Parent Communication: Teacher Strategies For A Sticky Topic

A foundational premise of student success lies in parent support and involvement at the school. Often times, parents are not involved in the educational process as much as they may like and although there are a myriad of reasons why involvement may be lacking, it is important to get parents on-board.

In an effort to overcome individual difference variables and events outside of a single teacher’s control, a specific communication improvement strategy that could be employed to improve the teacher-parent partnership would be to ‘touch’ parents often.

Having accessible information is excellent and providing a weekly re-cap is equally informative, however, engaging parents briefly and individually, may be the best strategy when other methods have proven unsuccessful.  Taking a small moment to send a personal, positive communication note to the parent concerning their child can go a long way. This may look like:

  1. A “Catching Students Being Good” e-mail,
  2. An e-mail praising the work of a student who was successful in a challenging area; and,
  3. A generalized note telling the parent the teacher knows their child, knows them, and is there for both of them during the school year.

Some parents may delete these messages, which merely means the communication was not impactful to them – and that is ok. However, for some parents, it will make a world of difference in creating a true partnership between home and classroom.

Simply stated, reach out the parents; let them know their student is more than a student name and number on your roll. Invite parents into your classroom – in whatever way your district will allow you too. Allow parents to be as involved as they want in what is happening in the classroom with their children; your students.

I believe in communication equity, classroom transparency, and parent partnership. When a parent is involved, the overreaching rewards to the school, the classroom, and the student are so fruitful, it can hardly be afforded not to invest the time to foster those mutual relationships.

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