SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT

What real world “difficult conversations” tell us about student evaluation

Every year, employers everywhere pay more than they need to in order to dismiss incompetent employees.  Why is that?  Nine times out of ten it’s because the employee’s manager did not provide the underperforming employee with formal notice of the problem.  Why doesn’t the manager provide the notice?  Because that would involve having a “difficult conversation” and people, whether they are managers or employees parents or teachers, avoid these types of conversations like the plague.  When a student is struggling at school, a parent-teacher interview becomes a “difficult conversation”.

The easiest thing for the teacher (and the parent) to do is to pretend that there isn’t a problem and focus on some of the student’s positive behaviours and achievements.  As a result, problems fester and remediation becomes increasingly difficult.  Many parents who turn to SQE for help are the victims of avoided “difficult conversations” with their children’s teachers.

If a teacher is strong enough, he or she can attempt to address the student’s misbehaviour or underachievement in an interview with the parents, but how can they do that credibly if they don’t have data to back up what they’re saying?  Just how often is Stacey running around the room screaming like a banshee?  Just how weak are Syed’s arithmetic skills? Educators who promote narrative report cards and parent-teacher interviews over report cards with letter or percentage grades are assuming that teachers are going to be able to handle these “difficult conversations” far better than most senior managers in both the private and public sectors.  And that’s just not a realistic expectation. (If you’re interested in learning more about this fascinating topic that applies to both our work and personal lives, I recommend that you read the book Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most by Patton et al.)