E U R O P E A N L E A G U E F O R M I D D L E L E V E L E D U C A T I O N
Student-Led Conferences Matter
As the name implies, student led-conferences are conferences with parents led by students. The classroom teacher’ s role becomes that of a facilitator( Bailey, 2001). Most often these conferences are held during the school’ s traditional conference nights.
Student-led conferences allow parents, teachers, and students to work together to support student improvement and to discuss academic success, personal goals, homework, social issues, and personal struggles of young adolescents( Tuinstra & Hiatt-Michael, 2004). Student-led conferences have been shown to:
• Improve communication and organizational skills( Gay, 2011)
• Promote communication with families( Hoeppner, 2009)
• Help students accept more responsibility for their learning( Fuller, 2010)
• Help parents understand the curriculum better and get better grades( Foster King, 2011)
There are multiple ways for teachers and students to organize student-led conferences, mainly through activities and discussions at different“ centers” in the room where students tell their parents what they have been learning and where they have been excelling or struggling in the different academic, social, physical, and fine arts areas( Foster King, 2011; Fuller, 2010). Children show and discuss both class and individual work and projects. Many times students develop portfolios – collections of artifacts representing their learning – during the school year that aid them in discussing their learning experiences with their parents.
Student-led conferencing is authentic evaluation – an evaluation process of classroom activities and lessons that involves multiple forms of assessments that reveal a student’ s learning, achievement, motivation, and attitudes. The students’ descriptions of their own firsthand experiences are much more real to themselves and their families than any words the teacher can speak or write. It is through this authentic evaluation that students move through a continuous cycle where they set goals to move forward, develop strategies to reach those goals, and produce work products or performances indicating movement toward reaching those goals( Tuinstra & Hiatt-Michael, 2004).
If your middle school already conducts school-wide student-led conferences, you can seek to deepen student empowerment and ownership of their academic work and social / behavioral skills by having students develop a portfolio that travels with them through all their years at middle school. By adding to the portfolio year after year, students, families, and their teachers can better see a child’ s holistic progress, both academically and socially / behaviorally.
Organize Throwback Days
Throwback days began with the initial wonderings at our middle school:“ How can a middle school get students to be accountable for summative assessment results long after the test is over is a question that educators have long asked themselves?” is a question the educators have long asked themselves.“ How does a middle school seek to help students engage and understand the data of high stakes testing is another obstacle that all schools seek to overcome?” From these questions, a throwback schedule was formed
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