Conferencing

     The dreaded student teacher interaction. When I think back to my experiences with conferencing, I remember my teachers telling me what I needed to work on, making me feel inadequate. This is not the type of conferencing that Ray discusses. This should be a productive and useful tool for both teacher and student. Its an open ended conversation for the teacher to find out where students strengths are and what needs work, not simply by telling students what they are doing wrong but by prompting questions so that students can evaluate their own work. I think that this is the key to holding a successful conference. Also, Ray puts such an importance upon conferencing that the students really respect it. Ray mentions how important the way we ask questions can be. Even a small change of a sentence can change a one worded answer into an explanation. Going even further in depth, Ray attempts to help teach us, wanna be teachers, how to and how important the right question is. I feel as if I have never had an issue with posing meaningful questions that expect insightful comments but it is nice to have a few guide lines to fall back on.