For This Year’s Conferences, Garfield ES Meets Parents Where They Are
October 21, 2010
Before they walked the aisles of Giant supermarket, browsed a menu at IHOP or picked up a novel in the Parklands-Turner Community Library, parents of Garfield Elementary School students could also conduct another bit of business on Monday: Meet their children’s teachers.
The Southeast school took a different approach to the traditional this week by holding parent/teacher conferences in the community. Parents could meet teachers at three convenient locations on Monday in what the school calls “Garfield in the Neighborhood.”
“I’ve been at Garfield for 21 years and we’ve never come out to the community to meet parents where they are,” said Scottie Hardy, health and physical education teacher at Garfield. “It’s a great way to get out into the community and show we care and show we’re part of it.”
The idea, said Principal Angela Tilghman, is to boost parental attendance at parent/teacher conferences by holding the meetings in places that are convenient for multitasking parents who lead active lives and for families that don’t have reliable regular transportation and may live too far from the school to just pop in for a conference.
“Many of our kids live primarily behind the Giant,” Tilghman said. “It’s a very long way from where the kids live to come to school. This is our attempt to get to where they are.”
Parent/teacher conferences give parents a chance to learn how their children are doing in school, monitor their children’s social and emotional progress, and get advice on ways to help their children improve in school.
On Monday afternoon, teachers at Giant Food on Alabama Avenue sat at round tables in a glass-enclosed room near the front entrance of the store with folders full of children’s work, as parents with children in tow filed into the room drawn by the green and yellow balloons tethered to the chairs.
“I think this should be done every year instead of in the school,” said parent Monique Willis, whose daughter, Rakiah, is a kindergartner at Garfield ES. “This gets more parents out together. I believe that a lot of parents don’t come out when it’s at school. They say they don’t have time, but I believe they don’t make time. Parents should make time for their kids. This is totally easier.”
The community conferences also gave the school a chance to raise its profile in the neighborhood and among businesses that their families frequent.
All teachers wore Garfield shirts and rotated from location to location throughout the day. Principal Tilghman even took a turn at Eddie Leonard’s Laundromat on Alabama Avenue, washing at least 20 student uniforms for students who either don’t have proper uniforms or need a clean one in an emergency.
“This is their community, where they live and where they do business,” said Tarsha Shaw, a kindergarten teacher at Garfield. “We want to get a sense of what our children are feeling when they walk to school. When we’re at a business, the community will remember. Parents will feel this is a business that supports the school and the school supports the community.”
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