Communicating with Parents

Since I started at the Faculty of Education in September I have been kicking around an idea about teacher's communicating with their students parents.  From what I have seen in the classroom, communication is still in the stone-age... teachers send notes home in a student's agenda where parents (allegedly) read them, initial, and maybe send something back.  If something really severe happens, the teachers will get all 19th century and attempt to call the parent... who is either at work or screening calls and ignoring the school number.   So the teacher leaves a message, and proceeds to play telephone tag with the parent after school and on lunch.

What I am proposing is a (not so) radical approach to communicating with parents... email.  We all know it and love it, and I think its time that we began using email and associated technologies to better include parents in their children's educations.  Below are a few examples of things I think we, as educators, could do:

1.  Get an email address for the parents of every student in the class at the beginning of the year.  Create a group for your class (so you type say "Class 2012" into the "To" category and the message is sent to all the parents) and start using it to disseminate information.  Having a hot lunch next week?... Let them know.  Planning on going on a field trip... Send a message their way.  Have a test coming up in the next few days their children should be studying for... fire away!  With younger grades you could even ask parents if they would be interested in having a daily list of homework sent home.  It would remind parents and keep them in the loop.

2.  Tell parents about positive things their kids did.  Most parents only here from the school when something goes wrong.  Teachers are busy and don't have a lot of time look up numbers, make a call, leave a message etc.  But it only takes 30 seconds to write a quick message to Mrs. Kimmel about how nice Jimmy was to Sally today when he shared his snack.

3.  Send an email instead of using a daily communication log.  You can get responses from the parents almost instantly (yay email on smart phones) and you have a record of all the emails saved in the cloud in case that communication book somehow disappears.

3.  Use Google Docs.  Now this one is a little more advanced but I think its worth it.  Ask the parents to sign up for a (free) gmail account.  Now create a document for each student titled "Assessments."  Now when you mark a piece of the students work, enter the title of the assignment, the student's grade and a few comments into the Doc. It keeps track of marks for you and allows the parents to stay in the loop with how their student is doing... no more surprises at report card time.

In general I think using email would be an excellent way to improve communication.  Wouldn't it be nice to know that little Jimmy won't be at school before you get there because Mom has sent you a quick email saying he is feeling sick... and you have already replied letting her know to just have him read a bit if he is feeling up to it?  Or be able to email worksheets to that student who has been away for 2 weeks, or even answer questions for a student who is away on vacation and trying to finish up a project.

Email isn't a radical thing.  I just think the Boards and we as teachers are very much behind in harnessing the power and potential to foster better communication between parents and teachers.