This week we had our first set of early release conferences. We do this twice each school year – once in November and once in February. Unlike elementary school where teachers meet with all of their students’ parents, in middle school we tend to only meet with students who are at risk of not meeting promotion requirements. We usually have very few “good” conferences – the ones where you call the parent in to brag on their student. It is sad – but unfortunately time constraints dictate our conferences.
This year, my students are doing web portfolios. As I have mentioned before, I am on a team of teachers throughout our school who are piloting a web portfolio program. The gifted language arts teacher and I decided to have a student led showcase style conference where parents and students came in together to look at the web portfolios. We would be there to answer any questions about the portfolio, but really students were leading the entire conference. We held it in an open house format for an hour and half, and families were invited to stop by at any time. We also provided some light refreshments.
This was such an amazing experience! It was incredible to watch students share their work in science and language arts with their parents. They were having such intense, positive conversations about what they had learned and why they chose to present their work the way that they did. It was energizing, and the students were doing the explaining. We had very few questions or concerns to address. We also had parents write one comment and two questions for their child, and reading this was so much fun. You could tell how proud parents are of their children. And the amount of learning that has been going on was very evident.
This was the best conference experience I have ever had. It was so good, I can’t wait until we do this next time. In fact, I may even have to do this again sooner than our next round of early release conferences.
