Why I love Student-led Conferences.

Student-led Conferences. This is the time not only for your students to shine but also to learn the art of reflection. Making their own contributions meaningful. They are no longer creating work for the sake of listening to their teacher but begin to learn how to find the connections that make it, make sense. Make them feel proud.

Give them a sense of purpose and a compass to discover exactly where they want to go. How? By handing them the reins and having them purposefully examine their body of work so far. Children are great at compartmentalizing. They for the most part can accomplish the task at hand. However, It takes a great deal of love and encouragement to get them to “buy in”.

So How do I get my Students to “buy in”?

Well this is what it all comes down to right? In the world that our kids live in right now school is not their first priority. No matter what values have been instilled in them. They value school. It is important to them but if I were to guess, it would look something like this… First priority do I feel safe? Second priority am I hungry? Third priority did I sleep last night? Fourth priority, what do my peers think about me? Fifth priority is my teacher pleased with me? Sixth priority how am I actually doing in my academics?

So if and when they get to number six because we have done all that we can to provide feelings of comfort and joy despite one through five. Let’s make learning their goal. We often do and that in itself is amazing. Just giving the whole picture here. So we get them to buy in simply through high expectations, compassion and consistency in those two things.

So Tell me more about these Student-led Conferences?

Well basically how our board does it and it can be applied in a variety of ways. This becomes your opportunity to have your students really sort through all of their work and look back at their growth during each reporting period. Instead of our traditional approach of sending home their work at the end of each block. We have the students sort through their own to discover their strengths and goals.

Really analyze why they think certain work is their strongest, best work and why certain work is where they will pull their next steps from. They then get to invite their most important people to show off said work in a very professional fashion at their school. With their proud teacher and principals cheering them on. It’s all so very big kid.

So what other types of Student-led conferences are there?

You can really take the lead here for your students if you are interested in this approach. In my opinion it’s best practice. Have you ever had a student call their parents to explain why they destroyed your property or were mean to another student or were rude to you? Similar concept you are putting them in charge of owning their behaviour choices.

Same goes for student-led conferences you are putting them in a situation where they can “own” their learning journey. They are being given the opportunity to really take the lead in their own learning and make it, make sense. You can do this regularly by: scheduling family drop in’s to check out the students learning, parent/student/teacher conferences, blogs, photo documentation by the student. The possibilities are endless.

The main point/goal of all this is not really how you choose to do it, but that you do it regularly so it becomes the norm. I once had a student think because I had spoken to a parent that was the end of it. They didn’t think they should need to speak to me about it too. I respectfully disagreed. Ha. We should always be guiding our students to remember that the responsibility for any natural consequence falls on the individual living the learning journey.

Remembering natural consequences are not punishments they are just the natural flow of occurrence that takes place based on our choices for any given circumstance. We just have to allow that process to occur and support.

With Love, C.

If you are interested in learning more about how to begin a student-led classroom. You can click here for more ideas.

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