Sage Advice: Staying Connected to Parents
What's the best way to stay connected with busy parents?
Email and school Web portals. Giving parents live online access to student grades, attendance, and assignments has been a great communication booster. They feel involved and can easily email with questions or suggestions. Playing phone tag is over.
Bob Elenbaas
Teacher
Lake Orion High School
Lake Orion, Michigan
Sharing conferences with other teachers. By having another of a student's teachers with us, parents and students can get updated and teachers can talk about learning styles and behavior issues in more than one class. The group gets a more complete picture of how a student is doing academically and can work together on possible solutions.
Marcie Wombold
Humanities instructor
Aviation High School
Seattle, Washington
I keep a blog called The Principal's Office -- tagline: "Not as bad a place to be as you remember" -- linked from the school's home page. I talk about what's going on in school, upcoming events, school philosophy, adolescent health tips, and so on, while offering discussion forums, an image gallery, a calendar, and, in the near future, a link to an online bookstore.
Norman Maynard
Principal
Thornton Friends Upper School
Silver Spring, Maryland
Tell them they and their child control nearly 80 percent of what makes a learner successful; the school contributes only 20 percent. If they want success, they, as well as the school and its teachers, need to be accountable.
Tom King
Adjunct professor of education
University of St. Thomas
Minneapolis, Minnesota
A Web site, of course! But it must be an online portal that contains student work samples, learning objectives for the week and the school year, state standards, online/PDF resources, teacher-communication links, monthly classroom news, and polls and surveys for student and parent feedback.
Miles Roe
Sixth-grade teacher
Mill Creek Elementary School
Doylestown, Pennsylvania
We have established a parent listserv, which we use to send out a "Weekly Message." It is great for last-minute reminders of upcoming events in school as well as in the community.
I have a simple, low tech way of keeping in touch with parents. Each of my students has a three ring binder that we call B.E.E. Binders. (Bring Everything Everyday) I got the idea from a teacher's website.
http://www.teachingheart.net/moosebooks.html
In the binder there is a section for the typical things you would find in a student binder - math notes, reading notes, etc. The difference with these binders is the first section is for parent communication (it has filler paper that is just for parent/teacher commmunication), and the second section is for our school calendar and schoolwide and classroom newsletters. The third section holds homework assignments, so parents can check up on this, as well. Everything is in a central location that is brought home and returned to school every day.
My parents love this, and I get positive feedback all the time about how nice it is to finally have a teacher that communicates with them.
Parents want to hear good things about their kids. They are going to be more receptive and more willing to cooperate with the teacher if they trust that the teacher is on their kids' side. I try to make more positive than criticizing contacts with parents. When I do need to contact parents about something negative, I make sure to let them know that my motivation is to alleviate the obstacle so that their child has a more positive experience in school. And the positive follow-up phonecall to a previous negative one is always warmly received. We all want to be proud of our kids.
In our community, internet access is not a given so I use the old fashion person to person methods. I call parents with good and bad news. I have even made home visits.
Communication Binders
I have a similar binder system, but I like your communication pages for parents and teachers. Do you check these pages daily or do you just have the students let you know if their parent wrote a note to you?
Communication between teachers and parents is so critical in the success of students. When parents and teachers are on board the same train, the students feel safe and ready for their journey. My school uses a website called homeworknow.com, and each teacher posts daily agendas, upcoming events, tests, projects, homework, etc. We have also adopted a Thursday mail policy. Anything that needs to be signed and returned goes home with the students on Thursdays. In addition, the school posts an email every Friday called the McConnell Minute. Parents who have furnished us with an active email address get a copy each week. Yet another way that we stay connected with parents is our 24 hour policy. Teachers are required to respond to parent inquiries within 24 hours. Most of our teachers email progress reports home weekly as well. All of these tools have a tremdously positive impact on our communication with parents.
AWESOME! I love this idea! How can I modify this idea to suit middle school? The kids have a binder for every subject already. I am not sure that another binder would be the best idea.... Any thoughts?
Comunication binder
Joy,
what age students do you use this binder with?
BEE Binders
This is an interesting idea. We have tried many ways to keep students organized, such as folders and spiral notebooks, expandible file folders and folders and notebook paper. Nothing seems to work well for the majority. How big are the binders? Do you use divider tabs? I will be looking for more feedback and information.
A Parent's Page
I keep parent's advised of what is going on in my classes and important information through a "Parents Page" on my school website. I also provide video podcasts of items I think I need to show them. Parent's can always count on the fact that I have a special place for them on the school site to advise them of important information! It works!
I like the idea of a three ring binder. I have a Friday Folder for my Kindergarten students that I send home each weekend. In it is letters from the office, a weekly classroom newsletter with upcoming events and important dates, notes about student progress, etc. I have gained a lot of positive feedback about the Friday Folders. Parents don't have to worry about missing notes sent home during the week(sometimes during the week Kindergarten students misplace things! LOL).
You can imagine what students' folders look like by January! The binder would last all year! Thank you, great idea!