To be dreading face to face parents evening Thursday

[IHateParentsEvenings]

Going to get flamed to a crisp, never mind.

I am dreading it … teaching all day and then three solid hours between 4 and 7 talking to parents, some will be lovely but there will be some really difficult ones, won’t be able to be cut off after five minutes, will enjoy making me justify every detention since September.

Then home exhausted and still got the next days planning to do …

sorry MN, I dread it.

I’m a teacher. If you can’t justify it, don’t give them out.

I know you’re a teacher.

YANBU OP, most people have an element of their job that they find difficult and its okay to talk about it, but for some reason on MN teachers must be saints who never complain, unlike any other profession.

If you can’t justify every detention then don’t give them out.

Where did the OP didn't say she couldn't justify them? Some parents would be quite happy to argue over perfectly obviously justifiable detentions.

That’s because they’re a pointless, outdated punishment, usually for low-level behavioural issues like homework.

We have them in my country, we have one near the beginning of the year where all the parents go at once to meet with the teacher, with the children, to get to know the teacher and talk about what the children will be doing and answer any questions (and as my DD's teacher is the PE teacher he makes us play games - played secret tag and follow the leader last time!)

Then the individual ones around February time. We get a list of times spread over several days and have to mark off all the times we can possibly do, then the teacher makes a timetable for the parents. Its spread over 3 or 4 days so not too many meetings in one day and some are in the afternoon (better for stay at home parents) and some in the early evening (better for working parents) and we get at least 10 minutes each. Never felt rushed. Much better system than the UK parents' evening I reckon, less rush, less stress, no late evenings for the teachers.

Was helpful when it came to switching DD from Finnish as a second language to native Finnish a couple of years ago, as I had no idea it was possible but the teacher brought it up during the parents evening. Would never have thought to ask her about it otherwise. But otherwise we have plenty of opportunities to contact the teacher anyway, through the school home portal thingy, and DD's teacher gave out his phone number at the beginning of the year so we can contact him via that too (he has a work phone but he doesn't like it and it has to stay in the classroom so he gives his personal number. His choice but I doubt any of the parents take the piss and call unless absolutely necessary)

A thought about PEs - the time cost falls entirely on the teacher who loses downtime after a day's work. The I last taught in the UK, there were PEs for each year level.

In Victoria the PE time has to be given back to the teacher as TOIL on the day, so 1. We got the morning off and PE ran 1.30-7.30, with breaks. Food and beverages were provided by the school, unlike in the UK, where the NUT put on the spread.

2.The impact on teaching be cause of the TOIL is apparent, so PEs happened twice year, all year levels in, first come, best dressed. It worked.

The moral here is that in the UK teacher time means nothing, so pile the individual PEs willy nilly. In Victoria, the "pain" is felt by students who don't get taught, so PEs are limited.

I know which one I'd rather have.

Online parent evening worked really well for my DD as there were no concerns.
Online didn’t work at all for my DS. The teachers would say how they thought he was doing, most were positive. I would then point out the things that weren’t going well, teacher would fumble for a few seconds then recommend talking to the SENCO - then we would be cut off and receive no follow up. Face to face would have been far more productive as then we could actually discuss methods to help if we had even an extra 5 mins.

This!

I have to say neither of my boy's schools cut parents off after 5 minutes in online meetings, but I can see how teachers are now dealing with angry parents who have been treated like this during lockdown.

Did you contact the teachers outside PE to discuss further?

We've not had a parent's evening since covid began, they've shifted to online, completely inconvenient. Zoom, teams meetings are sketchy here because of the area internet.

Can't wait to get back to face to face.

They’re exhausting for a parent, I dread to think what they’re like for a teacher. I much prefer online. YANBU at all. Thank you for giving up your time to help our little darlings. Oh and on the timing thing, I cut in now because I don’t give a shit about what the other parents think of me! Especially the entitled ones! So annoying when they over-run.

The 5 minute online ones are a complete waste of time. There's no chance to discuss anything. Some of the teachers had scripted exactly five minutes of them speaking - we did not get to say a word. I agree with PP, it smacks of box ticking.

No flaming here, as a parent virtual parents evenings were so much easier for us!! It is the way forward in my view!

It was variants of something like Pink123 - i.e. a word followed by a simple number. Bit of a shame she's been banned, her fantasies were quite entertaining. She also used to pop up with claims of working in management in some draconian sweatshop where the managers spend all day policing the minions and having solemn meetings to decide whether any individual had permission to go on holiday. Needless to say, loo breaks were rationed and timed. I think minions had to give notice before leaving to deal with emergencies, too.

Caiti19

One night for each year group per year,
4 - 10 minutes per appt depending on the year group.
I dont agree with the OP by the way, it is tiring but it’s part of our job, it’s like complaining about the fact that I have to do lots of marking.

I loved online parents evening, because it ran like clockwork. No chance for the parents in front of you to sit there grilling the teacher and not moving on after their allotted 5 mins, it was so efficient!

Not sure whether they will continue at our DSs' schools or not, but they were also really convenient. No needing to go to the school and line up in the hall for ages - just click the link and 5 mins later you're done. Brilliant!

YANBU OP, as a parent, I have so far only attend the Y7 PE, as Y8 and Y9 were both online. I much preferred it online although the Y9 could have done with slots longer than 5 minutes seeing as we were discussing options and it all got a bit rushed.

But it was so much easier than having to tramp around the school trying to find classrooms. I did think how much easier it must be for the teachers, as the call literally counted down from 5 minutes so could not over run.

You need to perfect a couple of really good lines to 'dispatch' parents and move on to the next ones.

One boss issued us all with timers which we set at the parents sat down. It concentrated everyone's minds.

As a parent I got the DCs to ask the teachers if they wanted to see us and only went to those who said they did. The rest often sent a note of thanks and that the DC was doing well etc.

I’m not a teacher but even from afar it looks shit op.

Olan something nice for this weekend to look forward to afterwards. That’s what I do for after Town Hall comms week (a bit of my job I absolutely hate)

I appreciate they're tiring (I was a teacher) but I'm really glad we've gone back to face to face. The conversation flows more naturally, we got to see our daughter's books which we've never seen before and not getting abruptly cut off by another parent logging on means you can end the conversation properly.

Exactly. It’s contractual. I don’t particularly enjoy working till 4am, especially in the days when I had to get the kids up at 7am, but it’s contractual.
If it was so bad I’d consider another job, but other things must outweigh it as I’ve been doing it over 20 years!

You’re allowed to not enjoy it and have an occasional whinge about it though. There can’t be many jobs where you’re held to account quite so much by your ‘clients’ parents in the way teachers are!