Student Contributor: J. Ziemba
Private student conferences are a great opportunity for teachers to have a conversation with each student concerning academics, behavior or any other concerns the teacher might have about her student. Conferences can be formal or informal depending on the circumstances, a quick conversation or a meeting before or after school.
The private conferences should be used by first declaring a purpose, conferences should be used to discuss the behavior or academic performance of a student. Conferences can also play a role in a discipline process, when a child starts to have trouble in the classroom. You then, hold a conference. This type of conference should be private between you and your student, without other students their as distractions. As a teacher, you need to be clear in explaining the reason for the conference or the issue that was concerning. That’s when you work together as student and teacher, letting the child have their own time to explain their side of the story. Keep a record, as a teacher you need to keep track of every conference you have with your students. Write down when the conference occurred and what the conversation was regarding, in some cases teachers can ask students to fill out a form acknowledging what the conference was about and how they can improve. Follow up, check in on how the student has been doing after the conference occurred. This can be short, if the child is improving with their behavior or academics use feedback and praise. If the child has done the opposite of what was expected, this is when you use a different strategy, possibly aiming towards discipline. If needed, you can hold a conference with yourself, student and parent.
Private Conferences fit perfect in the Corrective phase because this phase is the final step for teachers, this helps correct misbehavior within the classroom. If you notice that one particular student is misbehaving, conferences with that single student can help eliminate the behavior or the lack or academic performance. Talking to them privately, let’s the student realize the issue and be able to better themselves. It takes them away from their classmates and other distractions to help fix the occurring problem.
More Information –
Tool Source: http://www.theteachertoolkit.com/index.php/tool/student-conference
My placement is in a fifth grade classroom, which contains 23 students. I believe my school is in an urban area. I have a few students in my classroom who have behavioral slip ups and I had to think of ways to handle their behavioral outburst before they become regular occurrences. I decided to have private conferences with these students. In preparation of these private conferences I had to make sure I knew exactly what I was going to say and how I was going to say it. Fortunately, it was fairly easy to have a private conference due to the fact that there is usually a reason to have the private conference and that makes it easier to address what needs to be discussed with the student. You will notice successes after using this management tool, as I have. After having private conferences with students, they tend to behave better. I feel as though students feel more accountable for their actions after discussing their behaviors together.
My placement is in a third grade classroom. There are a total of 18 students in the classroom. My placement would be considered an urban area. This tool is fairly easy to use. The only preparation you need is to be able to know what you are going to tell the student. There needs to be a reason for the conference- what did the student do and what are ways to prevent the behavior from happening again. I had a total of 2 conferences within an 8 week span of my placement this quarter. It was easy to have these conferences because there must’ve been a big reason for having it. During the private conferences, the students all took it seriously and seemed to have felt bad for their actions. I would first ask the student why they thought I needed to talk to them. I would then ask him/her ways in which they can keep themselves accountable for preventing the same behavior from happening. After every conference I had, the students behaved better. I think this is a great tool to have when you are trying to help a student avoid making the same action/misbehavior. I don’t think there are any adjustments necessary to make the classroom management tool better. It was a great tool that I will definitely be incorporating in my future classroom!
I tested this classroom management tool with my 6-8th grade students. There is a total of about 30 students if you were to combine all 5 of our classes. This tool was easy to prepare for and use as it is just conferencing with students about their academics and where they are at in the class. There wasn’t anything that we had to teach the students with this tool as it was just having a conversation with them about their academics. The success I noticed with this tool is that students were more open about what they may be struggling with in the class during the 1 vs 1 conferences rather than when we would ask them during class. I also noticed that during these times, it was a good way to check-in with students about what may be going on outside of school. I think the one adjustment that I would make would be to have these conferences maybe in the hallway so that the whole class doesn’t hear what is being talked about and to make students feel more comfortable with talking with the teacher and not being embarrassed.