5 Effective Parent Teacher Communication Strategies You Must Have

Parents and teacher play the most important and vital role in a young student's development. It's critical that teachers establish effective communication methods and build a solid relationship with parents.

Whether you're a new teacher, or a teacher with only a few years of experience or even one with many years of experience, I'm sure that you will find these 5 parent teacher communication strategies very useful in building a strong relationship with your students' parents. I know I did.

1. Parent Teacher conferences are a must a few times throughout the year but many teachers, particularly new and inexperienced ones, are intimidated by them. Keep these things in mind to help you out:

* Put parents at ease by establishing a pleasant and friendly rapport with them; they may be just as nervous as you are.

* For the conference, it's important that you show parents that you're a true professional by being well prepared, organized, polite and courteous. Being well prepared means understanding each student's strengths and weaknesses, and having their assignments and tests available at your fingertips.

* Most interviews last only 15 - 20 minutes, so be aware of the schedule so that parents are not kept waiting. You can always schedule another meeting if you need more time with certain parents.

* Always end the conference in a friendly manner with a positive comment, e.g. "working together, we will be able to ..."

2. Classroom newsletters are a terrific way to keep the communication flowing between teacher and parents. When parents ask their children "How was school today", the typical answer is "good" or "fine". I always wrote an introductory classroom newsletter to the parents during the first month of each school year, but from then on each student would choose the items they wanted to include in their own newsletter (after discussing in class) and write about a page. The newsletters (never edited by me), went home with the students. It was a good way for parents to see the progress their child was making in being able to compose and write a letter.

3. Student agendas are vital and in my classroom they were used to the hilt. They were "My Bible". I used student agendas each day, to record items students needed to follow up on for the following day, keep parents informed of what is happening in the classroom, and as a means of daily communication between teacher and parents. Student agendas make everyone accountable; students, parents and teacher.

4. Report cards, no teacher likes doing them, but they give both students and parents an overview of the student's continued academic, personal and behavioral progress in a term, hopefully displaying steady improvement throughout the year. Write you report card comments in simple terms, putting a positive spin on any negative comments, i.e. be tactful and encouraging.

5. Both phone and email are obvious and good options if and when the need arises to contact parents quickly. If you're not getting a proper response from parents through the student's agenda and before an issue

Before you call, check out the student's past history with previous teachers if you can, have some notes prepared about what you want to say, limit the issues to discuss so parents are not overwhelmed, and end the call on a positive note with an arrangement to follow up sometime in the near future. Be sure to document the call.

Some teachers may consider using email as another means of communicating with parents to relay an important message quickly, perphaps set up a meeting or inform parents of an important issue at school,etc. Parents may prefer this initial method of communication or may just be unavailable by phone.

I hope you will use the suggestions and tips that I have briefly described here. I'm sure that you will find them very useful as I have throughout my teaching career.

By: hkrumholz

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Honey Krumholz has taught elementary school for 33 years. She is currently a college supervisor and mentor to student teachers. She presents seminars on teaching strategies at York University in Toronto. Visit her website and get her teaching strategies on many different topics, such as, homework questions and answers the benefits of homework, etc.