Week 6 Molly Iberger

My class had 4th grade parent night this past week, which I fortunately was able to attend. It was really nice to see how my teacher prepared for the parent night and what topics she chose to cover with the parents. One thing that I really liked that she did was she had previously sent home a survey asking parents to rank the items in which they would like to attend a workshop so they could better assist their student. After she received the responses she planned out one math activity and one reading activity that she could do with the parents to model what she expects and how the parents can help the student when completing the given task. 

 The parents slowly arrived and although only 12 parents came out of 22 students, it was a much larger attendance than my mentor has experienced in previous years. I was so excited and happy to be able to meet parents and match them with their students. There were a few parents who I was able to guess who there student was! One parent was impressed and told me she could tell that I really care about the students because I would have to know them very well in order to match her with her son. Hearing that made me smile from ear to ear because not only do I learn about them academically throughout the day but I try to take the time before and after school to get to know them on a personal level. 

 My mentor and I took turns discussing the curriculum we were currently teaching and the texts we were using. While she explained what she expected the students to do on the math and reading lesson I walked around and helped parents who were struggling with either the math question or the exact quoting we were asking for in the reading supplement. It was nice to have interactions with them and be involved so they knew that I was dedicated to helping their students. 

After the lessons we opened the floor to questions and walked around the room to talk with the parents. It was great to get to meet all of them and talk about their student. It was really neat to be apart of this night as it really showed me the teacher side of the parent teacher conferences as I only ever attended them with my Mom and Dad as a student. I have also had correspondences with a few of the parents so it was nice to finally talk to them in person. My favorite part had to be listening to the parents describe their kids and looking through their desks to see how organized their child was and what their child was hiding from them. My other favorite part was the debriefing afterwards with my mentor, I really enjoyed talking about the parents and parent-student relationship that was visible from the parents who came.