a pleasure to have in class
tuesday marked the beginning of parent-teacher conferences (PTCs) for fall 2026. as a second-year teacher, i'm a little bit more familiar with the procedure, but it's still a lot to deal with. we start preparations for these november conferences a whole two months earlier, in september.
to begin, each subject teacher compiles notes about the student to send in an email to their parents: just general observations, like work habits, friendships, etc. in the lower elementary department (first and second grade), we focus on social-emotional learning more than academics. then, we fill out progress reports for each student, marking various skills as "in progress", "proficient", and "exceptional". for english, these skills include things like handwriting, reading comprehension, and understanding of phonics.
last year, we prepared these emails and reports completely manually. each teacher would send their own email in a chain, and our reports were individual documents that we had to open and edit. this year, the school has enlisted the help of generative AI to help us streamline the process. each teacher left their notes in a collaborative spreadsheet, and the AI helped us compile all the notes into one comprehensive email. our reports also switched from individual documents to one google form, which the AI then took to create a single report that included all the different subjects.
i'm usually pretty against AI and i don't use it personally, but i have to admit this was really helpful and efficient. first, it's a lot less work for the teacher. in the past, i would have to open dozens of tabs to finish the progress reports, but now i just have to fill out one google form. it's also a lot more digestable for the parents. instead of receiving multiple emails and multiple reports from each subject teacher, they now get one email and one report, which i know i (and my inbox!) would appreciate if i were a parent.
the actual conferences have been going fairly smoothly. i work at a private school, so the expectations are quite high, but most of the parents are supportive. sometimes we get the odd parent that thinks their kid can do no wrong, or believes that their child is a victim somehow, but as a whole, i think they're mostly reasonable (and it's the homeroom teacher's job, not mine, to deal with those issues :p)
doing these conferences has made me curious about the conferences my parents would go to for me. i have vague memories of playing on the playground while my parents met my teachers, but i don't think they really continued past third grade, and i'm not sure how well they could communicate anyways because my parents hardly knew any english at the time. they probably just heard the generic "she's a pleasure to have in class" type of comments. i wonder if the preparation process for PTCs was as extensive for my old teachers as it is for me. i can't imagine that it was, given the difference in class sizes between public and private schools, but i'm sure the sheer number of students comes with its own challenges.
in addition to reminiscing on the past, i've also started to imagine the future. i don't know if or when i'll have children, but working with them has made me daydream about what kind of parent i would be. i like to think i'd be reasonable, especially considering i'm a teacher myself, and i want to raise my kids to be kind and strong over smart and successful. i've definitely picked up some parenting tricks from teaching too, like how to be firm and how to deal with dysregulation. unfortunately, my future husband will have to pack our lunches because despite my best efforts these past few years, i still can't cook.