I write this as I sit outside the locked school at 6:02am. I can’t believe I’m here before the cross country coach. I’ve got at 6:30am parent meeting to discuss a student’s pending reevaluation. This kid has been having a rough time, even by my behavior classroom’s standards. I know that the kid’s mom doesn’t want to have this meeting (nobody wants to hear “we don’t know what to do with your kid”). She, too, is a teacher, and “typical business hours” meetings throw HER classroom into a tailspin. So…here I am. At 6:02 in the morning. Outside a locked school. Because I know that, while highly inconvenient for my family at home and my colleagues here at school, this is going to be the best way to get this particular meeting to have a positive outcome. By not escalating the stress level of an already-stressed-out parent, I’m stacking the deck in our favor this morning and (hopefully) decreasing the odds of conflict.

I hear a lot of colleagues talking about the need for parents to understand that we, their children’s teachers, have families of our own and working hours that should be respected. And I believe that, too. However, when a parent meeting is already likely to be stressful, emotional, and fraught with conflict, I tend to look for any possible olive branch I can extend…and often that olive branch necessitates some atypical meeting times. Some inconvenience and challenge in the short term is, for me, often worth averting greater challenge in the long term.

Do I do this for EVERY family? No, I don’t. But offering very early (or late) meetings is a tactic worth keeping in your bag of tricks for when you really need it.

***UPDATE. This mom was a rockstar. She did a conference call FROM HER CAR while she was driving to work (crisis at HER school this morning) and was really, really supportive. Not sure if it was the accommodation of the meeting time or if she’d have been great to work with anyway. I was so relieved.