Posts Tagged ‘Parent’

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Essentials of Communicating With Parents

Friday, September 10th, 2010
Tyneham - old telephone

The biggest change I’m making in my planning for the start of the new school year is in how often I will communicate with parents. Communicating with parents requires effort, openness, clarity, and regularity. Let’s examine each of these.

Effort

Communicating with parents is not in the curriculum and not something taught in education classes. Too often, the only times teachers communicate with parents is when something is wrong; a child misbehaves or is injured somehow.  It is important to work at spreading good news, too.

But teachers already have so much to do. Where are we going to find the time to communicate with parents? Build it in to what you already do. Are you on Facebook or Twitter? Start a Facebook list of parents and limit what they can see. One post a week is all it take. Or start a Twitter account and only let parents see those tweets.

And, of course, there is Parentella. Parentella is a private parent-teacher social network. Teachers can create their private online classroom and invite parents to the class. Teachers can post homework, class news, events, and reminders to keep parents engaged in their kids’ educational lives.

Openness

Communication is a two-way street. When information flows in one direction only it is a lecture or an advertisement, but it is not communication. Good communication is about receiving information or other feedback as much as delivering information.

Listening with attention is a skill we ask our students to master and we have to do it also. As we teach our students, listening is more than keeping one’s mouth shut while someone else is talking and it is not planning what you will say. Listening is hearing, processing and considering what someone else has to say. We need to model it in our interactions with others.

Clarity

Like any other area of human endeavor, education has jargon. I wrote a paper as an undergrad in which I speculated that education in a particular field is merely the process of coming to understand what the jargon means. Parents don’t understand education jargon.

Practice clarity. Write and speak in clear, jargon-free English (or other language you share). Don’t sound like an education jargon generator.

One more thing, proofread! My wife is a copy editor and she catches every error in the notes and notices that come from our son’s school; there are far too many and some of the most aggravating ones would have been caught had the writer just read the item out loud. Trust your ears, if it sounds wrong, it probably is wrong.

Regularity

I have a colleague who teaches some children with very challenging emotional and behavioral issues. She is one of the few teachers I know who talks to parents with regularity; she calls the parents of all nine of her students every day. It needn’t be that often, but it is important to contact parents on a regular basis.

When my wife or I would pick up our son at the end of the school day and ask him what happened he’d respond, “stuff.” He’s going to be a junior in high school this year and all that’s ever happened at school is ‘stuff.’  Parents want to know what’s going on in class, what the class is studying, what’s coming up next, and more.

In the past I’ve given the parents of my students my email address and my cell-phone number, and I’ve left it up to them to contact me. This year I’m going to be more proactive. I’m going to email or call all parents at least once a week with general information about school and class events, also with information about all the great work their child is doing. Parents need to hear good news even more than they need to hear all the trouble their son or daughter causes.

Students are Crossing - Buckman Elementary-3.jpg

When I was student teaching in a 2nd grade class, the teacher guided the students in the collaborative writing of a weekly newsletter. Every Friday after lunch, the boys and girls would draw illustrations for the missive. I wonder if that would work in 7th and 8th grade. Hmmmm.

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Posted in Back to School, Deven Black, Teacher Perspectives | 7 Comments »

Being a Parent Rather than Enforcer

Tuesday, July 20th, 2010

In reading the New York Magazine‘s article, Why Parents Hate Parenting, I was struck by this passage:

“I’m going to count to three.”

It’s a weekday evening, and the mother in this videotape, a trim brunette with her hair in a bun and glasses propped up on her head, has already worked a full day and made dinner. Now she is approaching her 8-year-old son, the oldest of two, who’s seated at the computer in the den, absorbed in a movie. At issue is his homework, which he still hasn’t done.

“One. Two …”

This clip is from a study conducted by UCLA’s Center on Everyday Lives of Families, which earned a front-page story in the Sunday Times this May …

“I have to get it to the part and then pause it,” says the boy.

“No,” says his mother. “You do that after you do your homework.”

Tamar Kremer-Sadlik, the director of research in this study, has watched this scene many times. The reason she believes it’s so powerful is because it shows how painfully parents experience the pressure of making their children do their schoolwork. They seem to feel this pressure even more acutely than their children feel it themselves.

Exactly. Homework has evolved into a test of our parenting skills. The involved parents are the ones that make sure their children’s homework is done, that will teach whatever our children don’t understand about the assignment, that will enforce the teacher’s orders and rules without question. The uninvolved parents that don’t care about their child’s education will not go to such efforts.

Whether or not this is actually true, it is the assumption that a lot of parents have.  I am one of them. Since I’m not often on school grounds (due to working full-time, as the sole income provider for my girls), I am overly concerned of how I am perceived by my daughters’ teachers.

The scene described above is similar to what I could describe about homework battles in my own home.

When I pick them up at their after-school program, one of the first questions I ask is, “did you finish your homework?” 9 times out of 10, the answer is no. So I tell them to finish it when we get home while I make dinner.

