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Dear Reader,

I hope you were busy enough with some lovely Sunday activities that you didn't miss me at all last week! Cooking? Hiking in the beautiful autumn colours? A bit of dreadful trick or treating for good measure?¹ Whatever you got up to, I hope it was enjoyable.

On my end, life got in the way last week, which prevented me from putting out the newsletter - but I'm back with a bang this week.

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What do I have in store for you today? Well, today, with a bit of delay, we'll inaugurate November's theme of "relationships": relationships with students, between students... and with parents. And in what I think is a fairly well-timed newsletter, today we will talk about parent/teacher conferences.

You know those meetings with parents that are supposed to last only a few minutes each but sometimes seem to alter the passage of time so that by the end you feel like you've aged 20 years? Yep, those. Today, we will talk about 12 little strategies to handle these meetings, from how to frame your feedback to what pitfalls to avoid. I'll also cite a few concepts from the pedagogical literature that will come in handy at these concorso times.

Speaking of which: I have news. Of a brand new, short course for your final revision. If you'll bear with me, here's the key info 👇

(But if you couldn't be less interested in the concorso, please scroll down to the juicier bit!)

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🔔 New: Corso di ripasso prova scritta PNRR3

If you're studying for the concorso PNRR3, you've probably heard the dates of the written exams are out: 27 November for infanzia e primaria, 1 to 5 December for secondary schools.

You may also have your study materials: books, notes, one of our updated self-study courses and a potential heap of other digital and paper stuff to help you prepare.

But if you want to avoid that last-minute feeling of "have I really studied enough?", you can come along to my brand new, last-minute revision course in Italian ⭐

In 4 live sessions on Zoom in the week before the written exam starts, we'll cover about 90 authors, with 100+ quizzes, plus concept maps and some very handy matching exercises, which will stimulate your memory right in time for the written exam.

Here's the key info so you don't have to scramble for it:

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📅 Dates and times

We will do 4 live lessons on Zoom:

1. Pedagogia: Saturday 22 November, 11AM
2. Psicopedagogia: Monday 24 November, 6PM
3. Metodologie, tecnologie e inglese: Tuesday 25 November, 6PM
4. Inclusione, legislazione e valutazione: Wednesday 26 November, 6PM

Each lesson will last around 1 hour, for a total of 4 hours.

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🎥 Recordings

All lessons will be recorded, so don't worry if you can't attend live: you will find the video recordings uploaded in your course straight after each live event.

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📑 What we will do

We will revise the key topics for the written exam (based on my analysis of the topics that were in the PNRR1 and PNRR2 exams) through:

• Quizzes: more than 100 quizzes guided by yours truly (where the wrong answers will serve as the basis to study even more topics)
• Matching exercises: theory-author/definition-concept and so on: the best of the best for actively recalling concepts.
• Concept maps: I don't need to tell you how useful maps are to visualise and memorise. I will ask you to fill in some maps and use them as the starting point for more quizzes and revision. Just to give you a sense of what sort of maps we will use, here is one about learning theories 👇

If you want to find out more, have a look at the dedicated page (with a full list of Frequently Asked Questions that should be useful!)

Explore new course

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And that brings me to the end of this aside! Any questions, feel free to ping me.

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Parent-teacher conferences: 12 tips to survive manage them

Love 'em or hate 'em (but I have a strong suspicion which side most of you stand on...), you've got to do them: it's parent-teacher conference time.

You'll have your general hurdles, common to all teachers: parents booking but not showing up, parents who know everything, parents who don't even know what year group their little bundle of joy is in, parents who support said bundle of joy regardless of the mischief they get up to, and so on.

But because you're the English teacher, you also have to put up with the fascinating range of misconceptions that people have, and will have no shame voicing, about "how to best learn a foreign language". And you have to sit there and convince yourself that it is the right thing to bite your tongue while parent X goes on a 10-minute tirade about how you don't do enough grammar/literature/ESP/insert random thing.

And while thankfully there are also parents who are a pleasure to talk to, the experience can be quite taxing overall, so: here are 12 little tips to make these conversations as smooth as humanly possible, particularly when you have difficult feedback to deliver. Many of these might be things you already know or have tried, so please bear with me, but it's always good to remind ourselves before getting into the metaphorical parent/teacher conference ring.

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1. Prep, prep, prep like your life depends on it

Before the conference starts, prepare everything you need, particularly if you know it's going to be a difficult one. Pull out the evidence (tests, sure, but also your personal notes, examples of their homework and so on). It might also be a good idea to share the assessment grids with the parents so that they can better understand how their child was graded. Anticipate the parents' questions/comments: what question might they have and how could you address them so that the conversation remains productive?

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2. Set yourself an objective (and stick to it)

Parent-teacher conferences can easily get sidetracked and even get personal. To avoid this, I'd recommend being quite inflexible with yourself before you start: what is your objective for this conversation? Particularly if it's a difficult case, you want to make it a SMART objective: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound. For example, "get little Timmy's parents to support him with one extra reading comprehension per week so he can improve by our next reading test". Don't be overly optimistic (e.g. "improve the learner's very poor attitude in the next month") and during the conference, whenever you notice the conversation is getting sidetracked, ask yourself: how is this contributing to my objective? If it isn't, get back on track. It might be helpful to share your objective with the parent at the start of the meeting so that everybody is on the same page.

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3. Start off on the right foot

A strategy that White House advisers have been said to use with Donald Trump is to tell him the most important thing last, because that's what he'll remember. I'd suggest that the first and the last thing we hear are often the things that will be the most memorable in a conversation, so: starting off with something positive can only set the mood for a more constructive conversation. For example, if you have a student who chitchats all. the. blooming. day, you could frame it as "your child is very eager and sociable, which can be helpful in a subject like language learning. However..."

