Teachers Bear the Cost of High School Conferences

Adam Patric Miller says high school teachers face five hours of virtual parent-teacher appointments, then in-person meetings that keep faculty in the building until 7:30 p.m. after a full day of teaching. Teachers return to class exhausted the next day, he writes, while students have already had a grading day off.

Miller, a special contributor to the Chicago Tribune, says his school’s conferences are scheduled for next week, at quarter’s end and as early college-application deadlines approach. He calls conference week one of high school’s most “inhumane administrative imperatives.” The work exhausts teachers. They call in sick after conferences, he says, and their immune systems are depleted.

The work behind the appointments

Schools tell families conferences aren’t about grades, Miller says, but the meetings often focus on them. Teachers complete a full day of instruction before conferences, then teach again the next day. Students, meanwhile, stay home for a grading day.

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

The column offers no change to the conference schedule. 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.

Students, parents and school authority

Parent-teacher conferences make developmental sense in early grades, Miller argues, but not in high school, where students should learn independence. Most high school students can drive, he writes, and many seniors can vote. Soon, they’ll deal with college professors or bosses.

Grades tell parents about a student’s progress or lack of it, he says, and parents can email teachers with concerns. Parents with a genuine concern can schedule a conference at any time. But Miller argues they shouldn’t routinely intervene. He advises parents not to schedule a meeting when their child has an A or B, calling it a “victory lap conference.” If parents worry about learning, they should ask the student what can be done and contact the teacher if the student doesn’t know.

Districts present conferences as mandatory, Miller says, and parents fill every appointment slot. One student sobbed by his office door after missing a writing conference for a personal statement. Miller 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.

He recalls a parent asking a teacher who was explaining an essay grade, “Do you know I've published six books?” In an Ohio suburb, parents lined a hallway to meet a teacher who wasn’t giving A’s in the first quarter. One asked whether the student’s low grade would make admission to Johns Hopkins Medical School impossible. Another asked, “Don't you know the average IQ of students in your class is 130?”

Miller has taught high school for 25 years in three states and currently teaches in St. Louis. He closes with the quotation, “If the fool would persist in his folly,” a poet wrote, “he would become wise,” then says it feels like a teacher’s epitaph after a week of conferences.