It is that time of year for our Parent-Teacher Conferences
to begin all across America. Parents, teachers, counselors, administrators, and
students are all preparing for this educational tradition. You might wonder how
students play into the Parent-Teacher Conference. Well, for Francis Howell
Middle, we adopted (many years ago) the Student-Led Conference (SLC) practice; therefore
our students are an integral component of our fall (and spring) conferences!
With SLCs our students take an important leadership role. They
present their portfolio artifacts to their parents during the conference. The
students review assessments, assignment, standardized assessment scores, and
other portfolio items with their parents. They explain the scores that they
received and offer suggestions to their parents as to ways they can make
improvements. The classroom teachers are present and are readily available to
discuss any artifact in the portfolio (or to address any other parent questions
or concerns). This informal setting and format is quite conducive to increasing
communication between school and home.
There are multiple benefits in implementing the SLC format:
- Greater Student Voice
- Increased Oral Communication
- Student Ownership of Portfolio work
- Increased Parent-Student interaction within the conference format
If you haven’t tried this format, I suggest you look into
it. Let me know how it works out for your school community!
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