Numerous practical guidelines are presented informally to help the teacher of severely and moderately mentally retarded children and youth conduct successful parent teacher conferences. It is speculated that past public school experience with the use of parent teacher conferences has been unsuccessful for reasons such as lack of teacher knowledge on handling parents, and parental misunderstanding of teacher's comments. The basic purpose of the teacher parent report conference is explained to be reporting to parents the child's progress in the special education and training program. The conference is thought to be more individualizing and meaningful for the parents than is the report card. In order to conduct conferences well, the teacher is said to need to understand the effects of having a severely retarded child and the impact of this upon parents and families. The conference process is discussed and diagrammed, with emphasis on teacher control. Adequate teacher preparation is shown to be conducive to conducting the conference smoothly, warmly, and effectively. A suggested conference time schedule is provided. Appended is a bibliography of approximately 220 suggested readings for parents and staff in mental retardation. (CB)