At ISW, students lead their own end-of-year conferences. We love this practice for many reasons, not the least of which is that it allows us to live out many of our Core Values, including Respect, Responsibility, and Commitment to Education.
Beginning in Kindergarten, our teachers devote classroom time toward the end of the school year to sitting down with each child to take a look—one-on-one–at work completed. Our youngest students fill out teacher-created guide books that highlight their favorite activities (best field trip or Humanities topic or math accomplishment or song) as well as the elements that need more work (reading aloud, or listening, or memorizing math facts). Even our youngest students show surprising insights into their learning process. It is both heartwarming and tremendously encouraging to witness very young people lead their own conferences.
As students get older, they write considerably more in preparation for conferences, and the focus is on serious reflection. (When did I show grit? When should I have worked harder? What should be the focus of my summer work? What are strategies that have worked for me as I have tackled organization issues? What project did I rock? How did I balance the many demands of my schedule?) Students also put together portfolios of their work to share with parents. Adolescence is a period when students often experience the world as adult-dictated and themselves as powerless. The process of taking ownership through student conferences, however, is particularly empowering for Middle School and High School students. It suggests to them, rightly, that the adults in their lives respect them for the young adults they are becoming, that we trust them, and that they are well on the way to taking charge of their academic lives.
Assisting students in preparing for conferences is time-consuming; the fruits of that labor are well worth the effort.