A new trend in the educational field, student-led conferences, seeks to engage students in their own learning process and increase parent attendance at conferences. Instead of the traditional teacherparent conference, students are the ones who lead conferences under the guidance of their teachers.
Advantages to this process include student accountability - students feel part of the whole learning process and stay abreast of their own academic performance – and confidence-building. Even a struggling student can produce something positive for a conference, an art project or an essay that would not have appeared in a report card.

Another advantage is that children gain experience in organizing and presenting their work, share their achievements and classroom activities with parents, and develop independence and confidence by assuming a leadership role.

One disadvantage is that some parents wish to spend more time with their child’s tutor, though this can be overcome if parents make separate appointments to confer with teachers at a later date. Like any change, if a school thinks of adopting the new trend, teachers and students will need orientation and training.

Teacher’s Responsibilities

• Teachers have students set up a portfolio that includes graded work to date, a special project, a quiz, a homework assignment, and one assignment from which they felt they had learned the most.

• They help students set learning goals for the next quarter/semester and organize their graded work in sections.

• Teachers should explain that students have to keep their binders orderly because they would use them to lead the student-parent conferences.

• Send home a letter informing parents of the conference, the time allocated for each parent, and the fact that their child would lead it.

• Teachers role-play, pretending to be the student, with the student playing the teacher or the parent; e.g. teachers model how to explain a poor grade to parents.

• They give students a checklist of what to cover in the conference.

• The conference lasts 20 minutes; during the first 10 minutes, the student leads the conversation; whereas, during the second 10 minutes, teachers discuss the student’s report card and progress reports. Then, parents have time to ask questions.

• Teachers need to prepare assessment forms after the conference for the student, parent, and teacher to get feedback on the new practice.

Student Responsibility

• Students collect work for their portfolios throughout the year in preparation for the conference.

• During the first 10 minutes of the conference, the student leads the conversation:

1) they make introductions i.e. introduce the parents to the teacher and vice versa,

2) present the report card, his/ her best piece of work and portfolio,

3) review their educational progress,

4) set goals for the next month/ term/ semester, and

5) secure parent help with goals.

• Leave time for parents to ask questions.

By Nahla Nadeem

Dr. Nahla Nadeem has been working at the Cairo University for the past 20 years teaching applied linguistics. She has received her M.A and Ph.D in the same field. Dr. Nadeem also works as a free-lance trainer and educational consultant in schools and academic institutions as private universities. Dr. Nadeem has also worked as an educational consultant in McGraw-Hill educational for two years conducting training sessions on different topics related to ELT and school books. She is affiliated to TESOL Egypt.

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