How to Prepare for Parent Teacher Conferences for your LGBTQIA Student

It’s the most wonderful time of the year, parent teacher conferences! Now wait before you roll your eyes and leave. I know that these conferences can be useless or stressful depending on your child’s relationship to school and the teacher. What if I told you that parent teacher conferences are actually magic? They are a special time that you get to help set up the absolute best learning environment for your student. Interested now? Keep reading for my top tips to make the most of a parent teacher conference. 

Talk to Your Child About the Parent Teacher Conferences

The first step in preparing for a successful parent teacher conference is talking to your child. If you do not know their perspective, concerns, and feedback it is impossible to make the most of your time with their teacher/s. Spend some special time one on one and ask lots of open ended questions to get your child talking. Let them know that parent teacher conferences are coming up and that you are on their team to work to get the best learning environment for them at school. 

There are many things that your student might bring up in this conversation. Do your best to listen and let them do most of the talking. Special considerations you want to discuss with your LGBTQIA child include: if they are feeling respected and supported at school, if they are encountering any bullying or are worried about bullying, and if they are seeing themselves reflected in the subject matter they are being taught. 

While the first two are fairly self explanatory you might wonder what it means to have your child see themself in the subject matter they are being taught. At the most basic level, it means that they can see how what they are learning applies to them. They can see people from the LGBTQIA community in what they are learning. Have LGBTQIA people excelled at this subject in the past? Then your student should be learning about that. Are there fiction and non-fiction texts that show LGBTQIA people as members of communities? Are there examples of LGBTQIA folks in the media being used in the class? All of these can be useful questions to discuss with your child.

Make a Parent Teacher Conferences Game Plan

Secondly, parents often attend parent-teacher conferences together. To get the most out of your time, make a plan. How many people will be at the conference? Gather all the parents and guardians that will be at the conference for a meeting. If you can’t gather, make a shared note on your phones or a shared google doc. Have everyone put the things they would like discussed in the document. If your child consents (ask for their explicit consent), summarize and bullet point the things you chatted about at the top of this document or print it out and share it with everyone at the pre-conference meeting. 

Make a plan for who will talk about what at the parent teacher conference. Remember that the goal is to help foster the best learning environment for your child. Additionally, if there are mental and physical health concerns, those should always be at the number one priority. If you have concerns for your child’s well-being at school do not wait for a conference, bring these up immediately. Seek the appropriate professional supports.

What Should you Ask About if You Don’t Know Where to Start?

If nothing stands out from your conversation with your child and co-parents, a great place to start is to ask about a typical school day for your student. How does your child’s LGBTQIA status come up during their school day? Are there things like restroom or locker room use that your child has different accommodations for than other students? If so and you haven’t done so already, I recommend viewing the facilities your child uses. How do they compare to the restrooms or locker rooms that other students use? Are they comparable? Do they take a long time to access? 

You want to make sure that your child is not missing out on instructional time or being punished for being late to class because they are forced to walk to the other end of the building to use the restroom. Physically walk the paths your child walks during the day to see if anything stands out to you as an issue. If something does stand out, don’t be afraid to bring it up and look for a solution.

Make Sure the Educator is Being Provided the Tools They Need

There are lots of great educators out there that are doing the best they can with the tools they have. You as a parent are in a unique position to help get educators more of the tools they need to support your student. You and your child’s teacher/s are also on the same team. The goal of that team should be getting your student the best learning environment possible. It is possible that your child’s teacher has never gotten the proper training to support LGBTQIA+ students. This conference is a great time to ask your child’s teacher/s what tools they have been given to help support LGBTQIA+ students. 

Ideally, educators should be getting ongoing training to support all the students in the classroom in a culturally responsive way. This means at minimum yearly training on best practices to support LGBTQIA+ students. If your child’s teacher is not getting this training, go to the principal and request it. Organize other like minded parents and write a letter to the school board or request time to talk at the school board meeting. You have power here. In order to use it, you must make your voice heard.

Additionally, ask the teacher what support for LGBTQIA+ students in and outside the classroom. If the teacher thinks there are any school-wide steps that could be taken to make the school a better environment for your child, those are also great items to take to the principal and school board.

Make a Plan for Moving Forward

Things get better when you have a plan. If there are specific issues you and the teacher need to be working on for your student, it is crucial that you make a clear plan. Teachers have more on their plates now than they ever have. As a good teammate, make it clear what it is that you would like to see happen and make a plan for following up.

For example, your issue might be your student does not have enough time to get to and from the all gender restroom and not be late for class. A reasonable action plan could be that the teacher will give the student an extra 10 minutes over the course of the next grading period for bathroom use. Then, you would make a plan to check in half way through the grading term and see how it is working. If this plan you put in place works, it could be made ongoing. Aim for no more than teacher 2 action points coming out of this conference. If you don’t need any, that is fine too. 

In Conclusion

All this might sound overwhelming for a simple parent teacher conference, especially when I promised you magic. Change is hard work. So many of our schools desperately need this change to support LGBTQIA+ students. The magic is there. You will be able to see it forming when (hopefully) working with your child’s teacher toward a common goal. If the magic can’t be found there, you will see it sparking in forming a coalition with like minded parents. The true magic happens when the change clicks into place and there are culturally responsive learning environments for LGBTQIA+ students. The magic is the hard work of change and your child is worth it.  

Do you need help preparing for a Parent Teacher conference or do you know your child’s school desperately needs LGBTQIA+ Cultural Responsiveness Training, but don’t know how to make that happen? I would love to help! Please reach out to me by email at ashbellconsulting@gmail.com. For more tips on supporting LGBTQIA+ youth for parents and teachers please sign up for my newsletter below.