2. Purposeful: Conversations should have a purpose, keeping ‘fluff’ to a minimum. Teachers are busy. Parents are busy.
3. Actionable: Parents should be able to take away something actionable. Vague notions of a child ‘not doing well’ should be centered on specific steps a parent can take to help the student improve his or her performance.
4. Reasonable: Both parties should be working to accomplish tasks and goals that are reasonable. Expectations should be achievable and well-meaning. Also, both parties should have reasonable expectations about responsiveness and should be respectful about holiday and time-of-day concerns. (Hey, everyone has a life outside of work, even teachers.)
5. Continual: Once the lines of communication are open, keep them that way. Parents and teachers should have a constant, open dialog that isn’t just focused on a single problem, but should encompass a student’s holistic experience in the classroom.
This works out to SPARC. (We thought that was pretty clever, too. ) Mo’ Money, Mo’ Problems In a society where e-mail, text messaging and calling are all ubiquitous ways to communicate, why is it so difficult to get in touch with a school and speak directly to a teacher?
So just what are the problems that create barriers between teachers and parents? Barriers to Meaningful Conversations I believe there are five barriers to meaningful conversations between school and home.
1. Time: There is not a lot of research about why teachers and parents don’t reach out more. However, a chief complaint from teachers is a lack of time during their work day. Anecdotally, one could then infer that contacting a parent takes time from their day that teachers don’t have.