Too late to book important parents evening slots

[wildfellhall]

For once I missed the critical email giving the parents evening slots so now I've only managed to book a third of what I need and they're spread over three hours.

I feel such an idiot.

It's an important year and I haven't even met some of the teachers.

It's such a harsh system but I guess it's always been first come first served.

I see the teacher you quoted had already replied politely, but is anything stopping you?!

Finding a phone that rings out of school, in an office you can use, within the 10% of the working week you're not standing in a classroom teaching children, actually needing to plan lessons, mark work, log records or input data, and the parent being picking the phone up, being available in the first place to talk and amenable to listening.

There are hours and hours outside the usual working day dedicated to parents' evenings. It makes most sense for teachers to be able to select parents who are a priority at these times.

Exactly.

If every parent who can't get an appointment then wants a follow up phone call, it takes up so much of our time. Not to mention that parents who come on the evening only get 5 minutes, whereas phone calls inevitably end up becoming much longer than that and it's not as easy to cut them off. In my school it's also a nightmare to find anywhere remotely private to have a conversation - and so true about being able to find a phone that has an outside dial function!!

I'd love to turn the system around and have parents provide us with their availability, and then we as teachers book the appointments with the parents we want to see. That would revolutionise things!

Don't they release leftover slots later on? We get an invitation and the choice of five subjects. Then, once it's been a week or so and all parents have chosen their 5, they release slots for the rest on a first come first served.

I did this right after posting here! I'm sure an email conversation would be fine too.

I feel that in GCSE year that I had managed to at least meet my ds's teachers. Dd is not super confident in her science subjects and the personal feedback however brief has really helped in the past.

I don't necessarily agree that teachers need only see the students who are struggling. Sometimes with dd her teachers don't necessarily see the problems of being good at a subject that is challenging can have its own pressure. Some children can conceal a lot of unproductive worry; a few moments with a reassuring teacher with the parent witnessing that - has really helped in the past.

So I don't think these short appointments are as unimportant as some people imply. I think one meeting in GCSE year in person is a reasonable expectation for a parent.