During the conference, the students asked their parents to write any questions they had on an index card and to hold their questions until the end. This gave the students uninterrupted time to make their presentations.
I feel the student-led conferences empowered students and helped them claim ownership of their education. In our case, it was a responsibility that our student enjoyed.
parents attended the conference without their child and discussed their child's performance with the advisor, who served as an advocate for the student.
(1) a guiding structure for the conference; (2) a way to prepare students to run their own conferences; (3) a method of communicating the new format to parents and colleagues; and (4) the procedural operations that we would need to develop.
select only a few items for discussion during the conference
The students learned that they would do all the talking and that the advisor was there basically for moral support. (The team instructed the advisors to intervene only when students became bogged down or if parents overshadowed them.)
Once their portfolios were complete, students rehearsed the script three times with classmates as stand-in parents.