“Talking in class.” For many adults, this charged phrase may conjure up memories of times when we were asked to be quiet in a classroom so that we (and others) could focus on our individual work. But at Long-View, as in many schools that lift up the practices of dialogic teaching and inquiry learning, “talking in class” – in larger group conversations, with partners, and between individual learners and teachers – is foundational to the way we learn. 

One place where this ethic manifests is in the way that Literacy teachers at Long-View most frequently give feedback: individual “conferences” between a learner and a teacher. Our reading and writing conferences aren’t a once-a-semester affair, but happen in the course of every day. These brief interactions provide timely, individualized, holistic feedback on what’s happening at a particular moment in a child’s reading or writing life – and do so, critically, in a way that permits the child to engage dialogically with that feedback in real time….

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