Hi all! Today we're going to be digging into one of the most crucial relationships to develop early on in each and every school year: the connection between your students' school lives and their home lives.
Specifically, I'll be outlining 4 strategies that I use to maintain communication in my own classroom, along with my rationale for why I choose to use these strategies and how I perceive them to work during the day-to-day.
I aim to be an accessible and transparent teacher. That doesn't mean I'm on call 24/7 answering emails and fielding questions about assignment details and deadlines (that's just not reasonable). What it does mean is that I have structures in place, workshopped and encouraged by my administration and colleagues, to enable parent or guardian communication (originating from either home or school) and peel back the curtain that so often separates the "school" part of a student's day from the "home" part.
Before I get into the specifics of the structures I've got in place, though, I want to get into why I find these structures valuable and how, I believe, they reduce stress and increase flow in my classroom.
If you ask me what I used to think of when I heard the phrase "parent/teacher" communication, images of "sign here" lines on less than optimal tests and terse phone calls relaying bad behavior would've come to mind. And, while it is certainly important to communicate when things aren't going as well as they could in the classroom, using those interactions as the basis for your entire relationship with a student's home life is setting it up to be negative at worst, nonexistent at best.
The first time you call or email a parent shouldn't be when there's a problem. The second time you call or email a parent (after that "welcome back" email or classroom policy paper you send home) shouldn't be when there's a problem. You don't want to inundate parents and guardians with excessive emails, but you want to open the lines of communication early on and strive to keep them open as long as their child is your student.
Eliminating the "home vs. school" mentality that students (and, by extension parents) can genuinely absorb and believe is the first goal. You want to let everyone know, student and parent, that you're all on the same side: you want the best possible education for the student in your care. To that end, you will set expectations, help the students meet them and explore their potential, and be as clear and honest as possible as you do it. The outcome of learning isn't on any one party, but rather it's a joint effort between all involved.
Setting communication lines early on also allows you to establish a professional procedure that suits your habits. For example, my preferred method of communication is generally email (I process information best through words, if you couldn't tell). The procedure in my classroom is that emails regarding assignments, deadlines, and anything else related to class are always welcome, and I will always respond by the next school day at the latest (sometimes it's quicker than that, but that's not always a guarantee). However, my students (and their parents or guardians) have all be prepped with my classroom policy: if you are struggling locating/completing/etc. an assignment and you email me to detail the issue you're having, I'll work with you the next time we have class to correct the issue and put you on the right path. You won't lose any points, you can have more time to finish up the work; the rule in my class is to let me know what the problem is and not stress.
Because what good does stirring up frustration, both in my student and their parents, ultimately achieve? And that is really the goal of positive parent communication: preemptively creating a network to help minimize stress related to school while also utilizing the resources connected to the parent or guardian. In the end, your students' parents are the ones most invested in their education, their first, longest, and greatest teachers, and the ones who deserve to have their voices heard as they advocate for what's best for their kids.
So why leave them in the dark?
The remainder of this post will be detailing 4 ways in which I endeavor to keep the lines of communication always open in my classroom. Also, before I move on, it is important to note that you should always identify and accommodate the best way/time to contact a student's parent or guardian. I mentioned previously that I prefer emails when away from school (since I believe that keeps professional boundaries in place/I don't give out my cell number), but I have arranged phone conversations and Skype calls upon request.
1. The Phillips Flier: I really owe my principal for this one. When I first started teaching, I had the idea for a newsletter updating parents on the important day-to-day things going on in class: assignment deadlines, core novels, upcoming projects, etc. After discussing this idea with my principal (who gave me the fun name, by the way), I eventually settled on a weekly email blast detailing the week to come.
This format appealed to me because an email allowed me to link in materials (Activity Lists, Study Guides, Project Outlines, and the like) while also enabling parents and guardians to read and reread the material with their own schedules. This procedure is set in place from the very first week of school: parents are notified of the Flier via the emails on file and a paper document sent home with their student outlining my class's expectations. The Flier is sent out every Sunday for the upcoming week (technically the deadline I set for myself is each Monday, but I like to be early if I can help it). No personal student information is ever contained in the Flier; no names are mentioned. The point of the Phillips Flier is to open communication, share resources, and inform all parties of important dates.
This procedure is really quite easy to implement, as you're not writing personalized emails. One short email a week is all you need, but that one short email opens the door for all sorts of necessary dialogues to take place. I can't tell you how many times a parent or guardian has responded to the Phillips Flier with a question they have or a concern they'd like to raise. These questions and concerns aren't often a direct result of the Flier, but, by sending out a quick email with some necessary information, many parents and guardians feel they have a means to contact where they might not have otherwise.
2. Assignment Notifications: This procedure also deals with addressing the class at large. Similarly to the Phillips Flier, Assignment Notifications are generally sent via email (unless otherwise specified), but they are not as regularly timed as the Flier. Simply put, an Assignment Notification is a blanket email alerting parents that a substantial assignment (quiz, test, essay, and so forth) has just been entered into the gradebook. This notification takes next to no time to draft, but encourages parents and guardians to utilize the online tools at their disposal to see the most up to date version of their student's grade.
3. Personalized Progress Reports: This update is where blanket emails come to an end in my class. Whether by email, phone, or Skype, personalized progress reports occur on a monthly or quarterly basis (occasionally a parent does request weekly check ins), and contain information specific to the student being referenced. Current grades, missing assignments, behavior in class, and anything else a parent or guardian can think to ask are addressed in this format, along with my own vantage of the student's progress overall in my class up until that point.
One thing that's important to note about the Personalized Progress Reports is that I send them regardless of the student's current performance in my class. Whether they're hitting it out of the park or in a bit of a slump, I make time to be honest with their parent or guardian about what I'm seeing and what I recommend. I don't "not send" a report if the student's doing well in my class; a Personalized Progress Report's not something to dread seeing in your mailbox. My favorite days are the ones where I get to write outstanding reports; I love letting parents know that their kids are giving it their all and that it's being noticed. And it's essential for those kids to know that their hard work's not slipping by; they should know they're appreciated for their choices and efforts, not quietly ignored because our attention's too wrapped up focusing on the negative.
Additionally, I'm able to manage the load of these Personalized Progress Reports because of my smaller class sizes as a primarily Resource Room teacher. Managing Personalized Progress Reports for a class load of 60+ children may need some creative reworking, but I still think it's necessary and can be managed with the right workaround. Let me know what you think.
4. Blackboard: This last one is a school wide policy that I can't take credit for implementing. However, it is still incredibly valuable, and I believe it deserves to be mentioned. My school uses Blackboard as a way to push out notifications, updates, and reminders for day-to-day assignments. For those unfamiliar with Blackboard, it is a combination text/email platform that allows teachers to send "posts" containing daily relevant information. This platform is more direct and to the point than some of the other strategies mentioned here, but it's immediacy is where most of it's value comes from, in my opinion. Blackboard is effectively a digital version of an assignment pad updating in real time.
The goal of all these strategies is to open a door between the "school" and "home" lives of our students. It is to provide clarity, opportunities for collaboration and understanding, and ease school anxiety and stress. Frequent communication with your students' parents and guardians reminds all parties involved that we're all human: mistakes will be made and it's not the end of the world.
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