Parent - Teacher Communications #8

You said what??!!

Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

“See me in my office when you are free third period”, was the message SMA Principal Bernie left in my mailbox early one late October Monday morning. Being a bit curious and a lot anxious, I knocked on Bernie’s door at 7:30 AM hoping to chat. He was on the phone and mouthed, “Not now”, and pointed to the phone. Got it! I went down to the basement where my class was located (not kidding), and prepped for the day’s lessons and labs while envisioning what bad news was in store for me. I stopped by to say “hi” to Coach Joe Joe and to see if he had heard anything on the street—he hadn’t.

It was late into the first quarter and things seemed to be going pretty well. I still had my teaching position (despite my suspect pedagogy), was staying ahead of the students in learning the content, and had figured out how to do science labs properly (more on that in a later entry). I wasn’t having student discipline problems and had even earned the endearing nickname, “Dr. Detention”, for my liberal use of assigning detention to anyone who disrupted the class or failed to submit their homework. Still, Principal Bernie’s note had me wondering if I’d broken some golden rule of teaching for which I was going to pay dearly. Ever impatient, third period couldn’t happen soon enough.

When I arrived at Bernie’s office, he ushered me in and asked, “Did you tell Mrs. H. that she was irrational"?”. Uh, oh, I thought, me and my big mouth. (Mom had always told me “Your big mouth will get you in trouble one day”, sometimes adding, “One day I hope you have a kid just like you”.) “Yes, Bernie, I did say that to Mrs. H..” He looked at me like I had two heads, and asked, “Steve, what’s going on?”. I explained that Troy hadn’t been completing his homework or labs (sounded like me in high school), and Mrs. H. didn’t believe me when I called with concerns about his performance. She said Troy assured her he had done all his work (not true) and that I was being unfair (also untrue). Bernie sighed and said, “You can’t tell parents they are irrational. You can think that, but you need to filter what you say.” He then directed me to call Mrs. H. and apologize for my words and to set a meeting with Troy to discuss his work. 

Sigh. The good news was I still had a job, but the bad news was I had to "eat crow” and apologize. I was uncomfortable calling parents early in my career, and speaking with Mrs. H. was difficult. I put the call off till early evening, and was relieved and surprised by how well Troy’s mom accepted my apology when I finally called. She even thanked me for reaching out to her. Whew! Disaster averted. My conversation with Troy was fine, and to this day, we remain social media friends. Nearly one quarter into the school year, and so far, so good.

Lessons learned:

I learned from that experience and many others to follow the true value of parent-teacher communications, relationships, and the importance of messages home to celebrate student success or address concerns. Parents and teachers have the same goal in mind: success for children. And when things aren’t going well for a child, parental emotions ratchet up a bit. Teacher empathy, understanding, compassion, and a “we can figure this out” mindset are key to helping parents understand genuine concerns the teacher has about their child. Additionally, communicating with parents can also shed light on what’s going on at home, helping teachers gain insight into the student’s attitude and performance at school. Relationships matter, and effective teachers are those who recognize and value the connections they make with students’ parents.

Research:

1. Regular communication with parents impacts student success. A 2015 study¹ of a large northeastern urban school district found that summer school high school student course failures decreased by 41% when parents received weekly, personalized brief messages on what students could do to improve their work. Students were also 3.2% less likely to be absent than those who did not receive such improvement-focused messages from teachers. 

2. Getting parents involved in student’s school lives matters: a lot! A large scale study² of many smaller research studies (meta analysis) shows that students with parents who are involved with schools (communicate with teachers, volunteer in the classroom, help students with home activities…) have higher grades than those who aren’t involved. 

3. A family’s socioeconomic status (SES) often hinders parental involvement in schools, putting additional stressors on SES students. Transportation, school phobia, work hours, and other challenges can make parental involvement in school seem unattainable. This essay³ recommends four ways to ease the burden for low SES parents to engage in their children’s schools: 

   1. implement flexible volunteer opportunities 

   2. offer childcare

   3. offer training programs for parents

   4. increase awareness to meet specific needs for working parents.

(I will add that 1) regular communications by the teacher will further increase involvement of lower SES parents; and 2) for non-English speaking parents, Talking Points is a must have app for quick translation of your message via mobile phone or email into many different languages).

1. Kraft, Matthew A., and Todd Rogers. “The Underutilized Potential of Teacher-to-Parent Communication: Evidence from a Field Experiment.” Economics of Education Review, vol. 47, 2015, pp. 49–63, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econedurev.2015.04.001.

2. Fan, Xitao, and Michael Chen. “Parental Involvement and Students’ Academic Achievement: A Meta-Analysis.” Educational Psychology Review, vol. 13, no. 1, 2001, pp. 1–22, https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1009048817385.

3. Debra Malone. “Socioeconomic Status: A Potential Challenge for Parental Involvement in Schools.” The Delta Kappa Gamma Bulletin, vol. 83, no. 3, 2017, p. 58–62.