Having heard from other members of my online Suzuki teacher group that parent-teacher conferences were a "game-changer" in their studios, Jared and I decided to hesitantly dip our toes in. I wasn't sure what to do or how I'd feel about it, so to keep it as low-key as possible, I offered phone conferences to parents as an *option* during two days of our Thanksgiving week break. I had parents of about eight students take me up on it, and frankly I wasn't super sure of how to run these calls, other than I hoped they would be both positive and constructive.
BUT.
But. The Monday morning of that week I was signed up for a parent-teacher conference with the two lovely, young teachers from Anne's forest kindergarten. Laurel and I went and sat in a booth at a little cafe in a grocery store near the park with Teacher Sarah and Teacher Aly. They talked me through all the strengths they see in Anne at school and her quirks, and I thanked them for all their work. They also gave me a folder with a write-up of what all they told me as well as several pages she had drawn and dictated stories for. It was so fun, and I appreciate those teachers and the forest school more than I can tell you.
So I was warmed up! I typed up some bullet points for my appointed students. I talked with each parent about 25 minutes. It was a very pleasant conversation in each case where I told the parents all the things I could see their kids doing well. The purpose and value of the things they were currently working on. The things coming up soon in their study.
For a couple of the parents I had some specific questions I wanted to ask. One child, I had the sense we needed to be a bit more goal-oriented than process-oriented; that was basically just a hunch in the back of my mind, and that parent actually brought up a question specifically related to goals, so we figured out a plan to help her child with that. Another parent has two students working on the same repertoire, and I can see a bunch of potential problems coming down the pipe with that, so we got a chance to talk about how she could see the kids best working around it.
With a couple of the parents I shared this brain storm from a lesson about what is progress:
I wanted to encourage them to see all the ways their student truly is progressing.
The whole process was really positive and easily conversational, friendly; and once again I was surprised that some very obvious positives (to me!) were not obvious to others. So glad we got to make that personal connection.
I plan to offer this once or twice a year, perhaps optional or perhaps mandatory, for the entire future going forward. I think it really will be a game-changer.