We arrive home anytime between 6 & 7. I get dinner started, and tell the girls to finish their homework. My 9-year-old might look very busy writing something, but when I have a minute to check while a sauce simmers or the oven is heating, I see that it’s not homework at all. It’s a drawing or a letter to a friend or any number of other things. I try to get back her back on task, but then I have to leave her again to finish dinner.

If there is still homework to be done after dinner, I tell them to finish while I wash the dishes. It seems they have the majority of questions when I am in the middle of loading the dishwasher or something, so sometimes, they need to wait. So they find other things to do while they’re waiting, and then it’s like the scene in the New York article – they don’t want to do it on my timetable, they want to do it on theirs.

As it is, I rarely give my children the “help” they want – which is to say, they just want me to tell them the answers. I ask them, “what do you think the answer is?” I may have to guide them a little more to find the right answer. (And when it comes to my soon-to-be 8th grader’s math homework, I often don’t know the right answer without googling the type of problem and finding the right formula and doing the math myself. Even then, I’ve been known to get it wrong.)

Sometimes, when they say they want my help, they’re talking about things that are non-homework related. They’re talking about their friendship dramas, or they want to tell me something funny that happened at lunch.  They just want to talk to me.

Instead, I feel the need to be the enforcer. I’m basically saying to them,  “Your feelings don’t matter. Sharing something with me isn’t nearly as important as your spelling assignment to write each word three times.”

Of course, writing a spelling word three times is not more important than having a conversation.  A seemingly trivial conversation about what her best friend said can easily develop into a conversation about trust or empathy or simply a shared moment of laughter.

Last year,  I surrendered in the homework battles with my then 4th grader. After I was reminded that elementary school report cards do not necessarily make or break or child’s future, I opted for those moments of laughter and good conversation.

At my first parent-teacher conference after I waved the white flag, the teacher (of course) commented on the missing homework assignments. I told her the truth; that I was no longer playing the enforcer, and that our home life was better for it. She informed that some grades would suffer because of it, and I acknowledged that.

After that, sometimes the motivation for better grades worked for my daughter, and sometimes they didn’t. When she asked for my help, I would happily give it. And some of my fondest memories of her 4th grade year were our mock spelling bees. Every Thursday, before her spelling test on Friday, I would test her orally. She made up different people to play for each word, and it was all a lot of fun.

Still, that’s the only spelling homework she did all week. She stopped writing the words three times, and I stopped yelling at her to do it already.

Now I know that some parents and teachers will be concerned that I’m not properly teaching my child about responsibilities. I disagree. She had consequences for not doing the homework, and those came through in her grades. I just didn’t feel the need for a double consequence at home. (Isn’t that known as double jeopardy, anyhow?)

With my older daughter, it is a little bit different. She is more self-motivated because she has aspirations to go a performing arts high school that will require her to maintain a certain GPA. She is old enough to know what’s at stake here, and old enough to take on the responsibilities, and/or suffer the consequences. She knows I am here to help in any way I can. And she knows how to check the school website for how she’s doing. The only time I went above and beyond was when she was afraid to talk to one teacher about how to get extra credit, so I emailed the teacher instead and got the information, and printed the worksheets. Still, it was up to her to complete them and turn them in.

I will not be the enforcer this coming school year. I will stick to my role as parent; there to help and guide, there to remind them of possible consequences, and then taking that step back to let them take the fall or the bow that they have earned.

April McCaffery is the single mother to two daughters, going into 5th and 8th grade.

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Connecting the home and school for our kids’ success

Tuesday, May 18th, 2010

One of the things I have struggled with in relation to parenting has been my daughters’ education.  While I am aware of my general lack of time as a work at home mom, and sometimes, though it pains me to admit it, my patience is not always what I think it should be, I have struggled with the question of whether I should be teaching my daughter at home rather than sending her to school every day.

However, as I learned early on, I didn’t have to just send her out the door in the morning and pick her up again in the afternoon. In fact, our school encouraged my volunteering and I watched my daughter flourish as her teacher, school administrators and I worked together to provide a comprehensive learning environment that spanned from the living room to the classroom and back again.  I found that through my volunteering I was able to touch many children’s lives who did not have the same familial structure or level of parental involvement my daughter has, I was able to spend 3 hours a week reading with children who touched my heart and taught me the importance of parental outreach in schools.  When you volunteer your time, you are not only supporting the teachers, you are helping to enrich the students lives.

As parents we have the unique ability to effect our children’s learning both inside and outside of the classroom. When parents support their children’s schools, classrooms, and parent-teacher organizations by donating time, services, or products they show their children they believe in their education and they make it easier for their schools to offer more learning opportunities for the students.  Parents can also offer support by taking an active part in their child’s education by studying with the child, challenging their knowledge at home, and holding their child accountable for their responsibilities.  When parents take the time to instill values like respect, self-reliance, responsibility, and manners in their child, parents are equipping their children with the tools necessary to have a successful education.

Communication between educators and parents is of utmost importance also.  When the lines of communication are open, parents and teachers can more readily and successfully tackle discipline, learning, or social issues and receive support.  Parents can now stay connected to educators and administrators through a variety of options including email, classroom blogs, the 1-call system, online classroom tools, social networking, and good old fashioned telephone and snail mail.  Thanks to technology many schools can hold real-time parent-teacher conferences using video conferencing tools, parents can ask homework questions and get an immediate response from other classroom parents or the teacher, and working parents can stay informed by reading their teacher’s classroom blog.  This increased availability can and should translate into better parent-teacher communication and a greater learning experience for the student.

