Working With Parents: A Few Tips and Tricks to Help You Start The Year

I was never very good at talking to parents.  I was always closer in age to my students than their parents.  Parents intimidated me.  They always seemed scary, especially because phone calls were the way to get in touch with them.

I'm not a phone call person.  I mean, really.  I'm always shocked when people actually answer the phone, because I don't.  Ever.

But when I moved down to 6th grade, I knew I needed to change all of that.  Except the phone thing.  Still not budging on that one.

So I made a video and sent out a parent form.  This year, I made a video for the whole 6th grade Humanities team and all of used a version of the parent feedback google form.

Frankly, it's one of the most useful things I do all year. 

I feel a little dumb for resisting talking to parents for so long.  Suddenly, I had this wealth of knowledge from the people who knew my students best.  I reached out to the parents via email, with the goal being sending an email to every family in the first two weeks of school responding to what they wrote on the form.


Often I write to them about concerns they have, or I answer their questions, or I just thank them for taking to the time to write to me.  


This year, I also plan to send a newsletter every two weeks with questions to help parents talk to their kids about what they're learning, along with tech tips and names of assignments for students to share with their parents through Drive and Classroom.