Arranging the timetable for parents evening can be a real hassle in terms of the communication that is involved. Parents keep asking for times that are taken and cancelling others, often leading to a mass of notes flying backwards and forwards between teacher and parent.
This year I decided that it would be different…
As normal I sent out the letters asking the parents to state the time that they wanted for the parents evening. (I suppose that next year I could do this via a GDocs form, but hey ho hindsight is a wonderful thing!) When the responses came back I set up a GDoc with a simple table in it showing the times that had been booked in the first wave.
I then sent out an email to all the children which included the document so that they could show their parents which times they had been allocated. One point to note. I made sure that the parents could only read the document and not contribute to it directly as I could foresee a scenario of people changing appointments etc.
I asked them to email me if there were any problems with the times and I was quite suprised at how well this system worked as you can see below.
It turned out to be a really efficient method of communication with the parents that saved an awful lot of stress. The parents really seemed to appreciate the simplicity too.
