yr7 parents evening - first for us

[roisin]

OK, apparently we can choose which teachers we want to see
I have no particular axe to grind, no particular complaints, and just a few comments to make.
ds1 loves school and enjoy almost all his lessons and likes his teachers.
Now obviously it would be great to see all his teachers and tell them how fab they are, but life's too short.

50% of his timetable is taken up with Maths, English, Science, MFL and Humanities, so we certainly want to see them. But quite frankly have minimal desire to see anyone else.

Most other subjects just have 1 lesson a week, and presumably the teachers have several yr7 classes and won't have time to see everyone.

Ds1's strengths are certainly not in art, music, drama, or PE, and it's unlikely he will continue any of these subjects beyond KS3. I'm delighted he's at a school with such a wide and varied curriculum, but can't see a 5 min appointment with a teacher is going to make any difference to anyone.

I'm not aware of any problems in any of these subjects.

Do you think it's fine to just stick with the big 5 and ignore the rest?

The subject he enjoys least and shows least aptitude for is PE, but I can't see a parent consultation is going to achieve anything, is it? I'd love for them to do more fitness/activities/games rather than trad competitive team sports, but that's not going to happen is it? So why waste everyone's time?

We won't have to go throw the parents evening scrummage till May but I'll bare all tips on here in mind!

roisin - ours is on the 4th. No idea what to expect. Am sort of dreading it.

Appointment evenings at my new school are carefully organised to the point they become bizzare.

There is a bell every five minutes to tell people to move on. Under n circumstances do you see someone with no appointment or keep people waiting.

Twinset, that sounds a good idea to me. At my DCs secondary school we get 10 mins per teacher but we still invariably end up waiting for some annoying parents who are taking 20 mins or more - I just think what on earth is there to talk about! These parents are the ones who insist on seeing every single subject teacher, plus form tutor, plus Head of year .

I agree about just seeing the big 5, that's all we normally do.

You will do the teachers a favour by not requesting any other than the ones you feel you really want to discuss/find out something. Yr 7 parents evenings are notoriously difficult for teaching staff as they are the ones where more parents feel obliged to see more teachers. Trying to fit them all in becomes so difficult. When I was still teaching, some years I taught the entire year group. Imagine trying to fit in about 130 sets of parents into 2 evenings (150 in the year, some not requesting and some double sets for separated parents so 130 is not unusual). When you apply 10 mins for each set and the two evenings run for 4 hours, even with a break, it is clearly impossible: 24 slots for 130 requests with not breaks in 4 hours.... So we would resort to 5 min interviews and be told to phone interview the remaining!! It was HELL.
Imagine 5 min interviews non stop for 2 evenings for 4 hours each. This is on top of a full working week, and then trying to fit in loads and loads of follow up phone calls for those who requested but you were unable to see. Logistical nightmare.
So, if you do not really wish or need to speak to a teacher, they have not requested to see you, please don?t bother

(7 yrs on and still the thought of yr 7 parents evenings haunt me so much that I can write a frantic long winded post on the subject without drawing breath!)

Ours expect all of us to see all of them & it is a zoo (esp for the poor sods who teach several forms )

I've always thought they should tell us if they want to see us, & if not we can assume things are OK!

Assuming no 'issues' or problems (and let's face it, parents' evening isn't usually the time or place for discussing those), we usually do maths, English, science and another of our child's choice.

In Year 9 (options), we reverse the trend - we don't see the 'normal' suspects or those whose subjects are compulsory, but only see any teachers whose subject our child is thinking of taking but unsure about or wants to know more about the course or whatever.

Our children make the appointments for us.