Essential Conversation

In reading "the Essential conversation" by Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot I found it interesting that she wrote a whole book about parent-teacher conferences.  But it gave me a lot to think about because I thought about how I usually do parent-teacher conferences.  When I read the part in the book about how parent-teacher conferences become ritualistic because you give out the same platitudes and it becomes routine.  I noticed that I do that at my conferences because sometimes I am not sure how to go about telling a parent what their child really does.  I just give general information and tell them that their child is doing well.  After reading this it has made me more committed to not being routine in my conferences but to give the parents true information about their child.

IEP's

Something that I couldn't stop thinking about was in the video where everyone was meeting to go over the IEP for Dominic. The special education teacher wanted to shorten the time that he was pulled out of the regular classroom from 45 minutes to 30 minutes. But the parents did not want that so they left the time at 45 minutes. Someone mentioned in class that maybe the special education teacher wanted to shorten the time because he may miss information in his regular education classroom so they may wanted to shorten the time for that reason. But what I couldn't stop thinking about was that whatever the regular education teacher was going over in the classroom the special education teacher should be going over it to but maybe in a different way to better help Dominic. I just cannot help thinking that that is the way it should be and when Dominic goes back to his regular education teacher she should reiterate what he went over when he was with his special education teacher. It shouldn't be separate lessons it should somehow all come together.

 

Crucial Conversations

I found something interesting while reading the first couple of chapters of Crucial Conversations.  The definition of crucial conversations that Patterson used is "a discussion between two or more people where stakes are high, opinions vary and emotions run strong" (Patterson, Grenny, Mcmillan & Switzler, 2012).  I found this intresting because is is difficult for me to have crucial converstations even with my family.  You would think with your family you would be able to tell them anything that was crucial or important to you.  It is definitely difficult to have those converstations with someone at work so you would not think it would be difficlut with family, but I find that, that is the hardest converstation to have because you do not want to hurt anyones feelings or you may feel that it may cause a rift between you and your family.  That is why this topic interested me so much because I want to learn how to have better crucial conversations with my family and when collaborating at work.