Conferences

Conferences were a really good experience. Something that surprised me was how easy it came to make up the goals for each student. I learned how much I have learned about each and every one of them since the beginning of school. We struggled with only a few students, but for the most part we could come up with something perfect for each one. The students are pretty serious with these goals also. Some of them have already started to work on them, I hope they keep it up. Another thing that surprised me was seeing the kids in this situation. Some seemed nervous, and some seemed perfectly comfortable. I was also surprised to see how hard some of the kids were on themselves. For example one girl said she needed to work on reading, even though she is the highest reader in the class.

My CT was great at making the negative sound not so bad. Her wording for things was brilliant and I think they came out sounding great even if they were something pretty bad. I learned a lot about how to word things especially for parents that need to hear positives because you can tell all they have heard has been the negative. I also know there is a fine line, and I would not want a student or parent to feel offended by something I said.

I learned so much about my students and their families through conferences. I loved meeting the families and seeing the resemblance and hearing what the parents had to say about there own kids. I also liked hearing concerns of the parents and things that the student had on their minds that they never told us, such as people bullying them, or seating preferences. A lot of the things the parents were concerned about were things we also noticed, so it made things go really smoothly. The parents seemed to like the goal setting and I feel like it is something I would like to do in the future even if my school doesn't do it. I think student lead conferences are a great thing after being a part of them.