How to Communicate
Effectively With Your Parent Population
The goal for this school year is work smarter not harder and
in regard to communication with your parent population, if you can do a few
things consistently your will have a much easier school year. To communicate
effectively, ninety-five percent of your communication should be done proactively
and the remaining five percent should be done reactively. This document will be a guide for you in how
to categorize each of those forms of communication and how to utilize them over
the course of the school year.
Proactive Communication
· Weekly Email or Post
A proactive weekly email or post on google classroom is
critical to establishing rapport with your parent population. Try to send out the email at the same time
each week and include important weekly information, upcoming dates on the
calendar and few celebrations from the week.
It does not have to be lengthy but is should be consistent.
· Updating Grades and Academic
Information
All academic and character information should be communicated
to families through our online Learning Management System called Infinite
Campus. If you need more information on
how to post grades on academic or character along with comments for each
student click here.
· Behavior Charts and Academic
Contracts
In the event that you have one of those tricky students that
is distributive to other students during learning time, has difficulty
completing assignments, or just generally needs to be held accountable for
their actions it is important that you meet with the parents in the first six
weeks of the school year and establish a daily behavior contract or academic
contract with the family and create the expectation that this document is
reviewed and discussed after each school day.
· Sign-Ups for Student-Led Conferences
and Volunteering
It is important that we try to give our parents as much
advance notice about dates for conferences, crew trips, and volunteer
opportunities. Our school uses the free
resource, SignUpGenius,
for all communication for conference and volunteering opportunity. The expectation is to send out a link to a
SignUpGenius at least three weeks before a conference or any other event. The earlier you send it out the better.
Reactive Communication
· Pick Up the Phone
More often than not, if you are dealing with reactive
communication it is because a student made a mistake in some way. Email and text-messages can often be
misunderstood or hard to communicate, it is always best to first pick up the
phone and have a conversation with the parent.
· Flip the Script with your Phone Calls
Try to carve out five or ten minutes in your day to call a few parents
and share a celebration or some good news with parents. A good ratio to work towards is try to make
three positive phone calls to every one negative that you have to make. This will go a long way with your parent
population especially in the event that you might have to make a negative call
later in the year.
· Schedule a Meeting
There are some instances where phone or email is just not enough and you
need to meet in person. A member of the
admin team is always willing to sit in on a meeting you and the parents you
wish to communicate with. This is
usually a good idea if you want to create a behavior or academic contract, are
concern about a student’s academics, social and emotional health, or general
well-being.
For most of your parent population, establishing a routine of
weekly communication will proactively meet their needs. Try to stay ahead of your communication and
stay consistent with how often you communicate and when you communicate. If you over communicate, you risk that your
communications will not be read, if you under communicate, you risk having to
be much more reactive throughout the course of the year. Using this weekly proactive approach will
help you the families you serve stay up to date with everything they need to
know as the school year rolls by. If our
whole team can follow these basic communication rules with fidelity we should
have a more effective and easier year.
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