As you know, Student Led Conferences are Monday. Some people don’t mind them, some people would rather have a disease than lead a conference about themselves. So we talked about why they are important, like them or not, and this is the list the class generated:
(You can see these with more of the details in the Google Drive Study Skills Folder.)

1. The individual is the best judge of their own progress and effort.
2. Your family loves you and is paying for your education, so they enjoy seeing your progress and have the right to.
3. Seeing your progress so far allows you to make a plan to catch anything up that you need to before the end of the year.
4. Charting your progress reminds you that you are ultimately accountable for learning.
5. Refining and presenting your ideas in a persuasive way is important if you want to be an adult who changes the world. This is practice.
6. Figuring out how you learn will allow you to learn other things more efficiently in the future.

All of these reasons, and probably several more, are very valid reasons for putting students through the annual student-led conference. I would like to focus on the last one for this blog.

When my children were in elementary school, they regularly told me they weren’t learning very much. The change in work from day to day is almost undetectable most of the time, even if you are a teacher. It is  easy to feel that you aren’t  making much progress. In the short term, work fluctuates for a lot of reasons- maybe you liked the topic especially well, maybe you didn’t feel well, maybe you were upset. It’s even possible to feel that you are going backwards, not forwards. But, when we went in for “curriculum fair” at the end of the year, the changes were amazing. It was clear to see how much they had grown over the course of a year. As we have prepared for conferences, I have heard many exclamations and outright laughter. “HA! I thought that was a reader response!” “It looks like I didn’t even know what I was doing.” “I guess I didn’t know you have to study for tests.”  “Look at my time- how slow I was.”  Taking a long view, improvements really stand out. Improvement and proof of success are the best motivations to buckle down and work hard. You can see for sure that it pays off.

When I was a young person, I assumed that the everything you learned had a different learning strategy, and that they would be really closely related to your natural talents. It seemed as though some people could do some things, and other people could do other things. And it is true that people have different natural affinities. It’s probably also true that to be the best of the best of the best, you need some natural ability. But you can get pretty competent by employing  efficient learning strategies and practice. And even the best of the best don’t get to the pinnacle without them.

As I have watched a lot of people learn a lot of things, I have realized that the learning process is, in the larger sense, the same process over and over. Yes, the details may vary from skill to skill. But learning to read is alarmingly close to learning to play the piano.  Once we have  the learning process clear and  put in some effort, most of us can become passable at most things.

So there is a general learning process, and you can figure it out IF you notice that you are learning. Student-led conferences let students take a slightly longer view, but with enough evidence at hand that they can begin to think about what they did and how they did it. It’s possible  to see the improvements in their skills, knowledge and dispositions that they have acquired gradually over time.

Once a person begins to notice how they learn, they can do the most important thing of all- modify the general process so that it is more effective for their particular brain, and learn where their sticking points may be. For instance, some people really do improve a little  bit each day. Other people seem to stay stuck in the morass way longer than they would like to, then suddenly take a huge leap. As you can imagine, it can be hard to be the second type of person (and I am the second type).  You can easily become frustrated and decide that you are just incapable, as you are being passed by all and sundry. But if you KNOW that this is your usual pattern, and it will all come out in the end if you stick to the program, you have more power to stay the course in the face of what seem to be disappointing results.  Some people need to do one task for a long time and  get lost in it. Others need to switch up activities fairly regularly. If you get in the habit of comparing your process to your results, you can see which strategies were more efficient for you. This might be the most important thing you can learn.

You will be a participant in the conference process. So how can you help?  I know I won’t have to say this to this year’s parents, but take a warm and supportive tone. No one is being cross-examined, or defending their dissertation here. Ask questions in an  interested tone, and allow quiet, peaceful  time for thinking about them. Sometimes comments, even compliments, that are too general add pressure  to make everything amazing. Some of our work  won’t be amazing, for sure, for everyone. It can be more helpful to  reflect specific things- “I notice that in October you were _____________________, but now you are ________________________ most of the time. What do you think you did to make that happen?” Allow for nerves and a certain amount of fluster. After all, fifth graders are pretty new to a more formal presentation process as well. And enjoy the time. The years when you are the focus of their attention, and they are overtly thrilled to please you are rapidly coming to an end.

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