Students at the school I am student teaching prepare and present their information to their parents in lieu of a parent-teacher conference. We call them “Student Led Conferences” or SLCs for short. We see 12 sophomores every day for about 15 minutes, and we spent about 3 weeks preparing these students for their student led conferences. They were to write a biography of themselves that detailed who they are to this point in their lives. I actually liked the prompts given enough that I plan to revamp my bio page in my portfolio using the format outlined for theirs.
Yes, they have portfolios. Many of them complained of having to use a portfolio, so we explained its usefulness and even pulled out our own portfolios to show the students how they can be used when job hunting. Most could see the value, but a few still moaned and groaned. We helped them with page dividers, an outline to follow, and example after example for them to see what they should be putting into their portfolio. We gave them multiple days to work on it, and about half the class pulled them together. The rest, my lead teacher simply said “It just makes them look bad.”
Parent(s) and student came into our classroom and looked at the portfolio, the grades, and then the student got to present self-set goals. The process goes very smoothly for the students that are prepared, and it’s painstaking for the ones that aren’t.
The format of the SLCs is one that I hope to find in the school I teach at because it puts more weight on the students for them to be responsible about their work, and to present to their parents why things are happening in school the way that they are. If the student is doing well in school, the student gets to tell their parents. If the student isn’t doing well in school, the student informs the parent and it isn’t a parent versus teacher process but more of a parent and teacher both present to say “We are resources to help you, but you must do this on your own.”
December 5, 2011 at 01:34 |
i agree with what you said about SLCs. they are a great tool that helps the students get a good idea about where they are in class. hopefully it helped motivate the students to do a little better since they knew they were responsible for explaining what they had been doing so far.
on a slightly related topic; how did you like having conferences so late in the semester? we had ours near the 9 week mark and i thought that worked really well. it was early enough to inform the students about what they could do to get on track and late enough to get a decent look at what they are actually doing in class.