Parent teacher conferences:

My husband and I always go to conferences. I have never had a conflict with one of my children's teachers. If I ever had a difference in opinion I would definitely bring it up in a curteous and professional manner. You have a right to have a say in how your child is educated.

Oh we always went to the parent/teach interviews for our son, even when the letter said we did not have to go but could choose to if we wanted. We did want to go, and so always made the appointment and attended because we wanted to know what was going on. Our son never really had problems at school, but still we wanted that to be confirmed. At one time our son had n excellent teacher but this man was very single minded in that they had no television etc plus he talked in a flat monotone voice. "Good to see you again Mrs X, your son is doing alright and passing all his exams. I do have to say that he has a problem in that he doesn't try at all. I believe he is a genuis but he won't even apply himself to the subject". I was flabbergasted to say the least as our son always scored 100% in that particular subject plus he mostly got in the 90-99% range for at least 4 other subjects and he only did 7 subjects in total. I had thought that 100% was excellent because there are no mistakes and when I politely said this to the teacher, he informed me that the reason there was a problem was because he thought our son could do better if only he would study. Have to admit that the subject came easy to our son, and he did not study it at all. However, when we spoke to our son about it, he said there was no need to study because he always passed it plus he had better things to do with his time. The following year I attended another parent/teacher interview with this same teacher and heard the same thing over again. That was the last one I attended and I even excused myself early because I felt I would say something not polite to him. He might have thought he had the interests of our son at heart, but he obviously didn't understand our son very well. Needless to say when our son reached year 12 (last year before going to university) he attained 99% for that subject in the final exam. So, while I think it is important for all parents to attend the parent/teacher interviews for their children, they should also bear in mind that they know their own child better than the teacher. Sometimes teachers can give good advice but it is not necessarily what is best for the child.

yes i always go to them. Both my children have resource classes so i like to keep up on things and know how they are doing.

I remember one conference I attended for my oldest daughter. She was in the 2nd grade. Her teacher seemed nice enough. She always smiled and laughed when she was talking about her students. At the conference she said that my daughter's handwriting needed improvement, that she knew if she took her time she would be able to write neater. My daughter chimed in and said "Yea, or you rip the paper up and throw it in our face and tell us to do it over." I froze for about a half second, so did the teacher, but for longer. I slowly turned to look her in the eye and told her that I disapproved of such tactics and that had better not happen again as it was considered emotional abuse. She nervously smiled that flashy smile at me and said that it only happened once and would never happen again.

I do go here were we are they do not have buses so we have to take my son to school but we have 1 truck and my husband has to be to work first so he rides with our friends and some days i take my husband to work and go to school just to see how he is doing. and i have also confronted my sons teacher we got his report card and it had things on there that he knows like what a circle is and she had it marked that he didn't there was like 5 things on there she had marked that he did know she put he did not so i went in and asked her about it she said cuz he had only been here a short time she didn't have time to go over it with him so she would go over it all with him in that week and change it.