How to deal with parents?

Question

I am a teacher who needs to deal with parents. I need to tell parents bad news about their child performance how should I do this?

Answer 1

You should try to do it in a neutral way. Keep your emotions and your feelings out of it. If you are a teacher and you are having a hard time doing this part of your job, then you are too emotionally involved with this situation.
Find out for your self, where YOU are with this. Are you angry? At yourself? At the student? At the system?
Are you frustrated? At the child, or student? At the parents?
Put all of these questions and answers in their proper place in your mind.
You know the parents are most likely going to get or be defensive. You need documentation and you should have another staff member in the room with you that will back you up. Does anyone else know about this bad behavior? Or bad performance? If it's bad performance, then I suppose you mean grades and/or class participation.
The students grades will speak for themselves.
With all of that said, you should be able to offer a positive ending to the discussion with maybe a solution or two to the problem. Is extra credit work available for the student to do to improve their performance? Is there some kind of tutoring available to help this student? Is there counseling available if we are talking about some other kind of performance?
I hope this helps.

Answer 2

Always open the conversation with something positive. Even though it may be hard to find one, just try. Then go into talking to them about your concerns for their child. I recommend doing it as soon as you recognize that there is something wrong. Parents are truly concerned will want to get their child help, the longer you wait the less help the child can get. I wouldn't talk to the parents over the phone or through letter, ask to set up a meeting to discuss the issues. Have evidence to show the students, if it is an academic problem. It is a behavioral problem, have documented times, information about incident and actions taken. Some times parents have difficultly seeing that their child can be having problems, but they need to be made aware. If you think the child needs extra resource help, bring those people to the meeting. Or if they need extra help at home say with reading, have the materials ready for the parents to take home... Be prepared!

Answer 3

I agree with the others, and say as many positive things first; yet, this late in the school year, it could be expected that you have discussed similar issues with parents before.

It is crucial to establish a healthy relationship with parents as early in the school year as possible; this will alleviate any "bad" issues that may arise later. Moreover, you are probably not telling the parents anything new or anything they haven't already heard from the plethora of other teachers their child has had in the past.

Whatever the bad news, DO NOT sugar-coat it; be direct. Depending on the severity, you may ask an administrator to be present at the meeting.

Also, consider following-up as soon as possible.

Good Luck....

Answer 4

Try not to think of it as bad news but opportunities for improvement. Point out the positive points first. Talk about anything good about the child first.. Then be sincere but caring. Talk about the reality of the situation and offer solutions that you know the parent can live with. Give them as many options as possible. Then continue to provide support after you have shared this information with the parent. If possible, at the time of the sharing have resource persons there who can assist with manifesting the solution. This will give the parent hope. Put yourself in that person's place and you will be fine.

Answer 5

There have been a couple good books published lately about this - check out your local bookstore.

One thing is certain, you must keep meticulous records, and for any kid who you are going to fail, or any kid with type A parents, you have to keep meticulous records of all the times you asked them to come for extra help and they didnt come, all the extra work you offered to give them to make up their deficit, all the times you offered to do anything that they didnt take advantage of. If you can't show that the fault lies with the student, that the kid unequivocally had a good chance to do well but turned it down, then it is all your fault.

When I was teaching HS I kept an extensive file on every kid with a comment every day. When a parent came in I could show the parent for each class "No questions asked" and "Couldn't answer homework question" and "Homework not passed in" etc etc And I could compare that with kids who got A's in the class "Asked three questions" "Homework perfect" etc etc

As a professional, you should be able to show exactly what you have done to give every kid the maximum possible chance to succeed, and that there are kids succeeding. Then there is no question where the problem lies, and especially you won't hear the complaint "Ronny says everyone is failing!" hahahah!

Answer 6

make a meeting with the parents with coffe and biscuits as friends
show the parent the good things that there child is doing and say that the child has lots of talent but is slacking off time to time
then say i am her to make the child happy and to help the child and discuss with the parents everything with a smile on you face all the time
ask the parent to help you also

Answer 7

I am a student in high school and have witnessed some pretty roudy kids. I have seen few, however, parent teacher conferences. I say this, tell them why you called them in and then start to tell them how their child is doing. Tell them why, wat u have tried to do to correct the problem and how they need to work with them now. just a few pinters sry if this doesnt help.

Answer 8

Be honest and have the data to back up what you say. Discuss what you are doing to help the child in the classroom to improve.

Answer 9

I would tell them something that the child is doing right first and then give them the "however I am concerned..." part of the conference.