Monthly Archives: February 2022

Parent-teacher meetings can be a stressful time as they often add to our existing workloads. Not only do they usually occur before or after a busy day of teaching, many teachers feel uncomfortable dealing with parents. Changing formats and modes brought about by COVID may be adding to the stress. Planning and preparation are essential to increase effectiveness and reduce stress. The need for social distancing (when we are actually meeting face-to-face with parents) make setting up the environment for the interviews even more challenging. You should have a clear space to meet with the parent/s. Ideally you should be seated alongside the parent so that you can discuss and look at examples together. This may not be possible with…

To feel satisfied and happy in our work in schools, we need to feel both competent AND confident. If these are unbalanced, we can become doubtful, frustrated, unmotivated and could end up mentally and emotionally drained. Being too confident without competence is delusional. However, people who are competent but don’t have confidence, are filled with self-doubt and are likely to be anxious. As we learn new skills, we gain competence and as we gain competence we are more confident to try more, which again grows our competence. You may have experienced this as COVID has forced us to rapidly take on new skills. Becoming aware of how competence and confidence are both impactful and interrelated, as well as learning how…