Two Evenings of Student-Led Parent Teacher Conferences Successfully Completed

Student-Led Parent-Teacher Conferences Conclude With

Fall Night #2 on Wednesday, November 1

On Wednesday, November 1, afternoon/early evening from 4 to 6:30 PM we had a stream of parents and students entering and exiting all three floors of the Nichols Middle School.  I can wholeheartedly say that it was a successful evening of conferences.

There were students talking with their parents about their learning.  There were parents talking with teachers as their son or daughter listened and added insight.

This is how Parent-Teacher Conferences should be.  

When parents needed to just talk with the teachers, they were there and they talked.  I heard one teacher say, "If you need me, just call me over."

I heard many a student explain to their parent how they were doing, what they working on, and how they might improve.

I heard many a parent ask their child, so what would you do differently?  This is what conferences should be.  It should not be a "Telephone Game" where the teacher tells the parent how the student is doing, then the parent goes home and asks the child to explain, to then hear the child tell a different story.  This is not productive.

The student needs to be at the center of their learning, and Student-Led Conferencing helps achieve this.

This is what we are attempting to do with every initiative we have done here at the Nichols for the past six years.  Whether it is utilizing technology in the form of going 1 to 1 with Chromebooks, having a culminating project in 8th Grade ELA2, or designing Student-Led Conferences, we want our students to be at the center.

These nights are so powerful and give me a chance to see how we are moving in the right direction.  

A parent yesterday sent me an email, which I feel summarizes how I want all parents to feel about these initiatives:

Hi Mr. Geoghegan,

I just wanted to let you know how great our conference experience was this year. My son is in 6th grade and had some trouble with school  in previous years so as you can imagine I was worried about how he would do moving to a new school and having to be more independent, but he is loving Middle School. 

At past conferences we had a short amount of time with the teacher and we would learn things that came as a surprise to us, but it was tough not having our son there to discuss it with him in front of the teacher and it wasn't very productive, and to be honest I always dreaded them.

This year my son took us on an hour and a half tour of each classroom, he went through a typical day and presented to us how he felt he was doing and had an example for each category to explain why he felt he deserved the score he gave himself. In all honesty I was blown away. I have never seen my son so engaged in school and his progress. Each teacher was available in the classroom if we had questions and they all made it a point to come over, check in and give us an update. This was a much more enjoyable experience and gave me great insight into how my son is doing, it showed me how invested he is and I think it's a great skill for the kids to learn to present in front of a group. 

So from a new 6th grade parent who was worried and skeptical about the change, GREAT JOB and thank you for making school fun again for our kids!

Sincerely,

6th Grade Parent

In Twitter, there are times when someone will write something and you think that is exactly what I wanted to say, so you write, "BAM."  Well, this is a definite "BAM" moment.  

Yes; this is exactly what we hope to gain with each initiative.

Check out more of the pictures from the night.