parent communication

[sherylk]

How do you communicate and involve your parents at the high school level? It seems the older their student gets the less they communicate/involve with school. Any ideas?

[Unregistered]

I got hooked on online grading programs (I use snapgrades.net now, but I've used others) where parents have their own access. Parents are informed and up-to-date. Grading is transparent, and there is no "surprise" F at the end of a quarter. I post class messages to everyone, which really opened up the communication pathway. Of course, it requires internet access which is not always the case. It was great at my old school...

At my school now, the parents are known to be on the high-maintenance side, but I can't get them off my back (i.e. Nit-picking over 1 homework point from 4 months ago). Many parents don't understand category weighting, and get angry at me for being "unfair" because they don't see how the point values don't matter. The students sometimes tell their parents a typical teenage "explanation" of missing homework or a low test score, and the parents come at me with accusations of losing homework or incorrectly grading. It has opened the door to a lot of confrontation and I have had 3 admin-involved parent conferences to diffuse the situations. Starting next year, I'm back to private grading...

Basically... online grading has a lot of potential to help you out, but you need to evaluate the culture of school, and how much internet access your families have.

[annettemcd]

As a parent, I like internet access to my children's grades and assignments. It avoids the problems of being blindsided when grades come out and helps to keep the communication open between my children and myself. As I tell my kids, I might accept a low grade, but there is no excuse for a zero, so I look for the zeros and question any that I see.

My children attend a small school and I know if I have a question, I can always call the school, but I also expect to hear from a teacher if they have an issue with one of my kids and I have told teachers and administrators this. I fully support the school and the most of the teachers and know that we can work together.

I have gotten calls about issues like: "Your son does not like to show his work on math problems. I require that students show their work and if your son does not start showing his work, his grade is going to suffer." It worked to discuss this issue and now, a few years later, my son is a math tutor in the school working with the same teacher and now telling students that they need to show their work.

If communication is kept open then there is less misunderstandings resulting from the parents only hearing the child's point of view. I once talked to a teacher who had had a parent come in yelling that a child had come home and said that the teacher said that spelling didn't matter. The teacher had actually been talking about the writing process and had said that with a first draft, the point to get ideas on paper during which spelling was not as important as the ideas, but then spelling needed to be corrected during the editing process. Most parents should know that if something doesn't make sense, there is probably another side to it. Open communication is necessary for this.

With internet grading programs or with letters home, it is possible to communicate with parents and let them know what is happening in the classroom. I understand that it is more difficult in high school, but if teachers are not hearing from parents, they may need to initiate the communication, even if it just once per year per student to say, "Contact me if you have concerns. Here's my phone number and/or e-mail address" With the internet and e-mail, it is possible to have very short messages, but that keeps communication open. I appreciate short notes a great deal. It could be praise for a good student: "I enjoy John's insightful comments during class discussions." A comment on a problem: "Alice needs to pay more attention to careful proof-reading with her essays. You might want to read some of her papers with her before she hands them in." Or information on an upcoming assignment: "Next week we are going to start a study of the Civil War."

You might want to find if there is a way to get e-mail addresses for parents of your students if you can not put individual comments on an internet grading program. Create mailing lists in your e-mail program for each class for when you send out general information and that will make it easy to send the same message to everybody.

[klkatz]

you have access to the phone numbers and addresses. Call them for disciplinary reasons.. call them when Junior gets an A, or did something great in class.

Call them just to introduce yourself.

a simple phone call will do wonders to get the parents on your side, and you'd be amazed how different some students will act if they know their parents are just a phone call away.

[Yaritza Tijerina]

How do you communicate and involve your parents at the high school level? It seems the older their student gets the less they communicate/involve with school. Any ideas? i think that parents lose the trust and the streaght for their children.

[anaiza torres]

i think that parents lose the trust and the streaght for their children.
anaiza torres what do i think about children when their parents lose their childrens trust what do u think.

[Unregistered]

At the first parent-teacher conference of the year, I have parents write down how they want to be contacted (best phone number, e-mail, etc.). Then I use it. I know it's not always practical to make phone calls when you have 100+ students, but keeping the parents up-to-date is vital!

If you do know the parents and they can see you are interested in their child's education, when you have to make those phone calls no teacher wants to make, it goes much smoother.

I have a student whose mother and I stay in weekly contact by e-mail because of his performance/behavior/grades/etc. A couple of weeks ago, he worked extremely hard and turned in a great project both he and I were proud of. The first thing I did when I graded it was e-mailed his mother. The parents a lot of times are just as frustrated as we are with the child and need that positive feedback as well as the negative.

[Unregistered]

This was my first year teaching. Not only that, my first year teaching in special ed. I found that when it came to many of the students on my caseload, I had a heck of a time getting a hold of their parents. After many phone calls and my introductory letter sent home, I made a form to mail home to the parents and included a stamped envelope for them to return it. Most of the parents filled out the form and sent it back with the best mode of contact information. I make weekly contact with all the parents to let them know of progress, concerns, and even just to chat. Some parents are left feeling that after a certain grade, the teachers seem to become more distant. They get used to this, and give up with the contact issue. It may take some time to hear back from all parents, but not to worry. I had a mom that hadn't returned my call until November and now we talk all the time!