If you ask most teachers how many parents show up for things like Back to School Night and Parent/Teacher Conferences, very few will give you a double digit answer. The largest number of parents I have had on a parent conference day was five and that was with a roster of over 80 students. My school, however, has started a new conference system and we had almost 80% parent attendance the first time! The new concept is called a Student Led Conference (SLC). SLCs are designed for students to be the ones telling their parents about their progress thus far in school. Two school days were set aside and teachers were responsible for scheduling the conferences to meet the needs of the parents’ work schedules, sometimes staying as late as 8:00pm for a conference. During the conference, the student, one teacher and the students’ family meets in a room for approximately thirty minutes. The student will walk the family through his/her four classes, explaining how he/she is doing in each and why. The parent has time to ask the student questions about their academics and about the student’s work samples. The very first SLC we had over 200 parents and family members show up, which was well over five times the attendance at any other school event.
Are there other programs at different schools that are successful in providing parental involvement? I would argue that these types of programs not only get parents involved in their students’ education, but they hold students more accountable for their own education as well.
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2 comments:
Wonderful concept. So glad it is working!
Despite some philosophical disagreements I have with the structure of my school, SLCs are by far the strongest structure we have. It forces students to truly take ownership of their own learning--and serves as a great living progress report. For students who are already achieving, it is the opportunity for them to showcase their best efforts to their friends and family. For students who have been slacking during the semester, it is a chance for them to own their mistakes, identify their strengths and weaknesses, and move forward with a plan for intervention.
Because of the relationship I have built with my advisees and their parents, I always have very high participation among families for SLCs. However, for other advisors, they struggle generating both student and parent buy-in. I agree that SLCs are an excellent way to increase parental invovlement, but without proper school culture and buy-in (especially if there is no REAL consequence for not attending), they still will not be very successfull in increasing parental involvement.
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