Fourthgrader Cara
Yoder shows her mother, Deb, her
work during a
student-led
conference at Leacock
...(more)
Hey mom, this time you don't have to ask my teacher what I've learned. I'll show you myself.
That's the attitude of student-led parent conferences, used in two school districts here.
Recently at Leacock Elementary School in the Pequea Valley School District, Cara Yoder and her mother, Deb, sat together as the fourth-grader showed her mother a portfolio full of essays and math papers.
Cara beamed at her mom.
"We can share stuff with our parents instead of just taking a paper home," Cara said. "I feel good that I can show my work and be proud of myself."
That's the point of allowing the students to take charge.
They tell their parents what they are doing. They explain why they earned a C on a math test.
With a student-led conference, students typically show their parents a portfolio of work such as essays and art projects.
And the kids can point out the science project they completed and the poem they wrote that is displayed on a classroom bulletin board.
But don't think this is a break for teachers. It takes a tremendous amount of work to guide the students as they organize their portfolios for the conferences. The teachers are also still on hand during the meetings to answer questions and offer encouragement.
They also still meet with parents one-on-one.
Cara's teacher, Amy Arment, has used student-led conferences throughout her seven-year career, all at Leacock. All of the teachers at Leacock use them in the spring.
The elementary school on Old Philadelphia Pike still holds traditional parent conferences in the fall.
Arment thinks the student-led conferences are highly valuable. They hold students accountable for their own education, she said.
There are also benefits for the parent-child relationship.
"In a regular parent-teacher conference, often it lasts 15 minutes, and then they go," Arment said.
"With the student-led conferences, some families linger for long periods; they enjoy their time together in the classroom."
Christian Peifer loved the time with his mother, Melissa, and he loved talking to her about his education.
"It makes me feel like I understand what I'm learning," Christian said.
His mom said, "It's Christian showing me all of his accomplishments, and I think it's really cool. We never did that when I was growing up."
Nationally, student-led conferences have been a trend in education at various times in the past 50 years. Locally, they are not quite as common.
A survey of half of the 16 Lancaster County school districts showed that besides Pequea Valley, Manheim Central School District is the only other one to host student-led conferences.
They require extra work for the teachers and staff, Manheim Central Middle School Principal Scott Deisley said, but he added, "We have found them to be extremely beneficial."
Robert Frick, superintendent of Lampeter-Strasburg School District, said student-led conferences were popular in the late 1960s when he was a fifth-grade teacher.
"I used it for a little bit in my teaching days," Frick said. "But I dropped it because I think it really didn't serve what the parents wanted."
The parents he encountered wanted the teacher to tell them how their child was doing, he said.
Student-led parent conferences have their share of ups and downs.
Parent attendance is generally higher when the student is leading the conference, an article in Education World reported.
Beth Reinhart, principal of Paradise and Leacock Elementary schools in Pequea Valley, said parent attendance at her schools — for both the teacher-led and student-led conferences — is about 98 percent.
The schools schedule them up until 8 at night to give working parents time to attend, she said.
But if a parent does not appear, it leads to the child feeling highly disappointed, the Education World article reported.
To combat this, Reinhart said if a parent can't attend, the child can either take their portfolio home or share it with another adult in the building.
"It enables them to feel they participated, but it doesn't put undue pressure on the child," Reinhart said.
The two Pequea Valley schools also have a method in place to make sure the parents have time alone with the teacher if they want it.
On the invitation to the spring meeting, parents can reply that while at the school, they'd also like face-to-face time with the teacher.
Back at Leacock, fourth-grader Jennifer Simes sat at her daughter Jasmine's desk and admired a cave drawing.
After reading an article on cave paintings found in modern-day Germany, the students created their own cave art.
Jasmine, using only yellow, black and red — the colors used by the cave dwellers — made marks that depicted a mountain, horse, rainbow, summer, a bear, herself and her mother, her house, a tulip, good luck and the emotions of happiness and sadness.
"I like seeing it all," Jennifer Simes said. "It's fun seeing it from her point of view."
