Night 1 of Our Fall Parent-Teacher Student-Led Conferences Is a Success

Successful Night #1 of Fall Student-Led Parent-Teacher Conferences

On Thursday, October 26, NMS parents and students with the help of their teachers engaged in Student-Led Conferencing (SLC) as well as Parent-Teacher Conferences during our first evening of our Fall Parent-Teacher Conferences.

Students in all grades partook in explaining to their parents how they were progressing with the standards and with their own personal work towards mastering standards. 

Students would show their parents their work examples and talk them through where they might have been in the beginning of the school year, how they have improved so far, and what they still need to do to improve.

It was awesome to see how much our students were impressed with themselves.

Parents were also impressed with their children.  Many parents appreciated the format that we have been piloting for over three years now with their children talking their parents through their learning and not just having to stand in line to have the teacher talk about their child for only a couple of minutes.  Parents like the timing and what they were able to get out of the evening in terms of hearing their own child explain their own learning.

And our teachers loved to be able to show off how impressive our students are with their learning.

If any parents needed to discuss something with the teacher alone or on the side, our teachers are available to do this.  Some parents were telling me that a few parents were mentioning they did not "like" the format of Student-Led Conferences, but one parent said it me best:  "I love how you do Conferences.  I got to have my child explain to me how she was doing, what she was working on, showed me examples of this work, and I could ask her questions back.  There was one class that I had some questions about, and when I asked to talk with that teacher, we went into a separate area and we talked.  The teacher and I were able to work together with my child so that she knew what she had to make-up.  It was perfect.  Thank you."

Another parent mentioned how she liked how she got "more than a couple of minutes with the teachers.  It is hard to get anything out of just a few minute discussion."  

I meet and discuss with principals all over the commonwealth and country, we discuss things like Conference Nights, and there is no perfect system.  We are working to make these nights as successful as we can for everyone.  We will continue to do so.  We have no problem tweaking, fixing, amending anything we do if it helps us to improve.

Please let us know your feedback for it helps us to get better.  Please email or call me so we can take suggestions and run with them.  Thanks.

All the while all the learning and explaining was going on, our NMS PTA held down our Fall Book Fair in the Media Center.

Don't Forget:  This coming Wednesday, November 1, is our second night of conferences from 4 to 6:30 PM; we hope to see everyone else here for this spectacular night of learning.

Thank you.

Here are some pictures from the evening.