Parent Communication

I believe the relationship between teachers and parents is paramount to a child's success. I have had my share of parents over the years who were unhappy with my class. And I really take that personally, it feels like I failed them in some way. I think one of the hardest things that we do is find a balance to try and please all the parents of our students. Each family enters this process with different expectations. Some families want a lot of homework. Some families have busy lives with dance classes and choir practice and are thankful for teachers who do not assign homework. I worked with a teacher once who had a parent volunteer one day and that mom went to the administration to complain that it was too hot in her classroom. She was told by admin to turn the air up and make it cooler. Well, then she had kids going home and asking to wear sweaters (in Texas!) and parents wanted to know why it was so cold in the classroom. It's not always an easy balance to strike.

I try to contact my parents before the 1st day of school. Sometimes the rosters are not ready or they are still making changes, but I really try to reach out. There are parent newsletters coming home every week and I have a class website.

But I wanted to share what I do in addition to that.

Seesaw Digital Portfolios-This app has pretty much changed my life! Not only can I post pictures of the activities we do in class, but I can also explain the activity. When you teach in early childhood, your students are not going home and saying we discussed the ethics of the Giving Tree today. Parents look at the work that we are doing, it is authentic work, but they don't know what we did. I used to get complaints from parents that I wasn't challenging my students, and you know that is my passion. I finally figured out that if I share what we are doing daily parents can see the rigor in what we do.

Parent Dialogue Journals- Years ago I had a parent who was extremely unhappy with me as a teacher. I was venting to an administrator and she said--you are blaming the parent, look at your practice, what can you do differently? I was in a training and they were talking about doing dialogue journals with your students and a lightbulb went off.

I buy composition notebooks when they are 50 cents at Wal-Mart over the summer. I create a journal for each family and every Friday I send home a note about their child's week. It sounds like a lot of work but I take half the notebooks home on Wednesday and half on Thursday. It takes me about a half hour to write all the notes.

Some parents really appreciate this and write back every week. I actually had a parent tell me once that it was like receiving a hand-written letter about her child every week and she really looked forward to that. Some parents will just sign that they read it. Some parents never respond and I don't know whether they are reading it or not, but I continue to write the notes anyway.

How do you communicate with your parents? Always looking for new ideas. :)