The parent conference, with your own child

Homeschooling removes the parent–teacher meeting, which is mostly a relief and occasionally a loss. This is the useful half of it, kept: twenty minutes, once a term, sitting down.

Student

Term

Date

Do it away from the school table, with the work in front of you, and let the child hold the pages. It changes the conversation more than you would expect.

What became easier?

Start here. It is the question children can always answer, and it is also true.

Where is help still needed?

What work is the child proud of?

Let them choose it, even if you would have chosen something else. What they pick tells you what they think counts.

What routine helped?

What should change next term?

What does the child say?

Their words, written down as they said them. This is the row you will reread in two years, and paraphrasing ruins it.

One thing changes, not five. End by agreeing a single change for next term — a time, a routine, a subject order, one fewer thing. Five changes is a new system, and a new system in week one of a term is how a good year comes apart in February.

The one change we agreed

We will look at it again on

If the answer to question two is the same three terms running, that is not a routine problem. Go back to the placement question.