Ichabod Crane Central School District

 Martin H. Glynn School: Mrs. Jermain and Mrs. Wheeler

STUDENT LED CONFERENCES

Dear Parents,

This letter is to inform you of our exciting format in parent/teacher conferences. Instead of only the parent and teacher discussing each student’s progress, we enhance the role of the students in the conference process. Therefore, our conferences are student-led. This is a big change from the usual conference in which the child’s progress is discussed by the teacher and parent. Parents would then go home and tell their children what the teacher said. In that scenario, parents and teachers assumed about 90% ownership of all accomplishments and failures of students. If there was a problem, it was up to the parent or teacher to figure out what to do.
In student-led conferences, students take ownership of their work, accomplishments, and plans for change or improvement. In preparation for the conference, students will linger over their learning, thinking about what they have learned, how they improved, and on what they still need to do.


The teacher plays an important, and often difficult, role by providing students with the knowledge and strategies that will allow them to be self-sufficient at their conference. We will be there for support and encouragement. Although it would be much easier for us to sit down with parents ourselves, we strongly believe that empowering the students to take charge of their work, be accountable, communicate to parents on a new level, and set goals is far more powerful. To accomplish this, your child will need your encouragement and support.
As part of this procedure, students and teachers will be asking you to complete a post-conference reflection for your child. This paper will be given to you at the conference. Students will also complete post-conference reflection papers that will go into their writing binders.


We understand that there is occasionally the need for private discussion without your child present, and we will be happy to schedule an additional conference at another time, if necessary. We prefer not to send the student out of the room at the end of his or her conference, since that would defeat the purpose of the student-led conference.
We hope this letter has explained our conference process. Implementing this type of conference can be a new experience for many, and one in which we all must work together. If you have any questions or comments about the student-led conference procedure, please feel free to email us.

 

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