Parent Teacher Conference Letter 3: Fill & Download for Free

In all of my years of teaching, I’ve encountered dozens of completely unmotivated/disinterested students. These are the usual reasons:They are overwhelmed and shutting down is a defense mechanism. I teach middle school students (ages 11–14), and middle school is all about fostering independence, responsibility, and preparing students for high school. Students who’ve been pushed along through elementary school with a lot of support from adults sometimes struggle to do things on their own, so they just shut down. Pretending like you don’t care about, say, math class is more face-saving than admitting that you’ve made it to seventh grade (when they start adding letters to math equations) without being able to do basic multiplication or division. “I don’t care because I’m a preteen rebel” sounds better than “I’m in way over my head.”They’re mimicking their parents’ attitudes towards school. I’ve had students tell me, truthfully, that their parents don’t care about their grades, so why should they put forth any effort? I’ve had parents tell me this directly as well. They weren’t mean about it… I teach at private schools, so the parents are almost always supportive of the teachers. (They’re paying the tuition, after all.) But some parents adopt the attitude of “grades don’t matter… I know my kid is smart… he doesn’t have to prove it to other people.” And they’re usually correct; their child is very smart, but just really lazy when it comes to assignments.They’ve been overstimulated their entire lives outside of school. These are the kids who’ve been raised by television and video games. Constant noise and flashing lights in their face is their baseline for stimulation; anything less than that bores them.They’re physically exhausted because they stay up late into the night either playing video games, playing on travel sports teams, or doing nefarious things online, unsupervised in their bedrooms. I always know when travel sports seasons begin, because the students who play those sports struggle to stay awake in class. I’m all for kids playing sports… I think more of them should do it, actually. It’s healthy. But some parents take it too far and sign up their children for leagues that require 5+ hours of commitment after school on a regular basis. The students aren’t really unmotivated or disinterested in school so much as their minds and bodies need a break, and school is the least-stimulating time of the day for them.Puberty. This is a convenient excuse for any new issues that come up in students while they’re in middle school. They’re “going through some things” either mentally or physically. The best, most motivated students can become really insular and disinterested seemingly overnight. The best-behaved students can suddenly turn into little terrors. One day, you’ll realize that the student who always participated in class discussions and lit up the room just by being there hasn’t said anything in a week. Why? When in doubt, blame it on puberty. Parents usually notice the changes in their child’s attitude, too, and know more about what’s going on outside of school than the teachers do. I’ve been in many parent/teacher conferences when parents explained a sudden change in their child’s behavior as “yes, we noticed it too, right when he suddenly got interested in girls…”.

Yes. But not in a vacuum. It’s usually in the context of a greater observation. For example, “John has shown signs of performing above grade level, but he doesn’t seem to be able to focus to get the daily exercises done and is impacting his grades.”That was probably an actual conversation had about me in first grade. That’s when I tested into the “gifted” program, but I probably never finished the individual exercises. These were things like “go through the alphabet and state an animal that begins with each letter of the alphabet.” The thing I remember most about first grade was how pointless the work was. It was as if our teacher just wanted 2/3 of the class out of her hair so she could give individual attention to 1/3 of the class. It got so bad that they put a 30 minute timer on my desk. That just made me more aware of the countdown until I didn’t have to do whatever stupid task was on the board.Anyways, back to your question - yes, teachers definitely bring up intelligence in parent teacher conferences. And it is almost always in the context of how to help that student.Another example is “John struggles with tests requiring memorization but he does really well with creative writing. You should find some time at home without any distractions to make sure he focuses on memorizing xyz. Also, I’m going to assign him some higher requirements on writing assignments to push him.”Teachers only care about a student’s intelligence in as much that it helps them more effectively teach that student.

Oh dear. Going anon because I have conflicted feelings about this particular teacher. Because there were SO MANY occasions where she violated school rules, I'm just going to list the major events, in no particular order.Had a hand-selected group of students to discuss curriculum that other students were not invited to know about. The things that we discussed in this extra session were interesting, and the other students in the class were completely capable of comprehending the information, but my teacher took it upon herself to assess who "deserved" to be in a special group.Decided we could not proceed further with the lesson plan until the 7th grade class had completed a 2-week unit on how STDs are transferred in the homosexual community. We were advised not to tell our parents about this little unauthorized sex ed course.Shown numerous music videos depicting scantily clad women, vulgar images, and extreme language (Think: Miley Cyrus' Wrecking Ball, Nelly's Tip Drill, Lily Allen's Hard Out Here, etc.) This was all to make a point about how society treats people of color and women. Eventually, the students in my all girl class figured out how to play the system and soon we were happily watching a naked Brendon Urie belt out the lyrics to Girls Girls Boys on the overhead projector.When my parents got divorced, I numbed out. This teacher immediately recommended me to therapy. I was a shy kid, and I was dealing with a lot. I was so lost in my head, I didn't really ever acknowledge that she'd tried to help me. This pissed her off, and she began calling me out for no reason in class, trying to catch me off guard. She also stopped giving me instruction because she wanted me to initiate a conversation with her. Once, we were given a test (a test essentially based on her vague verbal summaries of a book she wouldn't let us read). One of the questions asked for an opinion, and when the test returned, I'd lost points on the question because it didn't concede with HER opinion of a book that only she'd read. At parent teacher conferences the test was brought out. I cried. I cried and cried. And she seemed, finally, satisfied.She would use class periods to act as a therapist. The class would sit in a circle, and people would talk about things in their lives that were upsetting them. Many people ended up in tears. If you weren't crying, you looked like you were an emotional zombie. Guess who wasn't crying.The teacher would then take the information gleaned from these therapy sessions and spread it to other classes.She pretended to be black when she wasn't. By this I mean that she would adapt what one could only call a "ghetto" dialect and say things like, "Hey boy, you fine!" or "Dat don't mean I go around humpin' the world!" (The second sentence was stated when she was teaching us about pansexuality). We were also taught about the "n" word, which she said was a sensitive topic, then proceeded to express her confusion as to why black students were abruptly leaving her class.She took people's cell phones. Then she read the texts on the cell phones and would confront the students involved.She had people write letters to their parents about emotional problems that were going on at home. She collected the letters, GRADED them, and then read these incredibly personal pieces of writing aloud to the class. Points were taken off for reasons like, "you didn't include empathy towards your mom in this paragraph."She would pull students out of class to talk to her. She was not a school councelor, but she sure acted like one. Later she created a role for herself called "Deacon of Culture", which allowed her to talk to students about emotional problems freely.99% of the things I mentioned were NOT approved by parents or adminYou may be wondering what kind of teacher she was. She was my history teacher. I don't think I learned much history, but I did learn about Mardis Gras. And there may have been some information about Aztecs sprinkled in at one point.