Earlier this month, Edutopia published a brilliant article by a high school teacher named Jori Krulder. You can find it here: 5-Minute Writing Conferences.

Ms. Krulder lists the process she uses, step-by-step, for meeting with 30 students over the course of their writing projects. I immediately noticed that these were steps I could follow myself, even though my students are adult learners and my classroom is now online. Indeed, the majority of this article is devoted to explaining her process -- that alone is a good reason to check it out.

But it's the last few paragraphs that changed me. See, Ms. Krulder got some positive results she'd expected; but she also got a huge one that she hadn't expected. Here's what she has to say about them:

"With individually targeted instruction, students were more likely to pay attention to and apply the ideas they learned from the conference. This was immediately apparent in the improvement in scores between the original and revised essay drafts. (Expected.)

"I was able to communicate my feedback to students much more clearly than I had through my previous brief and often illegible comments on their papers. (Expected.)

"Students were able to ask questions about writing that they were unable or unwilling to ask in front of the class. Because of this, I better understood how to improve my writing instruction. (Expected.)

"An unintended consequence of conferencing with students was a marked change in the culture of my class. It seems obvious to me now, in retrospect, that talking with each of my students and listening individually to their needs would improve our relationships, but with the day-to-day demands that teachers face, it’s easy to forget the immense value of just a few minutes of connection." (WOW! Not expected, but great!)

I have already added individual writing conferences to the Power to Write online program. Yes, this means that class sizes will necessarily be smaller than they could be without those conferences. But I'm convinced that the bonds that develop among our students and with our instructors will at least double the value our students receive from the training. And isn't that the most important thing?