If you have been to a parent-teacher conference before, this one will feel different. Your daughter runs it. Here is how the 25 minutes will go and what your job is while she does.

The big idea

A Scholar-Led Conference flips the usual meeting. Instead of a teacher telling you how your daughter is doing, your daughter tells you, with evidence. She has spent weeks in Crew preparing: choosing work samples from each class, writing reflections on them, reading her own JumpRope data, and rating herself on our Habits of Mind. On conference day she presents all of it to you and her Crew Leader.

She is not performing. She is practicing something we want her to be able to do for the rest of her life: look at her own work honestly, say what she is proud of, say where she is struggling, and make a plan. By 8th grade, that same skill becomes her Passage Portfolio Presentation in front of a community panel.

Where this comes from

Lillie May is an EL Education school, and our conferences follow EL’s model of student-engaged assessment: a scholar keeps the evidence of her own learning, speaks to her mastery, her character, and the quality of her work, and presents it to her family, with her Crew Leader preparing her every step of the way. That is the structure, and it is a good one.

But a structure is not a reason. The reason is older than any model, and it belongs to women who built schools when no one would build them for their children.

In 1909 Nannie Helen Burroughs opened a school for Black girls on a hill in Washington with almost no money and a motto that dared anyone to doubt her: We specialize in the wholly impossible. Her girls were expected to stand up, speak plainly, and account for their own work, because she knew the world would demand it of them and give them no credit in advance.

Septima Clark taught grown men and women on the Sea Islands to read the documents that governed their lives and to sign their own names to them. Her Citizenship Schools understood something we still believe: a person who can read her own record cannot be told what it says.

Antonia Pantoja founded ASPIRA in New York in 1961 so that Puerto Rican teenagers would stop waiting to be led. In ASPIRA clubs the young people ran the meetings, set the goals, and answered for them. She called them aspirantes, the ones who aspire.

And Dr. Lillie May Carroll Jackson organized this city on the same conviction: that people who are told to be quiet can learn to speak with evidence, together, until they are heard.

So when your daughter sits at that table and reads her own data to you, she is not performing an exercise from a book. She is doing what these women prepared girls to do. She is giving an account of herself, on her own terms, to people who love her and expect much of her. That is the whole point. It is also why we ask you to come.

Who is in the room

Your scholar, you (and anyone else from home you bring), and her Crew Leader. Her Crew Leader is the adult who knows her best at school. Crew is our advisory: a small group of scholars who stay together with one adult all year. If you want to know how Crew works, read about Crew at LMCJ. Her subject teachers are not usually in the room. If you want to talk with one of them, tell the Crew Leader and we will set it up separately.

How the 25 minutes go

• Minute 0–1WELCOME
  She greets you and introduces her Crew Leader.She thanks you for coming and tells you why it matters to her that you are here. Let her do this part. It is harder than it looks.
• Minute 1–16HER WORK
  She walks you through one piece of work from each class.This is the heart of the conference and it gets the most time. For each piece she explains the learning target (what she was supposed to learn), what she actually learned, how she made it, and what she would do differently next time. She will use her deck or notecards as a guide, not a script. Ask her to show you the hard part.
• Minute 16–20HER HABITS
  She rates herself on the six Habits of Mind (HOME) and backs it up.Integrity, Active Citizenship, Collaboration, Inquiry, Responsibility, Perseverance. She has counted her JumpRope comments and picked examples. This is the part where honesty matters most.
• Minute 20–22HER GRADES
  She shows you her JumpRope grades and explains them.Not just the number: why it is what it is, and whether it went up or down since last trimester. Guide 3 helps you follow along.
• Minute 22–24HER BENCHMARKS
  She shares her benchmark assessments and what they tell her.Her most recent i-Ready reading and math diagnostic, and her MCAP results, which are recorded on her scholar grade check sheet. She names where she is on grade level, where she is not yet, and the goal she has set for the spring. This is her data, and she should be the one reading it to you.
• Minute 24–25CLOSE
  She names her goal, her Crew Leader adds what she sees, and you ask your questions.Then she thanks you both. That is your cue for Guide 2.

Your job

Listen more than you talk, especially in the first fifteen minutes. Let her get through her material even if she stumbles. Nod. Ask her to show you the piece she is most proud of. Save the harder questions for the end, and ask them to her, not to the Crew Leader. When she says something you disagree with, ask her what evidence she has. That is exactly what we ask her every day.

If something serious comes up that needs an adult-to-adult conversation, say so, and the Crew Leader will find a time with you outside the conference. The 25 minutes belong to your scholar.

