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We're Psyched! How to Prepare for a Student-Run Convention
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by Jeanne A. Blakeslee
St. Paul's School for Girls
Brooklandville, Maryland
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Introduction
One of the things that psychologists do best is to give psychology away -- presenting what is known within the discipline to anyone who needs that knowledge. Thus, in the midst of the authentic assessment movement, one way I decided to assess my students was to have them put on a "convention" during which they would demonstrate their knowledge to other students, parents, and teachers. This assessment method gradually grew into a full-fledged convention for AP Psychology students -- complete with a keynote speaker and multiple 50-minute sessions on a variety of topics under the general heading, "How to Make the World a Better Place for Adolescents."
Last year, 150 students, teachers, and parents from nine schools in three states attended the convention. Participating students maintain that the convention is the high point of their academic lives -- no small accomplishment, indeed. Our convention is now an event with its own life and dynamic; students from area schools sign up for AP Psych precisely because they want to be part of the AP Psych convention. They are "psyched" for "How to Make the World a Better Place for Adolescents."
Goals and Models
A convention provides an important forum for kids to talk to other kids about academics -- a place where intellectual questions become almost as important as their social lives. Students choose their own presentation topics, and they become experts in that field of inquiry. By conducting purposeful academic research, students discover that, within the field, researchers have disagreements regarding their assumptions about human nature, their research designs, and interpretations of the data. An ideal time to hold the convention would be after the AP Exam is over, but not all of our schools are in session that late. Therefore, we host the convention in late spring, an important time to keep second-semester seniors engaged in their schoolwork.
Since we are all "dressing up for company," students rise to the challenge to do their best work. The excitement of having more than 100 guests share in an academic enterprise provides the kind of energy that allows more to happen than a teacher could otherwise expect. Our students also have the opportunity to see the participating teachers work together to prepare for the convention. As we model collegiality, professionalism, and teamwork -- both behind the scenes and in the way we communicate our mutual decisions -- students also learn to work together to prepare for their presentations.
Format and Scheduling
The format we use for the convention follows the host school's schedule, with 50-minute presentations that coincide with our 50-minute classes. The first two years, this allowed some of our non-AP Psychology students to attend presentations if they had a free period or if their teachers deemed the presentation relevant to their coursework. Now we have so many interested AP Psychology students, we can no longer invite other students; but the 50-minute schedule worked so well that we stayed with it.
The first period of our school day is over an hour long. During that time, we have registration -- manned by students from our school -- and the keynote address. At registration, all students receive programs and folders with complete information on sessions, time, and room assignments. Presenters also pick up their speaker badges. Our convention has the following schedule:
| 9:00 a.m. - 9:30 a.m. |
Registration |
| 9:40 a.m. - 10:30 a.m. |
Keynote Address |
| 10:45 a.m. - 11:35 a.m. |
Session I |
| 11:40 a.m. - 12:15 p.m. |
Lunch |
| 12:20 p.m. - 1:10 p.m. |
Session II |
| 1:15 p.m. - 2:05 p.m. |
Session III |
| 2:10 p.m. |
Closing Reception |
| 2:40 p.m. |
Buses depart |
The summer before the convention takes place, we invite a keynote speaker from a university within reasonable geographic range to participate. We offer a small honorarium for his or her expertise and time. During the three 50-minute sessions that follow the keynote address, five or six students make presentations. Recently, students presented the following topics:
- Prejudice and Stereotyping
- Self-Injurious Behavior
- Happiness
- Smiling
- Humor
- Optimism
- Stress
- Racism
- Homosexuality and Homophobia
- Self-Esteem and Peer-Group Formation
- Parenting
- Video Games
- Substance Use and Abuse
- Violence
- Body Image
- Sleep Deprivation
- Clinical Disorders
- Sexual Behavior
- Learning Disorders
Administrative Support and Planning
When organizing a convention, it is important to get administrative support from the head of the school and the psychology department chairperson. Hosting a convention also requires assistance from the technology department, the secretarial staff, cafeteria and maintenance workers, and those in public relations, so it is important that these staff members become excited about this possibility for their students. The budget for a convention can be as little as $400 -- covering the honorarium for the keynote speaker, folders, badges, and programs.
