Malia Leader:
What I like about SLCs is that I get to share my art and my work and my personality to my teachers and my parents.

Alec Patton:
This is High Tech High Unboxed. I’m Alec Patton, and that was Malia Leader, a fourth grade student at High Tech Elementary North County, talking about student-led conferences or SLCs. Later in the episode, you’re going to hear from Malia’s mom, Shani, a veteran teacher and school leader who’s worked at several high-tech high schools. And I want to mention up top, this is the second episode of a two-part series about student-led conferences. If you don’t really know what a student-led conference is, listen to the first episode first. It’s called Ron Berger on Student-Led Conferences. For everyone who’s got at least a passing familiarity with student-led conferences, here’s Malia’s advice for students and teachers.

Malia Leader:
The advice I’d give is don’t be shy. Don’t be scared, because you’re just sharing your work and your thoughts and your personality to your parents and your teacher, and it’s a way to learn. Another thing I like about SLCs is that it’s also a way for me to know my teacher and to know how she or he can care and be able to have fun helping teach and helping us learn. The advice I have for my teachers is giving their students good thoughts so that they don’t feel nervous before they start.

Alec Patton:
Shani also talked to her son, Huxley, about SLCs. Huxley’s in first grade, so he did his first SLCs in kindergarten last year. Here’s what he has to say, and you’ll hear Shani’s voice in this clip too, a little bit.

Huxley Leader:
It’s important to do SLC because you going in a meeting and you talk about what you kind of did with writing, reading, math, and other stuff like that, and you kind of just talk about some of the days that was good and bad, and we just talk about school.

Shani Leader:
How does it make you feel when your teacher and your parents are listening to you?

Huxley Leader:
Well, I’m really excited to do the meeting, but I feel good. Well, I think I’ll feel good.

Shani Leader:
Okay. Were you nervous when you did yours?

Huxley Leader:
Kind of shy, but I felt nervous.

Shani Leader:
Yeah. All right. Anything else you want to share about an SLC?

Huxley Leader:
Well, that’s all I know now about a SLC.

Alec Patton:
Those are Malia and Huxley’s takes. Now we’re going to hear from Shani. Shani’s worked at High Tech High since 2003, where she’s been founding art teacher at three different high-tech high schools. She’s taught both middle and high school. She’s been a dean, a school director, and as of this year, the lead designer of innovation and pedagogy at the High Tech High Graduate School of Education. And for Shani, here’s what student-led conferences are all about.

Shani Leader:
I mean, the idea behind student-led conferences, you want to hear from the kids and you want to hear about their process of learning and what’s important to them. And I’ve been thinking a lot about education and how do we find more spaces for kids to do that and for adults to just kind of step back and listen, because they have so much to say and oftentimes we don’t give them the opportunity to say it.

Alec Patton:
At High Tech High schools, student-led conferences happen twice a year, once in the fall and once in the spring.

Shani Leader:
They never get old. You never sit through a student-led conference and think it’s a waste of your time. It’s always a great experience. It’s been a great experience for me as a teacher, as an administrator being able to sit in on them, and as a parent. It just never gets old.

Alec Patton:
Why not?

Shani Leader:
They don’t get old because kids always have something to say that’s interesting. I mean, if we’re educators, we’re teachers, we’re interested in what kids have to say, they’re always going to bring something different.

Alec Patton:
I want to dig at that a little bit, because I think kids always have interesting things to say and it can be really hard to do the same thing with 50 or 100 kids. What is it about SLCs that make them immune to that?

Shani Leader:
You know what I think it is? I think it’s because it’s all about that individual student. There’s nothing crafted that they’re supposed to say, necessarily. It’s about their identity and learning about them. And I think too, there’s something really interesting that you learn about a kid when they’re interacting with their family and you get to be a part of that. That’s not something that you get to see as a teacher. You don’t get to see the interaction between the student and the family. And I’ve noticed that as a parent, too. As an educator, it’s hard to step back, but what I love about being a parent in those is seeing the interaction between your kid and the teacher.

Alec Patton:
Yeah. How should a kid prepare for an SLC?

Shani Leader:
I think it’s really important to practice just having conversations, and I think our kids do that a lot at High Tech through peer conversation and through group work and things like that. But definitely having them kind of think through what their process of learning is and what their hopes are and what their dreams are and things like that. Having them either write it out or practice it or both ahead of time, I think, is important.

Alec Patton:
And it isn’t just the students who need preparation and support.

Shani Leader:
Sometimes the parents need some guidance around how to ask questions and what types of questions to ask. I definitely have gone into SLCs before where parents have a very specific agenda of wanting to be like, “Well, why are you getting a certain grade in a certain class,” or something, and we want to kind of steer the conversation away from that and make it more about process and learning and really honoring the students. So maybe having some questions where the parents have some support in giving warm feedback and things like that first.

