Report Cards, PTCs and Parent Engagement Time
Hello everyone,
President Obama addressed the nation earlier today and uttered these words: “Ultimately, we are all on the same team.”
Our kids probably need to hear this from us and see this in action in the days and weeks ahead. We are their models! They take their cues from us.
A little bit about upcoming report cards, parent teacher conferences and parent engagement time.
Report Cards: Moving forward, BSI, like every other public school in NYC, will use the DOE system to generate report cards. These look different than our previous BSI generated progress reports in both the format for grades and the comments. Comments are aligned with standards in each of the content areas, rather than the personalized progress report narratives teachers have written in the past. Change can be challenging, particularly when we’ve grown accustomed to having things be a certain way: we’ll get through this!
Parent Teacher Conferences will be held on Wednesday, November 30th from 12:50 until 3 and 4:00 until 7:00 p.m. Chris, our parent coordinator, will handle sign-ups centrally. As you may have surmised from the PTC survey that Anna sent out on Monday, it’s not physically possible for all content teachers to see every parent during PTC allotted time, and we’re not fans of a 2-minute conference. We encourage families to utilize parent engagement time.
Parent Engagement Time at BSI is on Tuesday mornings, but we often accommodate families who can’t make it down to school by either having phone conferences or meeting on another day. One thoughtful parent commented on the PTC survey that he is concerned that there be an “equal shot for all families to see teachers,” and that time outside of the parent conference could be used for this. Yes! That’s the idea. Don’t wait until a certain date in November or March to talk about your child’s progress at school — we have held parent meetings since the first week of school. Reach out to your child’s teacher(s) to schedule a 10-minute conference.
We are here if you need us.
yours,
Donna