The first step in organizing a convention is to decide on locations and schedules -- decisions that teachers make all the time. For our student presentations, we needed to arrange for the use of classrooms normally used by other classes. St. Paul's also happens to have a wonderful theater, so I schedule the convention so that the theater is available for our keynote presentation. Location and room arrangements are almost as important to the convention as the quality of each presentation. Your space constraints will be different, so the decisions you make about location and schedule will also be different.
Our time line is roughly as follows:
| Summer |
Chairperson engages keynote speaker from local university. |
| Late summer/early fall |
Chairperson gets commitments from high school colleagues to have students participate as audience and/or presenters. |
| November |
Presenters begin research for review of the literature. |
| December |
Teachers estimate the size of student audience. |
| January |
Presenters submit proposals for presentations. |
| February |
Participating teachers make sure that there are sufficient number of presentations for the size of estimated audience; teachers of presenting students work with teams of presenters to ensure quality. |
| February/March |
Teachers continue to work together so that tech supports are in place and the quality of presentations is sufficiently high. |
| March |
Teachers assign audience members to presentations. |
| March/April |
Students practice presentations with their teachers. |
| April |
Convention |
Flexibility is crucial in planning this kind of event. Whatever can go wrong just might. We have had weather challenges, sickness, technology disasters, lunchroom problems, and inattentive audiences. Each year we identify one improvement to make the following year. Recently, we decided to change our lunch plan, because the cafeteria line does not move quickly enough to absorb all of our guests. Therefore, this year, we will have boxed lunches for all participants. Because the students want to have more time to talk with people from other schools, but are hesitant to do so, we are going to assign students to lunch tables and provide guide questions to help them begin conversations. In the future, we also plan to offer poster sessions to supplement the regular presentations.
We have already maximized our use of space -- we cannot accommodate all the students and other guests who want to come. We would have never envisioned that possibility four years ago. Our school's first convention had eight student presentations, each offered twice. One colleague from a nearby public school brought a bus of 35 students to be the audience. Our own students and parents supplemented that audience. Last year we had 16 presentations -- each offered only once -- and 150 students from public and private schools in the area. It is important to start small and to grow proportionately each year rather than begin on too grand a scale. Networking is also important -- get other teachers to support your convention, network with local college and university psychology departments, and use alumni and parent contacts. The first priority is for all the student presenters to have an audience; you can add more presentations in later years.
Student Preparation
Our convention has grown, so we now have five different teachers preparing student presenters. Three of us are from independent schools, one from a Catholic school, and one from a public high school. Each of us prepares our students in different ways, although all presentations involve good academic research. Most students base their presentations on a review of the academic literature. However, one of our teachers requires her students to conduct their own research to support their presentation -- and the AP Statistics class helps them crunch the data.
Because our students host the convention, I do require every student to participate in a presentation. My colleagues from other schools give their students a choice about participating. One teacher allows her students to present at the convention or write a 20-page paper. Another chooses the best of many classroom presentations. Two others are beginning the process: they have each attended the convention with their students, and this year their schools will join the ranks of preparing students to present at the convention.
By working together, we have found that a student-run convention is not only possible, it is also a good deal of fun for both students and teachers. The advice each of the five of us would give to teachers beginning a student-centered convention would be to:
- Start small
- Have high expectations
- Plan carefully
- Communicate with one another regularly
- Practice all presentations until (almost) perfect
- Have fun with the process as well as the result
The most unusual aspect of a student-run convention is that it is for the presenters, not the audience. The presenters achieve a professionalism not easily realized. They attain content proficiency and gain research and organizational skills. Most importantly, they become excited about academics: they savor conversations with other AP students about what they have learned. For those of us who work hard to prepare our students for the big day, that is the most important payoff.
Jeanne Blakeslee is the dean of students and director of student services at St. Paul's School for Girls in Brooklandville, Maryland. She has taught psychology for 26 years and AP Psychology since 1992. Jeanne has served as an AP Exam Reader since 2000. She has been a member of Teachers of Psychology in Secondary Schools (TOPSS) since its inception in 1992 and received an Excellence in Teaching Award from TOPSS in 2002.
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