Karen Ann Cullotta
Streamwood (Illinois): For years attendance was minimal at Tefft Middle School’s annual parent-teacher conferences, but the principal did not chalk up the poor response to apathetic or dysfunctional families.Instead,she blamed what she saw as the outmoded, irrelevant way the conferences were conducted.
Roughly 60% of the 850 students at Tefft, in this working-class suburb some 30 miles northwest of Chicago, are from low-income families. Many are immigrants, unfamiliar or uncomfortable with the tradition of parents perched in pint-size chairs, listening intently as a teacher delivers a 15-minute soliloquy on their child’s academic progress, or lack thereof. “Five years ago, the most important person—the student—was left out of the parent-teacher conference,” Tefft’s principal, Lavonne Smiley, said. “The old conferences were such a negative thing, so we turned it around by removing all the barriers and obstacles,” including allowing students not only to attend but also to lead the gatherings instead of anxiously awaiting their parents’ return home with the teacher’s verdict on their classroom performance.
Recently, 525 parents attended parent-teacher-student conferences, Smiley said, compared with 75 parents in 2003. No appointments were needed, and everyone was welcome at this year’s conferences, spread over two days that school officials called a Celebration of Learning.
Student-led conferences are gaining ground at elementary and middle schools nationwide, said Patti Kinney, an associate director for middle-level services at the National Association of Secondary School Principals in Virginia.
Although researchers have long hailed the benefits of such conferences—anointing students as the main stakeholders in their education, accountable for their performance during the school day and responsible for their academic future—their popularity appears to be increasing in part because of the rapidly shifting demographics at public schools nationwide. The classrooms, after all, are where a community’s changing cultural identity is often first glimpsed.
“I think we’re learning that every school has its own DNA, and there is not a prescription for conferences that works for every school,” Kinney said. “There is such an increasingly diverse population at our nation’s schools, the one-sizefits-all model conference just doesn’t work anymore.” NYT NEWS SERVICE
Streamwood (Illinois): For years attendance was minimal at Tefft Middle School’s annual parent-teacher conferences, but the principal did not chalk up the poor response to apathetic or dysfunctional families.Instead,she blamed what she saw as the outmoded, irrelevant way the conferences were conducted.
Roughly 60% of the 850 students at Tefft, in this working-class suburb some 30 miles northwest of Chicago, are from low-income families. Many are immigrants, unfamiliar or uncomfortable with the tradition of parents perched in pint-size chairs, listening intently as a teacher delivers a 15-minute soliloquy on their child’s academic progress, or lack thereof. “Five years ago, the most important person—the student—was left out of the parent-teacher conference,” Tefft’s principal, Lavonne Smiley, said. “The old conferences were such a negative thing, so we turned it around by removing all the barriers and obstacles,” including allowing students not only to attend but also to lead the gatherings instead of anxiously awaiting their parents’ return home with the teacher’s verdict on their classroom performance.
Recently, 525 parents attended parent-teacher-student conferences, Smiley said, compared with 75 parents in 2003. No appointments were needed, and everyone was welcome at this year’s conferences, spread over two days that school officials called a Celebration of Learning.
Student-led conferences are gaining ground at elementary and middle schools nationwide, said Patti Kinney, an associate director for middle-level services at the National Association of Secondary School Principals in Virginia.
Although researchers have long hailed the benefits of such conferences—anointing students as the main stakeholders in their education, accountable for their performance during the school day and responsible for their academic future—their popularity appears to be increasing in part because of the rapidly shifting demographics at public schools nationwide. The classrooms, after all, are where a community’s changing cultural identity is often first glimpsed.
“I think we’re learning that every school has its own DNA, and there is not a prescription for conferences that works for every school,” Kinney said. “There is such an increasingly diverse population at our nation’s schools, the one-sizefits-all model conference just doesn’t work anymore.” NYT NEWS SERVICE
Student-led conferences are gaining ground at elementary and middle schools around the United State.
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