This year is Lakeland High School’s second year participating in student-led conferences (SLC). 

The SLCs started last year for the class of 2024. 

The SLC will eliminate teachers from the conference, so parents have an opportunity to hear from their children about what they have learned this year. 

“This is an event where the students lead the conversation with their family members regarding what they are learning as opposed to the teacher or parent leading the conversation,” Derrick said. 

Principal Trent Derrick decided to bring this idea to LHS after schools in the district started using it. 

“Last year was the first year we had SLCs at LHS; however, this is the 4th year I believe that SLCs have occurred at the elementary and middle school level,” Derrick said. 

Derrick’s expectations from SLC are to help students embrace their education. 

“The goal of SLC is to empower our students to take more ownership of their learning. Our hope is that students take the time to highlight what they have accomplished throughout the year and communicate their learning to their parents or family members,” Derrick mentioned. 

Teachers at Lakeland are very appreciative of the opportunity that the freshmen and sophomores have this year. 

Next year the freshmen, sophomores, and juniors will have the opportunity to participate in SLC. By 2024, all grades will be participating in the SLCs. 

Adam Porth, a science teacher at LHS, hopes that this process will help the students take charge of their academic process.

“This will help students take leadership of their work and to actually start to care about it more. It helps them focus on their own work instead of depending on someone else to tell their parents what they have done this year,” Porth said.

The idea of SLC has begun to spread to younger grades too. 

“Elementary schools are actually starting to let kindergarteners do SLC so they can start at a young age,” Porth mentioned.  

Students at LHS are not as appreciative of the idea of doing SLC. 

Zoee Young thinks that there are more effective ways to show parents. 

“I don’t really see the point of the student-led conferences. Our parents get weekly reports of our grades, so we should not have to miss a school day to show them our grades,” Young said. 

“If parents want to know how their kids are doing in school, they should just go talk to our teachers because chances are students are not going to tell the truth, and will just make things up for the student-led conferences. It is very annoying” Young also mentioned.  

Another student of the 2024 class, Alyssa Byrne is not a fan of SLC either. 

“My parents don’t like coming to it. It just seems pointless when they can check our grades. It also takes away from a regular school day that we could go to,” Byrne said.

Students and staff have very different views about SLCs and if they are actually helpful. 

Does this program really help out students?