This week was parent-teacher conferences, and the conference for my kindergartener really had me thinking about how much power teachers have in setting the tone in conferences and day to day life in the classroom. My daughter absolutely loves school. She could hardly wait to go to her conference, and she said, "I miss my teacher so much," as we were getting into the car.
Fall conferences are for going over goals, and my daughter's teacher had asked her what she thought she needed to work on in preparation for the conferences. However, before going straight to areas of improvement, her teacher remembered how vital it is to start with positives. I know that my daughter might not have understood every word her teacher said to us in English and Spanish during the conference but like Mari in Painted Words, I knew that she would be able to tell by the excitement in her voice and expressions that she was saying something positive about her. As such, my daughter kept on smiling and smiling.
Yes, we talked about areas to work on in the conference and about her current academic progress, but the tone continued to feel the same - supportive and a sense that she likes my daughter for who she is. My daughter left just as energized as when she walked through the door. At no point did it feel like negative, negative, negative...
The day after conferences I was reading through assignments that my pre-service teachers submitted when I came across a reading buddy assignment where students were supposed to discuss where they think their reading buddy falls on TESOL and state English Language Proficiency standards. I started to read one that had a paragraph starting out with the reading buddy's personality and highlighting the positives about her as a person before moving on to talk about language proficiency in different domains. This was not part of the requirement, yet, she included it anyway, and I thought, That's going to make all the difference in her interactions with kids and families.
No comments:
Post a Comment