The Essential Conversation: What Parents and Teachers Can Learn from Each Other

Renowned Harvard professor Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot imparts wise and useful advice on how parents and teachers can improve a child's education through the parentteacher conference--the dialogue between the most important people in a child's life. The Essential Conversation is about the crucial exchange that occurs between parents and teachers--a dialogue that takes place more than 100 million times a year across our country. In this twice-yearly ritual, so friendly and bengin in its apparent goals, parents and teachers are wracked with anxiety. Even though the conversation appears to be focused on the child, the adults' behavior too often reflects their own childhood histories and insecurities. Through vividly observed accounts of parent-teacher conferences and parables of wisdom, MacArthur Prize-winner Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot caputres the dynamics of this complex and passionate encounter.