4. Frame things in terms of progress

In the spirit of not making things personal and sticking to the student's learning, frame your feedback in terms of the student's progress: "when it comes to [skill/topic/issue], your child has made some progress and managed to [outcome], but still needs to work on XYZ". For example, "when it comes to speaking, your child has made some progress and managed to express simple sentences, but still needs to work on his grammatical accuracy". If Carol Dweck has taught us anything with her Growth Mindset, it's the power of yet: a student may not have progressed enough yet, but they can.

5. Keep it neutral

If you said that education is anything but neutral, I'd agree with you, because human beings are not neutral; however, you are a professional, and to keep the conversation professional, you can keep your feedback as neutral as possible by focusing on observable behaviours. Parents can always try to question things, but a way to work with them instead of against them is to describe the student's observable behaviour (rather than your or other people's interpretation of their behaviour) and to do so in neutral terms: "talk" instead of "disrupt"; "move" instead of "mess about", and so on.

6. Describe the outcomes the student is meant to achieve

When you give the parent feedback about their child's progress, compare it to an outcome they're supposed to be working towards. You can take these from the CEFR, from your syllabus, from the Indicazioni nazionali and so on. For example, "your child needs to work more on his pronunciation in order to be able to produce sentences that are understandable, even with occasional mistakes, as required at the B1 level we are working towards". This will (hopefully, sometimes) help the parent understand what exactly is needed and what the child is working towards.

7. Avoid falling back on maladaptive attributions (even if the parent reinforces them)

One of the main theories of motivation is Weiner's attribution theory (of which I am a fairly big fan). In essence, it says that you have a much better chance at persevering (in learning but also in other things) if you believe that your successes and failures are due to reasons that are internal to you, that can change and that you can control. The prime example of this is effort: if you believe that the more effort you put, the more you'll succeed, you're more likely to persevere (and of course, succeed). We can sometimes inadvertently tipify students as "just not very good at" our subject: this is a maladaptive attribution, i.e. innate aptitude. You can't change aptitude, because you're born with it, so you might as well not try. What's worse is, sometimes parents can reinforce these beliefs². However, that's a conversation that can't lead to any realistic plan of action: how is a child supposed to improve if they're "just not very good" at something? Regardless of whether the student clearly has or doesn't have aptitude for your subject, steer clear of discussing aptitude and focus the conversation on what practical effort the student can and should make to improve their learning.

8. Focus on the things that can be changed

You have an objective, and the student needs to achieve it: what needs to change for that to happen? Focus on the things that can be changed, perhaps with the parent's help: how the student studies, what area they focus on, the topic they're completely missing, etc. Aspects of personality, like introversion or sociableness for example, are unlikely to change, at least in the short term, so it may be a good idea to focus on things that can change instead.

9. Pause, ask, make notes

Sometimes, when I'm going through a discussion I care about, I forget to... take a breath every now and then. So, throughout the conversation, make sure you pause - both to recover some strength, and to ask the parent to chime in. You may be surprised by their insights and learn things you had no idea about on your learners. Another little trick to use is to make notes when they tell you something. It will not only help you remember what you discussed, but it will make the parent feel valued and potentially more likely to cooperate with you.

10. Educate the parent about the specifics of your subject

"But Timmy doesn't care about literature, it's a waste of time!"; "Why do you do all those videos and songs? Don't students this age need more grammar?"; and I could go on, but the point is: everybody has been to school, so everybody has their beliefs about education. In your conversation, you might like to clarify a few things about how your subject works, particularly how language learning is a little different from learning other subjects. To keep the conversation neutral, you can refer to research studies. If the parent is keen, you can even share some of these with them: if they understand English, these visual summaries can work very well; if they don't, you can direct them to these resources or these resources, which explain the basics of language teaching in Italian.

11. Don't get tricked into unfair comparisons

Have you ever had a parent ask how their child stacks up against XYZ classmate(s)? This can come from a place of genuine curiosity, but agreeing to put things in this perspective can be a slippery slope: not only because the other classmates' information is confidential, but also because then the whole conversation can be sidetracked. Yes, vicarious experiences (i.e. observing someone else succeed at a task) can be a source of self-efficacy, but to keep your conversation focused and neutral, it might be better to go back to the learning outcomes: how much progress has the student made to reach the learning outcomes?

12. Provide clear and simple next steps

OK, so Timmy needs to achieve this goal: how is he going to get there? Help the parent understand what practical steps need to be implemented and how they can help, if at all. If you can, think back to your objectives and avoid vague statements with words like "improve"; rather, focus on the specific actions that need to happen and the tools to be used, e.g. complete one reading comprehension per week, create one concept map per new author, listen to the audio lesson and do the associated homework by a specific date.

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And that's the end of today's tips! Was there anything in there that might help you face parent/teacher conferences? I'm always, and forever will be, all ears.

Wishing you a lovely Sunday with your loved ones.

Take care, dear teacher ✨

¹ I inexplicably got duped into not one, not two, but three Halloween parties/neighbourhood trick of treating activities. Which, as someone who sees Halloween mainly as the necessary evil to overcome to get to the glorious Christmas season, is testament to how little willpower I have.

² In the field of mathematics education, for example, research has shown that parental math anxiety and beliefs directly impact their children's math anxiety.

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P.S.: My weekly suggestion for things to listen to/watch/read to improve your English while relaxing: Take a little walk down nostalgic memory lane with me this Sunday with Goodbye Kiss by Kasabian. Very English indeed (they hail from Leicester, one of the most commonly mispronounced British places).

✨Cool things I heard this week

The new revision course is exactly what I needed! No time to study, I was just going to try the exam without studying, but I can do 4 hours to try and at least remember something...

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