Conferring

Conferring
"Coaching and conferring take courage. It's not easy to pull up alongside a perfectly happy, thoroughly engaged reader and interrupt, "Could you tell me how your reading has been going?" This is especially true if we are new at conferring and aren't at all sure wat to research or decide, say or teach. The student turns trusting eyes to us, and we feel exposed in their gaze. "Am I doing more harm than good? At least she was reading before!" we think to ourselves. But we mustn't be too timid to try. Our wisdom, our experience, and our teaching are too valuable to run untapped within us. Just as each book, well read, makes children better readers, each conference, well taught, makes us better teachers. Our children deserve our bravest selves" (Calkins, pg 117).