A few times a year, schools all around the world do parent-teacher conferences to check in about the students progress in class. These conferences are typically after school and are around 10-15 minutes.

During these 10-15 minutes, the teacher will go over how the student is doing in class and what they could work on a little bit more. These conferences are basically just a check in, and are optional as well.

At Frederick High School, parent-teacher conferences happen twice a year during both semesters. In order to sign up for conferences, schools send out an email that can have a link where parents can sign up. Parents will be given a schedule for them to keep track of all the teachers they will meet with

While these conferences can be helpful for the parents to know what’s going on, they are a waste of time for students, and teachers. Teachers already get to the school early, and when conferences are happening, they have to stay at the school until around 7:30 or 8 pm.

These long days drain the teachers, and burn them out. On top of all of their teaching and planning, conferences add a lot on their plate. Teachers feel like they are at school more than at home during these conference weeks.

Not only do teachers feel burnout from conferences, but students also feel burnouts from these meetings. Sometimes a student could be struggling in a class, and they dont want their parents knowing because they would get in trouble. When parents find out more things about their teenager, it could cause some more stress on the student.

Most students hear the same type of information at every conference, which makes it kind of useless. The parents/guardians don’t typically learn any valuable information about their kids at these conferences.

Most students and teachers at Frederick can all agree that these conferences are a waste of time. These conferences take time out of students and teachers days and are repetitive after a while.

Freshman, Kimberly Soto Ramirez gave her opinion on conferences; “Conferences can be useful because parents/guardians are able to know what their kids are learning, but students can feel stressed during these conferences because they don’t know what the teachers is going to say about them.”

Kimberly had also added that “Teachers can feel stressed because they have to stay after school for a long time to talk to parents and since some teachers like to print out papers with students missing work and grades, that can make them feel stressed because they have many students and could get really exhausted from printing and other things.”

Overall, parent teacher conferences are a waste of teachers, students, and parents time and should be done less frequently throughout the year.