is the problem with giving that one out to parents (esp when they can get it from the child anyway)

Waiting for the thread that goes

"I am horrified to have been turfed out of a parents evening by the sound of a bell and handed a card with the teachers email on it! Don't these teachers know what they are doing!?!?!?"

The reason the appointments run over is because parents have questions. We tell the parents what we have prepared and then some interested parents ask questions. We are happy to answer them. We try to keep it short, however sometimes parents choose parents evenings to tell us really important information and we do actually care enough to listen.

Thanks for fixing everything. If you let us know your profession, I'll make up some useless shit about it and post it on the Internet.

5 minutes?! we have 15. they are fine but in my experience I ask one or two questions and the teacher talks for 95% of the time. not wanting to interrupt or to miss what the teacher thinks is important, I listen. Then at minute 12 I ask a question or mention something my DC has commented on or is concerned about. Then the teacher talks either for the remaining 3 minutes or for longer! These meetings seem to be more of a way to update parents on the work than for a chance to have a two-way conversation. At our school they start a bit late unless a parent hasn't turned up, or there's a gap. It's primary, though, so maybe a bit easier in some ways. I'm always impressed at the teachers' ability to keep going until 7pm!

BluePeppers I wouldn't give any parents my PROFESSIONAL email address. Nor do any of my colleagues.

Our HT gets emails about trivial nonsense from parents as well as fairly nasty ones so she doesn't want us to have to put up with that too.

I can't think of any occasional when a parent would have needed to email me about anything to be honest,

All the parents at my school have access to my work email address. It's on the website and they get emails from me regularly anyway.

But thanks for the top tip! It'll change parents evenings all over the world!

What do you do OP? Surely it's our turn to make sweeping generalisations about your profession.

But the students do have said emails don't they?
So what is stopping them from giving said email to their parents?
And how do you expect parents to contact you?

Schools: sit your parents in allotted seats, alphabetised by surname. Teachers move round to them per a pre-booked timetable. When the slot ends, you walk and your colleague comes along. Job done.

Quickest parents evening I had was with the most disgusting drippy sneezy cold ever. The parents couldn't get out of there fast enough you could almost see the germs hovering around my table and I coughed and sneezed though every very short appointment!

I am in the US. Where I am we don't have parents' evenings. Instead we have the teachers' email addresses and they have ours. If we need to discuss something we contact the teacher directly (and vice versa).

We do have an open house once a year where we go around to visit each classroom, meet the teachers, and learn what the curriculum will be that year. The Principal announces that we need to move to the next room over the PA system.

The only time we've been called into school to discuss our DC's progress was a truly weird thing where we had to sit in the library at a table with the DC and they updated us on their progress (no teacher present). As we knew what their progress was getting report cards every four weeks and talking to them every afternoon about what had happened at school that day, we were somewhat at a loss as to what to talk about.

Parents, you are NOT ever having my email address. All correspondence to come through the head and the bursar thank you very much :)

Shocked The email addresses are official school addresses handled through the school website, not the teachers' personal ones.

Well I attended my first ever year 7 parents evening a few weeks ago. They had a slot booking system where children got teachers to sign on a slot on a piece of paper. Getting the slots was a bit of a pain and quite chaotic but the evening itself was great.

None of the parents got to see all the teachers but we saw about 6 of his 13 teachers which was fine. The slots didn't seem to work too well but we managed to see everyone, if a bit late sometimes.

I was really really really impressed with most of the teachers and just really impressed with some of them. They seemed to know DS. Each of them had a fairly minor incident to report for DS (who has an ECHP and a diagnosis of ASD and ADHD). Every one of them seemed to have handled him brilliantly and did not make it seem like a big deal. On the whole they all said DS was doing really well, working hard in class , good attitude . It was quite frankly marvellous compared to the littany of woes we got at every meeting in Primary.
All at a very large rough city centre comp.

After ten years I've got parents evening down to a fine art .

In a triumph of optimism over experience, I keep being given consecutive appointments for my 3 primary school aged DC!

I often see teacher 2 before teacher 1 and then have missed teacher 3. I just block out a good hour and a half for three 10 minute appointments!

Our school enlist the P7's to escort parents to the waiting areas outside classrooms and to knock the door and come in and say times up, then wait till the parent leaves.

I find parents evenings an almost complete waste of time. I get reports regularly and rarely hear anything new at a parents evening. It's just quite nice to see the teachers sometimes.
So I don't often go and then I get worried emails 'we note you did not attend the parents evening....' Gah!

YABU. Why not speak to the teacher than giving 'advice' on MN. Not like they want to be there 3-7.30 after school so how about show some appreciation.

We're not supposed to give them out at my school (although they'd be easy enough to guess)

When would we be supposed to answer all these emails?! We already work from 7am-6pm and weekends! We could take time away from planning lessons and assessing the children's learning I suppose. Parents would love that.

We have professional email addresses so that other teachers can email us for school-based stuff. It's not an indication that we should be open to communication at all hours, and then (as someone has already complained about on the first page) have people get shitty when they don't get a reply. I can't imagine anything worse, and I pity secondary teachers who seem to have to deal with this more.

As I said upthread I've never had an occasion when I've needed to email a parent.

Any communications go through the head or school office. It's worked perfectly well for years so, as they say, "If it ain't broke.............." by giving our your email address

Seeing that handy tips are being dished out here is another one for teachers.

For the parents evening that we have 6 weeks in term please don't bullshit us with a generic statement about our child. When we asked you a specific question about him you had to admit you didn't know who he was. When we asked why you gave us a meaningless statement it doesn't help your case when you say 'I've only been teaching them for 6 weeks and I have other classes as well you know! I can't be expected to know everyone!'

It's fair to say that meeting lasted less than the allocated time!

To be fair all DSs' teachers were nice except that one. She was a bit strange.