Working
With Parents: Key Issues and Strategies
for Resolving Them
Teacher education courses prepare prospective
teachers to prepare lesson plans and to interact with students—but they do not
prepare them for parent interaction.
Programs in Educational Administration prepare a teacher to be an
administrator—but they, too, provide very little insight into how to deal with
parents. Most of what teachers and
administrators learn about this important topic is done on the job by trial and
error, supplemented by tips passed on to them from more experienced
colleagues—usually after a difficult
meeting with a parent. This One Day
Sabbatical is designed to provide teachers and administrators with guidelines to
follow that will improve their ability to successfully resolve problems with
parents when they arise.
This will be a hands-on session that will address the
basic rules for working with parents of all kinds. Topics include, but are not limited to: parent-teacher conferences, the importance of
regular communication with parents throughout the year, communicating with
parents when their child has academic or behavioral problems, ways to handle various
kinds of problem-parent behavior, and teacher-administrator communication with
regard to parent issues. Ample time
will be devoted to a discussion of ways to handle difficult situations involving
parents that have been drawn from actual experience, and participants are
encouraged bring one or two particularly tough situations from their own
experience to present to the group for analysis and discussion.
The workshop will be led by Dr. William Hovenden, an
Educational Psychologist and Headmaster of Sumner Academy. Dr. Hovenden has worked as a consultant for
schools, churches and other organizations for many years, and frequently
presents workshops on a range of behavioral and psychological issues for TAIS
and other educational organizations in Tennessee.
