Keeping Parents Informed
If we don't want an adversarial relationship with parents, we need to educate them about the education of their children. Technology provides a number of methods for keeping parents informed. Of course, the most effective way of all is a face-to-face meeting. In the past, Parents Night or Back to School Night was the standard way of informing parents about the teachers' expectations. It was one night set aside for parents to check out the mean teacher they had heard so much about at dinner. We probably need to make that a more collaborative process. These nights could be more effective if we allowed parents to pose sessions on topics that they had an interest in. Teachers could pose topics that they thought parents should be aware of. Back to School Night could be just that -- a night to learn about topics relevant to education in the 21st century. Sessions could be a hybrid form of the edcamp model.
A class website could be most helpful in creating transparency. Parents could access it at any time to see what is currently going on in class. Of course, this impacts a teacher as another set of things to do, so we should expect a great deal of support from the district in order for teachers to accomplish this. Effective websites often result in parent support, as well as an appreciation for seeing their child's work being modeled online. Kids respond differently as well, since they now have a voice and an audience that includes their parents.
There are apps like Remind that allow teachers to communicate via text to parents without revealing the phone numbers of the teacher or parent. Communication of both good and bad news can happen instantaneously in a medium that many people are familiar with. A text doesn't take two days to go through the mail to be possibly swiped from the mailbox by a mail-notice-savvy student.
Teachers can preserve students' work in digital files or portfolios. These can be instantly shared with parents. Grades on a report card are only subjective promises of potential, while the portfolio shows the actual work, which is proof of achievement and hopefully an example of mastery.
Parent Education Starts With Us
Today, educators are doing many things that are not in the education experiences of parents or teachers. We can't expect parents to understand these new dynamics of education if they aren't taught about them. Age may produce wisdom, but relevance needs to be worked on every day. In addition to the load that teachers already carry, parent education needs to somehow become a priority. If we want our kids' education to last, they will need models that both teachers and parents can provide. And we have to work harder at keeping parents in the loop.
How do you keep parents informed about and involved in what happens in the classroom?