Dear TCS Community,
Portfolio conferences are coming up today and tomorrow. Here’s why the conferences are an integral part of a TCS education.
Portfolio conferences among students, parents, and teachers begin with Ginny and Tamara’s classes, this year slated for the spring. For that age level, the teacher invites students to pick a sampling of work that shows the progress they have made to that point in the year. Parents and children take time in the library or the common room to review the portfolio together. Parent-teacher conferences follow soon after portfolio conferences.
This week, students in each of the older classes will take the portfolio conference process to a next level, assuming increasing responsibility for the direction of the conference with their teachers and parents. In preparation for the portfolio conferences, teachers coach students on how to present their work in relation to the learning goals established at the beginning of the school year.
I was curious about the impact that portfolio conferences have on students, parents, and learning at Touchstone. So I went directly to one of the constituencies—OSP students—to get their take on the conferences. Here are three questions I asked them, with a sampling of their thoughtful responses:
What was an easy part of portfolio conferences?
- Showing my work to tell a story about what I have learned
- Being able to talk with my parents and teachers about my progress
- Picking out the pieces and remembering particular advances for me
What was a difficult part of the portfolio conferences?
- Not getting to share everything
- Keeping up with my goals and matching them to the work I assemble
- Talking about the meaning of my work as I show my work
What did you learn from the portfolio conferences?
- How to present something important to me
- How to sum up my work and explain it
- How I use what I do best to set new goals for what needs work
Through successive years of portfolio assessments, our students learn valuable skills and lessons, as the OSP responses show. One OSP student commented that portfolio conferences helped him remember how his way of learning is different from that of his classmates’. TCS students not only understand how they learn best; they also figure out how others around them learn. This is fresh evidence that learning at Touchstone is a collective process for our students—from gathering materials that highlight a year to talking with parents and teachers about their work to operating with classmates as a team.
Best wishes for the winter break,
Don Grace, Head of School