phone conferences

If you're wondering what happened to the stressed-out teacher from our last episode, wonder no more. She's written to us again to let us know how the situation in her classroom is developing. It turns out that she needs help with parent phone calls. Like most rookie teachers, she's intimidated by the thought of contacting parents, especially parents who might not be up for, shall we say, any parent of the year awards.

If you thought last week's discussion on parent phone calls ended abruptly, you weren't imagining things. We got a bit long-winded and decided to split the conversation into two parts. This episode features the conclusion of our discussion. What sorts of things should you consider before you make a call home? How is a parent phone conference like a warranty claim on a faulty T.V.? These and other questions are asked and answered. Listener email comes from a new teacher whose employment started midway through the school year. How does she connect with a community that doesn't even know she's there?

If you don’t know how to conduct a successful phone conference with parents, you’ll end up dreading the time you spend on the phone almost as much as the lunches the cafeteria serves on “Not Quite Fish Patty” Fridays. In this episode, we start with the easy stuff: making positive phone calls home when students exceed your expectations. Then we move on to the less pleasant phone calls you’ll need to make. You know the ones I’m talking about, the “Your kid is driving me to an early grave” calls? Good times. Speaking of good times, our listener email is from someone who’s not having them. (Talk about an awkward segue.) He wants to know what to do if you slip up and accidentally curse in front of your students. Not just any curse word, mind you, but the Big One, the word that shares the same first letter as the word “fired.”