The Community and School

The community is an important resource that is often overlooked by far too many school systems. In my hometown, the school gets the most support for its sporting events. While the academics do get some community attention through the school board, Parent Teacher Group (PTG) meetings, and our local newspaper, sports draw the most attention. This is no surprise, as attending the different games the school hosts is one of the few things to do in our small town. While community support is high for our different sporting teams, the academic side of the school still needs to be addressed.

Our newspaper posts the names of the children who make the Honor Roll for each semester along with any achievement made by any of the schools teams (academic or otherwise). This is partnered with our school board meetings which allow for an additional praise of students, and also an open forum for discussion. The community also has the opportunity to voice its opinion at PTG meetings. Many faculty members, including the principals and superintendent, attend these meetings so the comments are going right to the top.

Overall, I think that my community does a decent job making itself known to the public. There are many opportunities for the communty to make its voice heard, and there are multiple outlets for the community to also step up and lend a hand.

Parent Teacher Conference

I feel that the conference went very well. The first conference was fairly straightforward, and went much as I had expected it to. I did discover during this conference however that it can be difficult to explain to parents how a child may be misbehaving during school. You have to always remain respectful and offer strategies on how the behavior may be corrected. The difficult conference was the true test. With difficult parents, an already stressful conference is made incredibly difficult. Even the simplest of explanations can be next to impossible if the parents do not want to hear it. All in all I have learned that parents really control the entire situation when it come to the conference. No matter how much you may plan, the outcome of the conference is almost entirely up to them. You do however have the ability to steer the meeting in a direction that will benefit the student. Really the entire conference is set up to help the student and that is what matters most.