An article in yesterday’s Philly Inquirer shows us that there are signs that we are understanding how important it is that students play a larger role in thinking about their own education. It seems that several schools in the area are moving toward student-run parent conferences.

At the request of principal Gino Priolo, all Tatem third graders and one fifth-grade class are piloting the conferences this year. If feedback is positive, they could expand to other grades next year.

Priolo arrived at Haddonfield from Cherry Hill, which uses student-led conferences in all grades. Walking the halls between conferences, he couldn’t say enough good things about the practice.

"The landscape of public education has changed so much in the last 20 years, and this is one way," Priolo said. "Kids need to be critical thinkers. They need to think about themselves and their learning."

Some parents have told him that they worry about including their children in delicate discussions, but Priolo said parents and teachers should discuss any serious problems well before November.

In the weeks before report cards, he said, a host of tools prepped students for the conference, including videos of student-led conferences, mock conferences with Priolo and teachers, and goal sheets.

And I love this. I don’t understand the traditional high school parent-teacher night where parents run around and try to talk to five or six different teachers for one or two minutes each. One, having done that when I was a student teacher, it’s hard to have many meaningful interactions with parents that way. Two, most parents come without their children so it cuts the most important stakeholder out of the conversation. Three, each teacher really only a small slice of who that child is.

For me, the article only goes half-way. Student-run conferences at the high school level should run hand-in-hand with Advisories or Family Groups or whatever you want to call them. At SLA we’re going to have four-year Advisories where teachers and students travel together for all four years. I think it’s important that students know that there is an adult in the building who knows them as more than just a student of a particular subject, but rather as a whole person — and a person over time.

And it’s important for the parents to know that there is an adult at the school who is looking out for their child… who can see trends in their child’s performance. And it’s important that there’s an adult who knows them too.

And then there’s advisory class itself. It gives kids the chance to see a moment where adults and kids can interact in a different fashion than the traditional classroom. It gives kids a smaller, cohesive community within the school. It allows kids an opportunity to grow up with a small group of other students.

And yes, it can be difficult for some teachers to know what to do with that time — and I do think you need to allow for enough time to make it a meaningful place. I’ve known teachers who have said that they aren’t counselors, and it’s not their job to run a class that often feels "touchy-feely" or just is out of their comfort area. But there are models for Advisory out there — like this one used in Chicago. And again — more than that — Advisory reminds us of what, to me, is the most important thing to remember about being high school teachers:

No subject we teach should be more important than the student in front of us.

Advisory humanizes us. It forces us to look at the whole child and the whole school. It makes us remember, even a little, what the life of a high school student is like outside of the lens of our particular subject area. And then, when you have an advisory system that works… where teachers and students form real communities that matter, then parent-teacher-child conferences where the student voice is every bit as important as the other people around the table just make sense. They don’t seem out of the ordinary. What would seem out of the ordinary is doing it any other way.