Project 4: Parent Meetings

Narrative

The single activity that I spend most of my time on is individual parent meetings. I schedule meetings with all of the parents of my students at least 1-2 times per year. Although these are very time consuming, I feel that they are the most important part of my job. During these meetings, I meet individually with students and parents to discuss their individual progress towards graduation and college. It is during these meetings that we develop specific plans for each student. Starting in September, shortly after the start of the school year I scheduled meetings with the entire 11th grade. In January, I scheduled meetings with the 11th graders who failed or earned Ds in any of their classes. In February, I did the same for 9th graders. Finally, in March/April I scheduled group parent conferences for the 9th graders who did not fail any classes. Throughout the year I am also meeting with any parent who wishes to schedule time in addition to the time I have allotted them. During these meetings we set goals, check in on grades, develop credit recovery plans, plan for college, and discuss any other issues that come up.

Reflections on Leadership

I am continuously learning how to be most efficient with these parent conferences, since they require so much time and planning. Through the years, I have found a pattern that often times the parents that most need to attend are the ones whom I have a hard time getting to come. For this reason, I have started earlier in sending out letters of student progress and I have automated phone call reminders sent home closer to the date of their scheduled meetings with me. I have also allotted myself a lot more time and flexibility to reschedule. If I am unable to get the parents in, I still meet with the students and take diligent notes for my record that are accessible by any other teacher. I feel that a large leadership role that I have with these meetings is then communicating about them to the students' advisors, who serve as another adult on campus who work closely with the student. Many times the advisors are able to meet with parents that are not able to meet with me. I consider this a big leadership role on campus, because it is here where I am able to make the connections with students and families. It takes some time to get to know students names and their specific issues, but I can honestly say that by the time students are finishing the 10th grade, I tend to know most fo their names and where they stand academically with minima reference to their records.

From this year's rounds of parent meetings, I have learned that I still have a lot of work to do in terms of getting more parents to attend, especially those of the most at-risk students, since those are the parents who attend at lower rates. I have also come to understand that although I might not be able to get parents to come, there is a lot of work that can be done at the school to help support the students in the absence of their parents. I have not been able to implement it this year, so perhaps it can be a project for next year, however I feel that a structured peer and adult mentoring system can be used for students who are identified as high risk with little intervention taking place at home. The reality is that my meetings really help parents to help their students at home, however for those that do not have that luxury, we need to do more as a school to help them while they are with us.

CSPEL Standards

Standards 1.2, 1.3 - By planning, scheduling, and conducting these meetings, I am helping to address some of the barriers that prevent students from meeting out vision of being prepared for college, leadership, and life. Parents, students, and staff all know that they will be meetig with me throughout the year to check in on the vision. The biggest resource that I have allocated towards this vision is my time. A lot of my time is spent holding these and I also call on the support of the office staff to help me send letter, phone calls, and directing students to see me.

Standard 3.3 - My process of identifying which students to meet with and when has become extremely efficient and organized. As soon as grades becomes available I run reports and send out letters accordingly. Unfortunately, it is not (yet...I hope) a fully automated system, however my recent use of detailed excel spreadsheets and mail-merged letters has helped me to not only send out letters faster and more efficiently, but also to keep track of notes and data for future reference. When I need the help of office staff, I give clear directions and check in on them.

Standard 4.1 - In my early years as a counselor, while I was scrambling to stay afloat, I was only able to meet with the most needy and at-risk students, however now I feel as though I am in a place where I can reach out to all. Very little attention used to be spent on 9th graders and I found myself explaining things to parents in the 10th and 11th grades that they should have known. I have started to engage parents much earlier.

Standards 5.1, 5.2, 5.3 - I maintain the utmost professionalism with my parents. During the meetings I try my best to keep a schedule going so as not to delay parents from their daily activities. Many times during these meetings is where I am made aware of specific issues in which I then have to turn around and advocate for the students. During these meetings it is also important to focus on the individual students that I am meeting with, even though parents often try to engage about other. I maintain privacy and confidentiality. I used student data, teacher information, and parent feedback during the meetings to solve student problems as much as possible. As a counselor, my therapeutic approach is usually solution-focused brief therapy, in which I talk students and parents through some of their issues to help them see and understand what changes are necessary and help to implement them. After each round of parent meetings, I consistently reflect on how to best conduct the next round.

Standard 6.2 - During my parent meetings is when I am best able to engage parents in what they think is best for their students and the school. Often times these meetings lead to proposals to school-wide improvement from parents, such as increasing course offerings, planning new events, etc.

Supporting Documents

These are the letters that I use to inform parents of the meetings.

11th grade parent meeting schedule

9th grade group parent meeting schedule

Here is the presentation I use to guide the group meetings with parents of 9th graders that are on track.