I'm a strange teacher (I suppose I could just end this sentence here) who has come to enjoy parent-teacher conferences. They are a chance to get to see the parents of my students and get everyone on the same side. In the down time, we are surrounded by our colleagues whom we rarely get to see in the school day. We not only get to hang out with them, but we get to see them in action as they deal with their conferences. Unfortunately, we were all locked away in our rooms this year, and half of my parents chose to have their conferences by phone (which I do not prefer) rather than use Zoom.
There were also some silver linings. Foremost, our administration stepped up once again and not only provided the traditional pizza dinner, but had volunteers from the staff face off in a Family Feud-esque Halloween-themed contest. It was a blast to play and had us laughing through it and for a while afterward. I think that our staff is bonded better this year despite (and perhaps in spite of) the isolation.
Also, being shut in my room with few conferences afforded me the time to get a little bit ahead in my story read-alouds for my classes. I've made it a point to enjoy making these and just allow my mistakes to be a part of the experience (as opposed to the more-rehearsed and deeply edited recordings I did last spring). I've been enjoying the sounds and wit within the literature as well as learning to laugh at more at my own mistakes. I'm also finding humor in strange things. At one point, I spent a while chortling over the "Is this video made for kids?" question I have to answer to post a video on Youtube because the video I had uploaded was my reading of "A Modest Proposal"--a satire by Jonathan Swift about eating infants.
In general, I prefer the previous way in running our parent-teacher conferences. I hope that we can return to them next year, if not next spring.