Greetings from Your Leadership Team,
Learner led conferences will be held Thursday, March 22, and Friday, March 23. Facilitators also may offer additional times. Please keep an eye out of for signups from your learner’s facilitator.
What to Expect at Learner-Led Conferences
Learner-led conferences offer your learner not only a real voice in the assessment of their learning, but it also offers practice in speaking to their strengths. This will prepare them for the real-life experience of talking to potential employers as they get older. This process is more of a performance than an evaluation; your learner will compile what s/he has been learning and review this process with you, the family member.
The first conference can be overwhelming and learners may be nervous. They will need support from you. Facilitators are at the conference for support only. All of the information about a learner’s work, progress, behavior, goals and grades will come from the learner. If you would like to talk to a facilitator about specifics, there will be signup sheets to schedule a time with your learner’s advisor at a later date.
What is the Role of the Parent at an LLC?
Parents play an important supportive role in this process. The focus of the conference is on learning and growth, not simply a “show and tell” display of work. It is a time for families to “sit beside” their child, listen to and trust their child’s assessment of his/her own learning, and ask good questions. Families may also work with the child to set new goals based on the discussion during the conference.
Leave It Better than You Found It
One of our iLEAD expectations is to “Leave it Better Than You Found It.” When we ask our learners what we mean by this, they will often say, “clean up after yourself,” or “to leave a place better than you find it, you have to pick up some other people’s trash,” for example a classroom or the play yard. Simplistically, they’ve got the idea. We make sure we clean up after ourselves, and try to leave the play yard, classroom or common areas nicer than we found them.
Zooming out a bit, what if we used this expectation to also apply to relationships? What if we made leaving our relationships with others better than we find them a priority? Each time we meet with another person or work with another person, we both leave the experience better off than when we began. Imagine the world of possibilities.
Zooming out even further, what if we used this expectation to also apply to the world?
The modern world can be a frightening place. Often things happen, and our kids — even us adults — may feel like there’s a lack of control. Sometimes the simplest way to make a difference is in the day-to-day encounters we have with each other.
This week, we encourage our SCVi Family — our learners, our families, and our staff — to Leave It Better Than You Found It. Share your stories with us online or by emailing them to leadership@scvi-k12.org
We look forward to hearing about your experiences!
Your Leadership Team