Alec Patton:
And how do you that? How do you train a parent for an SLC?

Shani Leader:
That’s a good question. Well, a lot of parents, they definitely get easier as you’re doing an SLC with a senior is different from doing an SLC with a ninth grade parent, because they get used to just sitting and listening and knowing that it’s sort of the student’s show and not theirs. So practice is one way. Another way, I think, is giving some guidance ahead of time for parents so that they know what to expect, because it is new, oftentimes, for parents to kind of step back in that space.

Alec Patton:
This became very real for Shani when she attended her first SLC as a parent when Malia was in kindergarten. I asked Shani what struck her most about that.

Shani Leader:
I think the biggest takeaway and maybe surprise to me was that I was nervous. And for somebody who has done a lot of these, I was like, why am I feeling that way? That is so strange. But it was nice to be able to put myself in the parents’ shoes in that moment of like, oh, I don’t really know. Even though I know what an SLC is, I’m not really sure what to expect. And I noticed that my kid was a little bit nervous, and so that made me a little bit nervous. And so that was my biggest surprise and takeaway, I think. And I just really wanted my kid to do well, and so that was in my mind.

Alec Patton:
What do you think you were nervous about?

Shani Leader:
I think, I mean, part of it, like I said, was just knowing that they were nervous, especially my youngest one. He did his first one when he was five, and so he was just like, “What do I say? I forget what an SLC is.” He just needed a lot of reminders of, it’s okay, you’re just talking about yourself. There’s not a right or wrong here. He needed a lot of encouragement in that way. So I think it was just that standpoint that kind of made me like, oh, I hope they’re okay.

Alec Patton:
What advice does parent Shani have for teacher Shani?

Shani Leader:
Parent Shani would tell teacher Shani that a parent might be nervous even if they know what to expect with an SLC. So even if you sent an email sharing, hey, these are the steps, and your student is going to be the one doing most of the talking, and you’re just there to listen, just a reminder that the parents might be a little bit nervous too, and they might be a little bit worried about their kid doing well. And so it’s just kind of that reminder to take a step back and realize that this is kind of a big deal. And for those of us who have done this many times, it might not feel that way, but for the kid and the parent, it is a big deal.

Alec Patton:
And what do you value most about the SLCs as a parent?

Shani Leader:
There are, I think, were two things. One, I love seeing the teacher interact with my child and my child interact with the teacher, and just see what that dynamic looked like and felt like. And it always made me feel good, because my kids have had great teachers, and so to see that interaction has always been really reassuring. And then just to hear my kid really just talk and take the lead on a conversation, even when they’re really little, is pretty empowering and pretty special. Again, even after seeing a lot of these, that moment is still really special to me.

Alec Patton:
Shani and I finished by talking about how to make time for SLCs as a school leader.

Shani Leader:
Yeah, I mean, that has to be really intentional and it has to be part of your structures with the year. So for us, we made sure that we had at least two half days for students. So students would leave before lunch, and then that way the teachers had all afternoon. And generally, we ended up making meetings in the mornings too. And that was important for families who work. You have to have some early morning sessions and you have to have some later evening sessions, but there’s not enough time to do all of it if you don’t structure some time in your day, so those half days were really important.

Alec Patton:
And what do you find that you most needed to help teachers with?

Shani Leader:
I think that was the biggest thing, is making sure that there was the time and that the schedules, having a little bit of sport with, here’s a template for schedules, so that teachers aren’t spending a long time trying to figure out what a schedule might look like. So making sure that we kind of shared those across teams. And I also like to give a little bit of freedom within the way that they’re structured as far as how much time for questioning, how much time in between. Some teachers didn’t mind going late in the evening and had more time in between. And some teachers who have kids at home, they need to go a little bit earlier.

So I think from a director or leadership standpoint, there does need to be a little bit of flexibility and autonomy for teachers around how they schedule it, and I think too around the questions that teachers think are important for their classes and that kind of thing. And I think that piece is really important. You don’t want it to feel rushed. You want it to feel like you’re really giving the student and the family the time that they deserve and honoring the student’s voice. So definitely a mistake I’ve made before is sort of scheduling them back to back to back to back, but having enough time in between to let it go a little bit over if it needs to.

Alec Patton:
High Tech High Unboxed is hosted and produced by me, Alec Patton. Our theme music is by Brother Herschel. Huge thanks this week to Shani, Malia, and Huxley. You can find links to lots of resources for student-led conferences, including my interview with Ron Berger, in the show notes. Thanks for listening.