I have thoughts on both sides of this issue. As a parent, I have gotten one child all the
way through public school, and he is now a freshman engineering major. I have two more, one in middle school and one
in high school.
Most of the communication from my children’s teachers has
been some form of ‘this assignment is missing’ or ‘you still owe fees for this
activity.’ That’s good, I guess. I’m informed about what my kids have
done. Better is the sort of communication
that says, ‘We have this thing coming up’ or ‘This assignment will be due
soon.’ Proactive, yay!
Having been in this district as a parent for over thirteen
years now, I know how to navigate the website to find where the assignments and
information is posted. I can keep myself
informed if I try, and if the teacher updates their website regularly.
I work in the same district where my kids attend, so I run
into their teachers on a regular basis.
Most of the time when they hear my last name, I hear some variation
of ‘Your kid is so awesome!’ which I
appreciate, I really do. But I have to
wonder – would I ever hear it if I wasn’t employed by the district?
Last year, I resolved that I would directly communicate with
parents about the wonderful stuff their kids are doing. On several of those phone calls, I could tell
that the parents were bracing for impact when I identified myself. By the end of the phone call, after I had
told them, ‘Your kid did this great thing today,’ we were both feeling
marvelous. My goal was to get to every
student over the course of the year with that type of phone call, but I must
admit that time got away from me and I didn’t meet that goal.
This year, I have the same resolution and will definitely
get to a greater portion of my class roster, shooting for 100%!
As for the proactive side of things, with all the technology
and digital tools available to me, communication with parents should be a
snap. I’m working on a multi-stage
attack on the problem. I have a Celly
account, I’m encouraging parents to follow my class Twitter, I keep my website
updated, and I’m trying to nail down good email addresses for all of them. Hopefully, with all these methods, each
parent will feel informed and welcome to participate in my class.
This is even more critical in a PBL classroom where the rest
of the school isn’t doing it. If a
parent walked into my class, I’m sure it would appear to be some sort of unholy
mess on first impression. From grading to the chaos, transparency and
open communication with parents about what is going on is key. The other benefit of this is that I know
there are some parents out there who could be the sort of authentic audience
that our projects need to be relevant.
How will I ever know if I don’t talk to them?
So that’s the plan for this upcoming year – I’ll see how it
goes!
