Parent/Teacher Communication... HELP!
As a teacher, I understand that it is essential to maintain connected to the parents of my students. I realize that I should be constantly contacting them in order to share all types of information- student health (did he/she complain of any aches and pains that day), student behavior (was it a good day or a bad day?), student accomplishments and celebrations, etc. I would like to put into place some sort of constant system of communication between the parents and myself- one that is fairly easy to document. I am in the habit of sending home a weekly newsletter in order to keep parents updated on weekly skills, but I would like something more personal. What makes this difficult is that I have many student's parents that have a disconnected phone line, many student's parents that are illiterate, and many student parents that do not have regular access to a computer; therefore, making communication difficult. Does anyone have a suggestion for how I could become better connected with the parents of my students? I am open to any and all comments and suggestions. Thanks!
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Establishing positive relationships with parents
Dear Rachel,
I totally agree with you that it is very important to establish positive and strong connections with the parents. I believe that success at school could be achieved with a sacred triangle: a student, a teacher and a parent. If one of these elements are missing, it is unlikely that one will get an expected positive result. Let me share my school's practice that helps to homeroom teachers to know more about students' backgrounds and to establish good relationships with parents:
We simply do home visits with a bouquet of flowers, where we try to talk about different sides of our students' characters or habits. Since, most of my parents are Cambodians and only few of them speak English, I do my home visits with one Khmer assistant teacher who helps me to communicate with parents. Majority of parents are happy to see caring teachers in their homes and are eager to meet with us again. At the same time, I try to take all updated information related to the families' contacts so that the info could be used at a required time.
I hope that you will establish positive relationships with your parents very soon.