Parents evenings for Secondary school age children.

Spendless

Thanks for the replies I am seeing the core subjects of English, Maths and Science teachers. DS booked science first it being his fav subject.

I'm not too worried about not having appointments for music, drama and dance.

Some teachers I'm seeing cos I want to find out more eg when I see the PE teacher I'd like to know which kit DS needs on which days cos he lugs the whole lot around and it barely fits in his bag and I can't get an answer that makes any sense from DS!

I have appts for Geography and French but would have liked to see History and RE teacher too

And out of the 3 design subjects or whatever they're called nowadays I've only got art and design, whereas I wouldn't have minded speaking to food and technology and def wanted to speak to design and tech.

I'd not considered that I could approach the teachers on the night and ask if they were available to speak to though, so thanks for that info.

LadyMorticia

I don't have kids yet but when I was at school we were told to make appointments with all of our teachers but no-one ever did that! Why waste a P.E teacher's and your time when you both know that the student is crap at P.E?

My most important ones for getting appointments were always English, German, R.E and Drama, which were the subjects I excelled out. I always avoided getting appointments with my P.E and Food Studies teachers! Other subjects I was okay at so made an effort to get appointments with them but it was no biggie if I couldn't.:p

angelil

As a teacher of secondary school kids I would say the following:

- Don't see a teacher if you KNOW your kid is doing fine/has no problems whatsoever in that particular subject; it wastes your time and mine (even if it is a nice ego booster for you and your child) to only be told the kid is a pleasure to teach/is top of the class and takes time away from appointments with parents whose children have problems in the subject.

- Don't just 'drop in' whenever you think the teacher 'might' be free unless you know for a fact that the school doesn't mind you doing this. At ours the appointments are made by parents online in advance and my list is full days before the parents' evening; It throws you completely off schedule and it is a pain in the rear when your commute is nearly an hour and a half one way to be delayed by even fifteen extra minutes.

- Finally, just about all teachers have an email address these days. If you can't get an appointment with a teacher, get their email address from the school office and email them your questions/concerns instead, explaining in the email that you are writing because you were unable to attend the parents' evening.

Hope this helps a bit

Shelldean

our school works in this way... a letter is sent home about 4 wks before parents eve. We then mark any subjects we'd like to see and if we're available for the whole three hours of parent eve ( we never are as DH cant get there till 5.30) This letter is sent back with DS.
Then appox a wk before the evening we get another letter posted with the appointments on it.

I always ask for the core subjects, and then any others I think he maybe struggling in. Sometime we get what we want, then some times we ones we didn't ask for. This is because if that subject teacher only has one class for that yr group they ask to see everyone regardless. And we can only ever speak to the DT teacher that they are doing that term. It changes 3 times a yr.


BUT the problems arrise when you have twins!!!!! and they share a couple fo classes. Has taken the school until yr 11 to get their finger out and actually give me TWO appointments rather than one shared. Apprently the system doesn't realise their twins and give me one 5 mins app for two.... not good when it's the core subject classes they share. Every yr until this yr I've had to call up and ask for another appointment gggrrrrrr They then had to manually add us to either the begining or the end, or sometime both. Meaning we was there for the whole 3 hours And I have to do the first part alone and try and remember who said what about which boy!!.

And our parents eves get earlier and earlier in the school yr the further up the school the boys get. The twins yr 11 was back in Nov, Yrs 9 & 10 have been Yr 8 is this Thurs and yr 7 is in Jun.
We also get FULL reports in the weeks before our parents eve and interim reports at other times.
Got the youngest one on Thurs.... wish me luck?? LOL

Savvy_Sue

Spendless wrote: »

Some teachers I'm seeing cos I want to find out more eg when I see the PE teacher I'd like to know which kit DS needs on which days cos he lugs the whole lot around and it barely fits in his bag and I can't get an answer that makes any sense from DS!

I think ours were told to always take it all because it might be necessary to do swimming when it should have been rugby or vice versa, etc. That was what the school said, mine worked out what they needed and just took that.

Spendless wrote: »

I'd not considered that I could approach the teachers on the night and ask if they were available to speak to though, so thanks for that info.

And if you can't see them on the night, either email or phone or send a note in and hope you get a response.

Spendless

Ok, Well we've been and I am sooooo glad we DID see the teacher of the subject DS excels in, because she immediately started talking about him suddenly becoming introverted, not listening, only wanting to work alone etc but his actual work is not suffering, nor his exam grades, and we haven't seen any lack of enthusiasm at home, however it tied in to us with a spell of bother we've been having with him and some of his peer group and school is aware as DH had a meeting with them before the last hols. Anyway we got to see the person in charge of pastoral care and have set the ball rolling for DS to get some support.

The PE teacher wasn't there so haven't got to the bottom of the kit! And we did manage to see the DT teacher, after being told he was sat in his classroom with no queue, we asked if he had a free space.

ammonite

In my first year, I genuinely lost the slip of paper with all the appointments on. Parents went in and managed to speak to everyone. There wasn't any issues I was hiding, I was just (and still am) clumsy and irresponsible with paper

Mad-Frog

Do kids nowadays actually book appointments for their parents?

Gosh in my day and I suspect most of yours I never ever told my parents when parents evening was, I actually told my mum when we moved from Scotland to England that it didn't happen in England She found out in my last year but figured she was too late to 'help' me :cool:

Spendless I am glad you have found out and got he ball rolling as it where so don't mean any offence

Marisco

Didn't realise that you had to make appointments these days!! When my kids were in high school (80's early 90's) you just went, got in the Q and waited! My ex and myself used to "split" the room, he'd take maths, the sciences and related subjects (as he was so much better than me at them!) and I'd take English, the "arty farty" subjects and languages. It worked well for us, and we'd compare notes when we got home.

ellay864

For any subjects you have concerns with you should be able to contact the teacher at any time anyway - certainly at my sons's school we were always encouraged to get in touch as soon as we had any problems and not just wait til parents evening. When DS1 was in yr 11 he was 'unable' to fit in an appointment with his English teacher, who was a great teacher and always really booked up. But having seen my son's English book a few days afterwards I realised his grades were plummeting so rang up and arranged to speak to the teacher - he rang me back at a time that convenient for him to have a decent conversation. When I said DS1 hadn't managed to get an appointment the teacher said he didn't think he'd tried too hard...which was spot on! We had a really useful chat, far better than squeezed into 5 mins in a crowded school hall and my son went from working at a grade C/D level to coming out with an A* If I'd just relied on the parent's evening I doubt that would have happened