Hailey's Parent Teacher Conferences

Hailey - 6th Grade

By the time your last one reaches 6th grade, you often wonder if you really need to still attend parent-teacher conferences! Or at least I am! Most of the time, my kids are doing pretty well in classes and sometimes I'm even embarrassed that I booked a conference with a teacher to talk about how my kid has an A in a class. However, the reason why I keep signing up for these conferences is that it's nice to put a name with a face and have them know/learn more about my child. 

So I picked four conferences with Hailey's teachers - Advanced Math, Science, Social Studies and Advanced Language Arts. She has As in all of these classes but it was so good to have these conferences because there was a common theme running throughout them in most of my discussions with her teachers and that was that she tended to be more quiet in class especially during discussions. 

I forget that Hailey was a really shy kid when she was little. In fact, her Montessori school took her to be tested because she literally did not talk. Of course, we knew she did talk but she definitely is the quietest of my three. 

Now I had been noticing this the last year or so at the dinner table. Of course the discussions always revolved around Austen's college or his soccer and then Peyton would pipe in to make sure she had some of the attention too. Hailey was just a quiet observer during these discussions, even when we tried to pull her in. I thought it would get better when Austen went to college - no more college or soccer talk but it didn't. Peyton just monopolized the conversation more! 

So now, after these conferences, I'm challenging her to come out of her shell and be an active participant in these family discussions so in turn she's a more active participant in her classroom discussions too. I'll report back in six months to see if she's improved but with Austen home again for the next month or so,  she's really going to have to work at participating in the conversation.