“How’s school going?” gets you “fine.” These get you further. Pick three or four. You do not need all of them, and you do not need to read them off a page. The best question is the one that follows what she just said.

A few to hold back

Questions that go straight to the Crew Leader over her head (“Is she behaving?”) take the conference away from her. If you want the adult read on something, ask it after she finishes, and ask it in front of her: “Ms. Cole, does that match what you see?” She learns that the adults in her life compare notes, and that there is nothing to hide.

JumpRope is where we keep her grades, and it looks different from the report cards you grew up with. Add her i-Ready and MCAP benchmarks and there is a lot on the table. Ten minutes with this guide and you will be able to follow everything she shows you.

Logging in

Families and scholars use her Lillie May email address and password to sign in to JumpRope. Grades are updated every week, so you can check in any time, not just before conferences. If she has forgotten her login, her Crew Leader can reset it. If you do not have the login link, her Crew Leader can send it to you.

How a grade is built

Every class grade at Lillie May has two parts. Two-thirds is academic: her work on grade-level standards, measured through classwork, quizzes (formative assessments), and unit tests (summative assessments). One-third is HOME, our six Habits of Mind. So a scholar can know the material cold and still see her grade pulled down by how she shows up, or the reverse. When she explains a grade at the conference, ask her which part is driving it.

The six Habits of Mind

Teachers leave HOME comments in JumpRope through the trimester, positive and negative. Before the conference she counts them and rates herself on each habit from 4 to 1. Here is what each habit means, in the words we use with her.

The 4-to-1 scale

Her benchmark assessments

JumpRope tells you how she is doing in her classes. Benchmarks tell you how she is doing against the grade level, and she will bring both to the conference.

• i-Ready is a reading and math diagnostic she takes three times a year: fall, winter, and spring. It reports the grade level she is currently working at in each subject, how much she has grown since the last one, and the skill areas to build. Ask her which areas it flagged and whether she agrees.
• MCAP is Maryland’s state test in English language arts and math, given each spring. Her most recent MCAP results are recorded on her scholar grade check sheet, which she brings to the conference along with the goal she has set for this spring. She should be able to tell you her level and what she is doing to move it.

A word on the two: an i-Ready result is a snapshot from one morning, and MCAP is one test on one week. Neither is the whole story, and we do not treat them as one. Their job is to help us adjust teaching so every scholar gets what she needs as she moves up. What we care about is that she can read them, tell you what they mean, and say what she is going to do next.

Reading the trimester

Our year runs in three trimesters, and there is a conference in each one. At the conference she will show you last trimester’s final grade next to this trimester’s current grade for every class: ELA, Math, Science, Humanities, Resource, and Crew. Look for the big moves, up or down, and ask her to tell the story behind one of them. A grade that dropped usually has a reason she already knows.

This is your conference. Nobody is going to run it for you, and nobody should. Here is everything to have ready and everything to practice. Check them off with your Crew or with someone at home.

Have ready

• One artifact from each class, with the reflection finished.For each one you can say: the learning target, what you learned, the steps you took to make it, and what you would do to push it to higher quality.

• Your JumpRope grades: last trimester’s final and this trimester’s current, every class.Know the story of one big change, up or down.

• Your benchmark data: your most recent i-Ready reading and math results, and your scholar grade check sheet with your MCAP results and your goal for the spring.Know your current grade level in each, one skill area you are working on, and what you are doing about it.

• Your HOME self-ratings, 4 to 1, with a JumpRope comment or a real example for each one.Count the positive and negative comments first. Rate yourself honestly. Your family and your Crew Leader can both see the comments.

• One goal for the next trimester and one thing you need from home to reach it.

• Your notecards or portfolio site, open and in order.A guide, not a script. If you can only say it by reading it, you do not know it yet.

Practice until you can do all ten

This is what your Crew Leader and your practice partner are watching for. Be kind, be honest, be helpful when you check a sister.

• Eye contact, most of the time.

• A voice people can hear: right volume, right speed, right tone.

• Greet your grown-up. Introduce or reintroduce your Crew Leader. Welcome everyone.

• Thank your grown-up for being here and say why it matters to you.

• Tell them what you are going to cover before you cover it.

• Use your notecards or slides without reading from them.

• For every artifact: the learning target, the learning, the process, and next steps. All four.

• Show your scores, grades and benchmarks, explain them, and say why they matter.

• Present your HOME targets with honesty and openness.

• Thank your grown-up and your Crew Leader. Ask if they have questions.