Grade-level team meetings are held daily and include classroom and special education teachers, the unified arts teacher, the counselor, and the reading teacher. On the day that the sixth grade team was observed, the meeting was devoted to a discussion of the students - no bureaucratic details or other teacher business was raised. Focus for these meetings is usually split evenly between the curriculum and individual students. This meeting was to decide which students to refer to mentors from Big Brothers/Big Sisters. Everyone seemed familiar with the lives and challenges of every student whose name was mentioned, and attitudes toward the students were unfailingly respectful and constructive. The question came down to which students actually needed the steady influence of a mentoring relationship, and which needed additional help in their studies, which could be provided by tutors available through the America Reads* program at the University of Illinois.

Sometimes, parents are invited to a team meeting to discuss how to deal with a problem their child is having. According to the sixth grade counselor, including the parent serves several purposes:

1. It involves the parent in the decision-making process, rather than just notifying the parent of decisions already made.
2. It conveys the message, "We're all in this together, trying to help this kid."
3. It helps parents realize that they too have a responsibility for involving themselves in the process of solving the problem.

Involving parents makes the process more time-consuming, but the counselor says it's worth it. In an "intimate, non-threatening, pro-active" setting, the counselor says, parents are able to reflect on their child's life and behavior and even share "what stories the child is telling at home" (often stories blaming the school), thus helping decrease the distance between home and school.

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