Student Led Conferences
Student Led Conferences are starting next week. Officially, parent conferences are on Thursday 17MAR16 from 5-8PM and on Friday 18MAR16 from 12-2PM. However, you can schedule your 5 hours of parent time flexibly to best meet the needs of your advisees and their families. For example, if mornings work better for your families, you can elect to come in early to meet. Then you would not be expected to stay until 8 (or 2). The main goal for SLCs is to get as many parents in as possible. Flexibility in programming makes this a bit easier.
Students will be officially dismissed after benchmarks are complete. Teachers are encouraged to flexibly use time to schedule conferences and grade benchmarks. All teachers are expected to use fully all five hours of conference time. Larger advisories will have shorter conferences and smaller advisories will have longer conferences. That way,
everyone is expected to use the exact same amount of time for SLCs (5 hours).
To keep track of how many parents come, I'm asking all advisors to complete an
APPOINTMENT sheet. Please be sure that all of your appointments are entered into this document (which is soon to come) by WEDNESDAY 16MAR16. If you are having problems getting in contact with a family member, please make sure to reach out to Carol for support.
Making Appointments for SLCs
For this round of SLCs we need to get as many parents in as possible so that they can also have a voice in completing our School Survey. As a reminder, the Survey is the primary tool used to evaluate our school now. The Quality Review and School Performance do not carry nearly the weight that the survey does. So, it's super important that we get parents to come in! Our goal is to have at least two-thirds of each advisory submit completed parent surveys. This year, we are going to ask that parents submit paper surveys and that they do so prior to leaving the school. So, when you're scheduling, please remember to tell parents that we really want to hear their voices! Here's an example of what you can say when you set up your appointment. You definitely don't have to use it, but if you're stuck on what to say, use this as a guide:
Hello! It's [student name] Advisor. March Parent conferences are coming up and I wanted to reach out today to try to set up an appointment with you. This week, we are beginning to schedule Student Led Conferences. UAI uses Student Led Conferences as the format for our Parent Conferences. In Student Led Conferences, [name of the student] will reflect on her learning, and show us both how she has grown, overcome her struggles, and excelled this year. Just so you know, during Student Led Conferences, you won't be able to meet individually with teachers. These conferences are scheduled with me, your daughter's advisor, [student name], and you. However, if you still want to meet with any of her teachers, I can certainly help you set that up! I have these three times available. [List times] Which one works best for you? [select time] Great! I look forward to seeing you then. Do you have an email address? I will send you a calendar invite to help remind us both. Finally, we really would like to have your voice heard on our parent surveys. Only 30% responded last year. We really need to hear more! Can you save a few minutes after our conference to complete the survey? Thanks so much!!
Please do your best to get parents in for SLCs. We need to get our parent response rate up! If you can't get in touch with anyone, have your advisee call home with you and make the appointment herself. If that doesn't work, please do reach out to Carol for extra help.
Student Responsibilities for SLCs
Students should use Advisory
and Class time to prepare students for their SLC Responsibilities.
The student responsibilities for the SLC are exactly those of the in-class conference. SLC Student responsibilities are as follows:
- She is prepared with curriculum materials and student work that illustrates a specific conceptual challenge for each subject area. In addition, she is prepared to reflect upon her social-emotional learning and it's impact on her academic achievement. Prior to the SLC, she has attempted to resolve confusion.
- Using the challenge as a frame of reference, she is prepared to explain existing understandings related to the identified challenge(s).
- She can independently explain their confusion, and describe her needs.
- She takes initiative to work through challenge/confusion. She demonstrates how she is the primary agent in resolution.
- She states 'take-away' and explains how new understanding can be applied to other situations.
- She makes SMART goals for the spring term (see below)
SLC Suggested Agenda (~25 minutes)
NOTE: Teacher may guide or facilitate, but should not take over by teaching, demonstrating, or solving the problem for the student.
[2 min] Initial Logistics. Prior to beginning the SLC, please take a few moments to check the following:
- Review student attendance and make goals for improvement
- Check to make sure you have all working phone numbers and email addresses
- Make sure families can log onto Pupil Path
[1min] What am I hear to show?: Student Welcomes & Introduces Family and Staff. She also provides an overview of what she plans to discuss at the SLC.
[3min] What do I know? For each subject area, the student describes what she knows in a full statements. She also explains current struggles and problems within each class and how she overcame those struggles. Struggles focus on conceptual dilemmas, but can also reference social-emotional hurdles. Student will use work to help illustrate her points as she speaks.
[5min] What don't I know? Student talks about where/how understanding is currently breaking down in each class and she explains what she thinks is getting in the way of her learning. She should also discuss prior work and efforts aimed at resolving these unknowns and why/how these attempts failed.
[5min] What are some trends and patterns? What are some specific needs? After reflecting on each of her courses, students should now identify trends and patterns that stretch across classes and also highlight individual specific struggles that need to be expressed. In particular students should reflect on their courses and their work in these courses and connect their trends to their path towards developing the skills (both academic and social emotional) necessary for graduation and high school/college readiness (and completion).
[3min] What's my resolution(s)? Student resolves her breaches by relating what she knows to what she doesn't know. For example, "First, I (describe problem)"; "Then, I (pivot point - describe how you came to new realizations/learnings)"; "Finally, I (discuss how you applied your new understandings to resolve the breach)".
[5min] What are my goals and next steps? Students explains what she learned (or ‘take-away’ that can be applied to similar situations in the future), and commits to specific measurable and achievable goals for her learning. Please make sure to note these goals and share with grade team so that teachers can follow up during in-class conferences.
[2 min] Ending Logistics. Please save some time at the end of the meeting to review these logistics with families:
- First, thank the parents/family for coming! Also thank the student for her bravery and reflection during the process.
- Invite parents to our Family Engagement Night on March 22nd.
- Invite families to sign up for Saturday School
- Finally, please ask parents to take 5 minutes to complete the parent survey BEFORE THEY LEAVE THE SCHOOL. We really need their voices. Please drop by Carol's office to pick up your advisee's surveys.
Here are some resources from other grade teams that may be informative or useful to you!
