The Parent Teacher Conference Meet Up

Ash Merritt
Assistant Editor
  Parent Teacher Conferences (PTC) are a get together for parents and teachers to converse about their students. These conferences include teachers telling the parents how their child is doing and what they can improve on, and the teacher hearing about their students from a parent’s perspective. 
  Parents can find the dates for the conferences via PowerSchool messages as well as on the Bonneville website, calendar, and social media.  According to a few upper-level teachers, freshmen teachers have more to prepare for when parent-teacher conferences come around; however, for seniors the teachers have less to prepare. Mrs. Martindale claims that this year's conferences went well, but there is always room for improvement. The most frequent students to come to PTC are students that do well in their classes; however, the students who should come to these meetings are not seen. Having the conferences less important and more of a friendly talk among teachers and parents. “90% of the time the kids who need to be here are not,” exclaims Martindale. Having parent teacher conferences can be a pleasant experience; however, the chit chat and small get together is not always what the conference is for. Bonneville High School has staggered time with Rocky Mountain Middle School so that parents can attend both school meetings. Plus the schools alternate times so that teachers at the high school or middle school must stay late every time the conferences come around. Having PTC at a set time can mess with parents coming in and seeing the teachers; instead some teachers set meetings with parents at a different time and that just eliminates the point of having the set day for parent teacher conferences. 
  Mr. Owens says, “With the availability of information from PowerSchool, School Status, and other platforms, I feel like parents and students should be informed of how kiddos are performing. Teachers and parents have myriad opportunities to communicate about student performance outside of an organized PTC. However, some parents still request the opportunity to visit on a formal PTC night.” 
  In summary, the parent teacher conference nights are well planned for teachers; however, they are not the most effective for parents. These nights could be eliminated by having teachers and parents set up meetings on their own time and more virtual if possible.

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