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Thursday, August 8, 2019

Open Parent Communication Great Teachers Use


Do you have open communication with parents?

Do you need strategies for creating positive parent communication?



This blog post is part of a blog series "6 Things GREAT Teachers Do" that will share teacher tips for using parent communication in your classroom for success. With practical tips and techniques that have been used in the classroom, this will be a helpful series for any teacher looking to create a better communication system.

Open Parent Communication Great Teachers Use


Communication with parents is necessary for any classroom to have success. Parents need to know from teachers how well their students are performing behaviorally and academically. Establishing open communication with parents can be done many different ways. Some of the most popular ways to communicate are face-to-face and over the telephone. Regardless of your communication system, maintaining a regular communication with parents is important to having a successful school year.

What does communication look like in today’s classroom? Here are some examples of how communication with parents can occur in today’s classroom.

1.   You can contact parents by phone. 


      Make sure you gather the correct phone numbers for parents at the beginning of the school year. After that you can update the phone numbers every quarter. This is also a good time to reach out and make sure all the phone numbers are working. A great phone tip, if you’re not comfortable calling on your personal number, only call from school during school hours. Check with your school policy on phone calls before telling parents your hours of communication by phone. Set the phone call return expectations at the beginning of the school year. Forty-eight hours is a respectable time frame for a professional teacher to return a parent phone call. 

2.  You can email parents. 

      
      Remember that if you are a public school teacher, your emails to parents are public. Whatever you write in an email must be acceptable to be printed in a newspaper for everyone in your city to read too. So before you press send think, “would this be acceptable to post in the newspaper?” Email is very accessible for people in today's society. Remember to set an email return expectation with parents at the beginning of the school year. Forty-eight hours is a respectable time frame for a professional teacher to return a parent email. 

       3.  You can send home a monthly newsletter. 

      These are great for parents to see the learning objectives, activities, and other important dates for the month. Remember that parents only have a few minutes to read this. Write and highlight only the important information.  

Do you want the correct email address and phone numbers? Yes!

Do you want to compile all the information in one spot? Yes! 

It's easy. Send home with students the Parent Communication Assignment. You will have all of your parent emails and phone numbers in one day! Once you have all the parent contact information, you can save it to a folder in your school email account. This will be easy for you to access during the school year. Access the Parent Communication Assignment today!


Happy Teaching!