When parents and teachers work together it is obvious that the student benefits, whether you choose to volunteer your time, services, or you just support quietly at home remember that you are just as responsible (and more too) for your child’s education and future.  It is up to you to show your child that you think education is important, that you support your child’s teacher and the effort he or she puts forth, and to instill the morals and values that will enable them to grow into contributing and valuable members of society.

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Posted in Amanda Henson, PTA, Parent Perspectives, School Involvement | 4 Comments »

Stepping Up My Own Communication

Thursday, April 22nd, 2010
 
Ever since I read the Civic Enterprise’s report on high school drop-outs, I’ve been obsessing about the disconnect between teachers, parents, and children. The report brought to attention that all three parties need to come together to make the difference.
 
The report found that once everyone came together and had a chance to both listen and be heard when it comes to problems in education, the assumptions faded away. Students and parents aren’t totally apathetic, but often feel helpless, as do the teachers. Everyone feels like they’re being pulled in different directions.
 
For weeks, I’ve been thinking about this, and it finally hit me that I am also guilty of it as much as anyone. Oh sure, I write here and on my blog about what I think is working and what’s not, but I have been remiss when it comes to talking to my children’s teachers.
 
It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that making my case, one teacher at a time, is too time-consuming and not worth the effort. Also, I worry about the repercussions, as do my daughters: the “problem parent” syndrome.
 
Still, I do have some friends in “high” places. I deeply admire and respect one of my daughter’s Principals, as well as her Curriculum Director. I have also proven myself to be an “involved parent” in their eyes. They won’t see me as a problem parent, I don’t think. I hope they will see me as a parent who sees a problem, and wants to address it. I also happen to be friends with both a School Board member and a high school Principal. They have both been completely receptive every time
I’ve talked to them, and have opened my eyes to their own perspectives.
 
I know it won’t change everything, or maybe even anything in the present moment. But what if other parents follow suit? What if every parent that has a friend that’s a teacher talks to them openly and honestly, and the conversation is mutually respectful? What if every teacher that’s a parent listened to their children’s friends talk about school, and how they feel about it? What if every neighbor of a Principal invites him or her over to dinner and learns about their daily challenges? What if every
School Board member had lunch with a teacher and a parent and their student?
 
Maybe the only way to bridge the disconnect is to start with one connection at a time.

by April McCaffery

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Posted in April McCaffery, Parent Perspectives, School Involvement | 2 Comments »

Parent to Parent Communication: Have We Learned Anything from High School?

Tuesday, April 20th, 2010

Today I want to tell you my thoughts on parent to parent interactions.  They are my opinions on a new parent who is starting to organize play dates and birthday parties and dinner plates for the mums that have just had a new bub.

I think parent to parent interactions fall into three camps:

  • Our children are friends and so are we
  • Our children are friends
  • Our children have something in common (school, class, sport, just banged into each other on the jungle gym)


Our Children are friends and so are we.

I think there are two types of subgroups here.  The first are adults who were friends before kids, and the second groups became friends after children.  This is probably the ‘dream’ situation for everyone.  I know they are for me.  You see I have strong connections with another family that growing up we went on many family holidays together and even went overseas together.  I hope I can find the same type of friendship myself.

An interesting dilemma is what to do if your children ‘fall out’ as friends.  I have seen this happen with high school students.  Some parents remain friends, while others also split because they become involved in their children’s fights and take sides.

Our Children are friends

My best friend at school was Michelle.  We were best friends all through high school.  We played the same sport, had sleepovers and generally were in each other’s pockets for the best part of 8 years.  Our parents were not.  In fact, as an adult I realized that our parents never interacted with each other.  When asked about this, my father said “She was your friend and that was all that mattered”

I guess this is the same for husbands and wives.  I have a group of girlfriends that I see regularly.   The husbands have nothing in common so they don’t attend.  We have fun and our hubby’s are at home looking after the kids.  Win Win for all!

I see this group as a social minefield.  Many parents try to ‘become friends’ for the sake of their children.  Or others try to break the friendship because of their own preconceptions of the parents.

Our Children have something in common

This is probably the most common group of interactions.  They are the chats we have with other adults when waiting to pick up your child from school, sports games or even at a park.  You strike up a conversation, normally just to pass the time.  These can also be the most awkward conversations if your children have become involved in a disagreement or accident.

Have we learned anything from high school?

I believe that human nature dictates that we all belong to a group, even as parents.  What I hope is that I don’t regress back to high school and only stay within my sphere of friends and comfort zone.  Because this time round my decisions will affect my daughter.  In the short term she may miss out on some great relationships.  But in the long term I believe that I would be modeling the very behavior I don’t want:  a girl dictated by peer pressure.
 

By: Ainslie Hunter

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Posted in Ainslie Hunter, Parent Perspectives | 1 Comment »

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