Teacher Says High School Conferences Drain Educators

Five hours of virtual appointments. Then in-person meetings until 7:30 p.m., after a full day of teaching. That’s the schedule Adam Patric Miller, a high school teacher in St. Louis, says his colleagues face during conference week. He wants schools to scrap the practice for older students.

In a column published Oct. 15, 2026, as a special contributor to the Chicago Tribune, Miller argues parent-teacher conferences make sense in early grades, but not in high school. His own school holds conferences next week, at the end of the quarter, a stressful stretch with early college-application deadlines approaching.

The Toll on Teachers

Miller lays out the schedule. Virtual 10-minute slots run after school and on Tuesday. Faculty then stay in the building to meet parents face to face until 7:30 p.m. The next day, he says, teachers return to their students exhausted. Friday is for recovering at home. They’ve also had a grading day while students stayed home, even though teachers are told conferences aren’t about grades. In Miller’s view, the meetings often become conversations about grades anyway.

He calls conference week one of the most “inhumane administrative imperatives” in high school. Then, he says, teachers call in sick with depleted immune systems. Teaching is exhausting work to begin with.

Miller asks why teachers don’t collectively refuse the practice. Public-school teachers, he says, are the last people making decisions that affect their own well-being and students’ learning.

Pressure on Students

Faculty aren’t the only ones who pay a price. Miller recalls a student sobbing by his office door after missing a writing conference for a personal statement. He rescheduled the meeting for the following week and reminded the student that weeks remained to polish the nearly finished statement before the Nov. 1 deadline.

High school students, he argues, are learning independence. Most can drive, and many seniors can vote. Soon they’ll deal with college professors or bosses. Grades already show parents how a student is progressing, he writes. Parents can email teachers with concerns, though they shouldn’t routinely intervene. A parent with a genuine concern can schedule a conference at any time.

Public Relations and Power Plays

Miller says conferences serve a purpose beyond learning. Per-pupil spending and taxes are high, he writes, and the meetings give taxpayers face time with teachers who are “presentable, articulate” and show that buying a home in the school community was a wise investment.

The sessions can also become power plays. A parent told Miller’s officemate, who was explaining an essay grade, “Do you know I've published six books?” Years ago, while teaching honors freshman English in a suburb of Ohio, Miller watched parents line a hallway to meet a teacher who wasn’t giving A’s in the first quarter. One asked, “Do you know with such a low grade for my son, you're making it impossible for him to get into Johns Hopkins Medical School?” Another asked, “Don't you know the average IQ of students in your class is 130?”

What He Wants Parents to Do

Miller’s advice is practical. If a child has an A or B, parents should skip the meeting, which he calls a “victory lap conference.” If they worry about learning, they should ask the student what can be done and contact the teacher only if the student doesn’t know. When districts present conferences as mandatory, he notes, parents fill every slot.

He closes with a line from a poet: “If the fool would persist in his folly,” the poet wrote, “he would become wise.” Miller says it feels like a teacher’s epitaph after a week of conferences.

Miller has taught high school for 25 years in three states and is the author of “A Greater Monster.”

Why This Matters: Conference week puts two things public schools say they value—family engagement and educator well-being—at odds. Miller’s account suggests the two can collide when a district mandates long evening hours without regard for what teachers are already carrying. His claim that public-school teachers have little say over decisions affecting their own working conditions raises a question about institutional accountability: who decides how teachers’ time is spent, and who answers for the toll? Students feel it too, he argues, when adults hover and undercut their independence. Whether districts accept his remedy or not, the column draws attention to a workload burden rarely seen in budget debates.