This post contains affiliate links.
Every year, somewhere in May or June, teachers sit down for end-of-year student handoff conversations. Sometimes it’s a formal meeting. Sometimes it’s five minutes in the hallway, and sometimes it’s a sticky note left in a cumulative folder. Almost every time, the conversation about the most challenging students lands somewhere between not useful enough and accidentally damaging.
Most teachers go into these student handoff conversations with good intentions – they want to prepare the next teacher, give them a heads up, help them avoid some of the harder moments from the year. But there’s a real difference between helping someone understand a kid and warning them about one. The way we talk about students in these student handoff conversations can follow a child from grade to grade in ways we don’t always see.
So here’s a more useful way to think about it.
The Goal Isn’t to Warn, It’s to Give a Head Start
When you frame student handoff conversations as a warning, the next teacher enters September already on guard. They’re waiting for the behavior they were told about, which means they’re likely to find it. This can sometimes to create the conditions that bring it out! When you frame it as a head start, you’re giving someone a window into who a kid actually is, what they need, and what has and hasn’t worked. That’s genuinely useful information.
Before you say anything about a student, ask yourself: is this information going to help the next teacher connect with this kid faster, or is it going to make them more skeptical before they’ve had a chance to form their own relationship? If it’s the second one, think about how to reframe it or whether it needs to be said at all.
A Simple Framework for Tricky Student Handoff Conversations
If you’re not sure where to start, try organizing your thinking around four things: what the behavior looks like, what’s underneath it, what works, and what you’re still figuring out.
1. What the behavior looks like
Be specific and behavioral, not interpretive. “He sometimes gets up and walks to the back of the room when work gets difficult” is useful. “He’s defiant” is not. The first gives the next teacher something to observe and respond to. The second gives them a label that’s going to color everything before the kid even sits down.
2. What’s underneath it
This is the most important part and also the part most often skipped. If you’ve figured out what’s driving the behavior (anxiety about looking wrong in front of peers, difficulty with transitions, a need for more processing time than the schedule allows), say that clearly. If you haven’t figured it out, say that too. “I was never totally sure what was driving it, but it seemed to get worse around transitions” is more honest and more helpful than a confident explanation that turns out to be wrong.
3. What works
Not what you wish worked. What actually worked, even if it was inconvenient or imperfect. “Giving her two minutes to sit with her feelings before expecting her to engage” might feel like a small thing, but it’s exactly what the next teacher needs to know going into September. Talk about the relationship too, how did this kid need to be approached? Did humor help or did it feel dismissive? Did they need frequent check-ins or did check-ins create pressure? These are the things that take months to figure out on your own.
4. What you’re still figuring out
You don’t have to have answers to everything. Being honest about what you never cracked is actually a gift! It tells the next teacher where to focus their curiosity instead of sending them down roads that led nowhere for you.
A Few Things Worth Being Careful About
Watch the word “manipulative.” I genuinely feel that it’s one of the most overused and least useful words in education. It almost always describes a kid who has learned to get their needs met in ways that are inconvenient for adults. That’s not actually manipulation, that’s a kid who has figured out what works for them in an environment that hasn’t always worked for them. The next teacher deserves to know what the underlying need is, not just the strategy the kid is using to meet it.
Be careful with hard years too. If it was a legitimately difficult year with a student, of course you should be honest about that! Honest can look like “we had a rocky start and it took us a long time to find our footing” not “good luck with that one.” The first is information. The second is a verdict, and kids don’t get to appeal verdicts.
Think carefully before sharing things that are more about your experience of the year than about the student. Sometimes what feels like important context is really just residual frustration looking for somewhere to go. The student handoff conversations aren’t the place for that.
The Part That Matters Most
The information you share in these student handoff conversations (even casually, even with the best intentions) shapes how an adult is going to walk toward a child in September. That’s not a small thing. Most kids who get labeled as difficult are kids who needed something specific that nobody named out loud yet. If you figured out what that something was, passing it on clearly and generously is one of the most important things you can do before you close out your year!!
I invite you to check out my book, Their Best Behavior, which is perfect for summer PD reading, teacher/school book clubs, and the like. It totally aligns with the language and support in this blog post and would be a perfect next step for teachers looking to support behavior in both teacher and student centered ways.
