By Stacy DeBroff

The parent-teacher conference offers you the teacher's perspective on his abilities and progress, and a chance to use these insights to help him improve. You should approach a parent-teacher conference like you would an important business meeting - prepare yourself, keep organized, and follow through on your objectives.

Approach the meeting as an invaluable opportunity to discuss with a trained professional the developmental, academic, social, and other issues that your child faces at school. Your child's teacher sees him at work and at play, in large social groups and alone. Use parent-teacher conferences as a way to gain insights about your child's progress.

Our anxiety over parent-teacher conferences revolves around trepidation about how our children are doing. While, hopefully, you enter parent-teacher conferences with a fairly accurate sense of how your child is doing, there is always the fear of surprise bad news.

For many of us, the temptation is to dash in with a few questions or issues and let the teacher take charge of the rest of the meeting. But you need to bring your own agenda to ensure that you get to the issues foremost in your mind.

To prepare for a conference, set aside a sheet of paper for each child at the beginning of the school year, and jot down notes about your concerns. Such issues may include your child's academic progress, family events, and your child's dynamics with particular classmates.

Ask the teacher beforehand if she keeps an in-class folder of your child's work and if you can review it before the conference.

Before going to any meeting at the school, always talk to your child about his experience at school. Ask if he has any specific questions or concerns you should bring up with the teacher.

Show up for conferences early. You'll have more time to talk to the teacher if the person before you fails to show or ends early, or time to review your child's in-class portfolio while you wait in order to take a closer look at what your child has been doing in class. Moreover, your child's teacher may have conferences scheduled back-to-back, so by running late you deprive yourself of meeting time.

Start with a compliment. Talk about how much you appreciated a creative assignment or how impressed you are with your child's growth in reading. Be appreciative and thank her for taking the time to see you.

Bring paper to jot down notes during the conference so you won't forget comments, suggestions, actions, and follow-up items. Taking notes on what the teacher tells you can be helpful, but if you do so, make sure you remember to look up and make eye contact as well.

Spend the beginning of the conference listening. Let the teacher direct the conversation. The information she shares may answer some of your questions.

Although teachers like to lead parent-teacher conferences, make sure that the questions you need answered get addressed.

Ask your most important questions first, just in case time runs out before you and the teacher have a chance to discuss everything. Avoid lengthy discussion on topics that are unrelated, story-telling, and long asides.

Don't be shy. Teachers will keep talking if you don't offer anything up.

You are an expert on your child, and you've known him longer and in more complex ways than a teacher ever can. Your insights are important, so share them.

PARENT-TEACHER-CHILD CONFERENCES

A growing trend in schools, especially in the later grades, is to have your child participate in conferences with you and his teacher. Schools have found that involving the child in these conferences is an effective way to give the student greater responsibility in his own learning process. By actively participating in the evaluation of classroom performance, fear of the behind-closed-doors discussion is replaced with motivation, insight and open communication.

Student-led conferences build a sense that your child is in control of his education and is capable of deciding what is important enough for you to see. Teachers' questions guide students in deciding what the most interesting and important parts of his education are, and the ones you most need to know about. These questions encourage your child to be reflective, to articulate his strengths and weaknesses, and convey what he has learned through his coursework instead of simply having these things pointed out to him. This allows your child to be an active participant in his own education, which, more often than not, will positively impact his academic performance.

Child-led conferences encourage your child to take ownership of his education. The old scenario is the concerned parent coming home from a parent-teacher conference to a child who just blames the teacher for his poor school performance. Instead of perpetuating "The Blame Game," parent-teacher-child conferences are a productive, cooperative process.

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