Student-led Conferences run the week after the end of the semester. Students and parents sign up for 30-minute time slots during the Thursday and Friday after the end of the semester. Teachers are expected to be flexible with their schedules to meet the needs and times of parents who may be working regular hours and need to come in later.

Tone of Student-led Conferences

Student-led Conferences are friendly and reflective spaces. While many of the students’ areas of growth may arise during the conference, the teachers role is to maintain a space of reflection, honesty, progress and goal setting. Honor student achievements, honor the realities of their challenges, and be honest with their families about their needs. Defend against parents taking this as a time to lambast their child and hold the space for celebration, in-depth discussion about learning and developing a growth mindset in parents and students.

Preparing Students for SLCs

In the weeks leading up to the end of the semester, crew leaders take time in crew to prepare their students to lead their own conference. This includes time for students to write out their scripts or outlines, review projects, products and learning targets from classes, as well as practicing SLCs with students and crew leaders role-playing as teachers, parents and students. Also ensure that students have memorized their SLC times.

Preparing Parents for SLCs

Two to three weeks before SLCs, crew leaders should reach out to parents by phone and through letters home to arrange for times for student-led conferences. Often parents are not in control of their work schedules. As such, their schedules may shift or change, and thus it is important to make confirmation calls the Monday and Tuesday leading up to the Student-led Conference.

What makes for an excellent student-led conference?

• Student-led Conferences are best when parents, teachers and students are leaning in close together, looking at the work and the student.

• The student should do 95% of the talking. They are leading the conference – not only talking about their work, but also walking the parents and crew leader through the agenda.

• Students should pick their most engaging, meaningful products and projects. Test and practice work are not best for SLCs as they do not allow for a rich conversation about student learning and application of their skills.

• All participants should be considering the student’s needs, growth and progress, considering the whole young adult they are growing into and look to the future and future plans.

• Preparation: student materials should be ready, in their folder and in order of their discussion

• Parents should be involved by asking questions, but also evaluating their student on the SLC rubric

• Hold high expectations for students. While the conference is less formal than a stand-up presentation, they should still use their oral presentation skills and should not require a lot of prompting to do the talking in the SLC

• Students sort through their work and make preliminary selections (if the work is available for them)

• Students note if the work they want to use is still being graded or processed.

• Students work on the Student-led Conferences

At EPIC, one of the many roles that the Crew teacher plays is that of counselor. Nobody in the school knows students as well as the Crew teacher, including their academic standing with credits. It is essential that in each SLC there is a conversation about credits and progress toward promotion, particularly for those students who have failed classes and are in danger of repeating. Our goal is that each student and their parents get clear communication from the Crew teacher about their academic standing at the end of each trimester. This conversation should include action planning on what the student needs to do to get on-track for promotion.