Instead of sitting on the sidelines during parent-teacher conferences, students increasingly are joining their parents in meetings to discuss their academic progress.
These are called student-led conferences—and they are gaining in popularity nationally.
To take some mystery out of how these meetings work, teacher-writer Kyle Redford recently wrote about how she conducts student-led conferences for Education Week’s Reaching All Students blog.
Redford wrote that she didn’t understand why she wasn’t invited to such conferences when she was a student. So, she now involves her 5th grade students in the process and explains how it is done.
“I always thought it was odd that the person being discussed was not invited to participate, but I accepted the arrangement as an injustice that children suffered because, well, because we were children,” Redford wrote in the March 10 blog post.
The concept of student-led conferences has been growing, especially with a model developed by WestEd, which Education Week wrote about last year. In five years, the model had spread to 250 schools in 16 states, according to the story.
What do you think of the idea of student-led conferences? Have you participated in such meetings, and were they helpful? Tell us what you think.
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