Assuming you are a classroom teacher…

Start the year off right – make a NO SECRETS atmosphere in your classroom.

Try to make contact, in some form, with every parent from your class (as often as possible). Send a weekly e-mail with classroom news, send notes home about the POSITIVE things Johnny did, invite parents in for an author’s tea, student presentations or to show off other student work, and so on. I send a postcard to each of my students about 3 weeks before school starts letting them know what I have done over the summer and that I look forward to meeting them the first day of school.

Eventually, when you need to contact a parent about the terrible thing that Johnny did, you will have already built some rapport and shown the parents that you do care about Johnny and that you are worried (not nagging).

Do you use data notebooks? I do. It is a 3-ring binder (1 for each student) with test scores, work samples, student goals, copies of progress reports/report cards, awards and so on that I send home periodically for parents to review. This helps keep parents in the loop even if they are unable to come into the classroom.

Also, remember that many parents work during the day and would like to be a part of their child’s educational process, but can’t always make time in the middle of the day to do so…be flexible…offer parents the option of coming in to chat first thing in the morning or in the evening. In my district, parent-teacher conferences are scheduled in the middle of the week from 10:00 – 2:00 which does not make it very appealing for working parents. I have always offered meetings from 7:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. on conference days and the parents are always very greatful to have that option.

I guess the biggest word of advice is to put yourself in their shoes…how would you like to be treated, approached, informed, and so on?

Parents should contact their kids’ teachers at the beginning of the school year, before any issues may arise. It’s good to get to know each other, establish a clear line of contact, and set the tone. Come to Open House and introduce yourself, send a note to school with your child, or send an email! By all means, come to Parent-Teacher Conferences!

As a teacher, I always set the tone that I am here to collaborate with the parents and work together to bring the best out of their child. But I don’t have time to call 150+ parents and introduce myself. I hate when the first contact I have with parents is negative. Parents tend to get defensive and pit me against the family.

It used to be, if I called home with a problem, we would talk and action would be taken. I would see an immediate change from the child. More and more, I find that parents tend to side with their child and get defensive with me. Trust me, I have better things to do than pick on your kid. I don’t know when or why the tables turned into the teacher being wrong, and the child being right, but I see it more and more often. It is a very frustrating part of being a teacher!

There are really good articles on pta.org under parent resources about what parents can do to help teachers and how to plan for a parent-teacher conference.

From a personal standpoint, I have found that keeping in contact with parents (mostly through email – it is really hard to make so many calls when you teach high school) has tremendously improved my relationships with my students’ parents. Most parents appreciate knowing what is going on. For years I used mygradebook.com so that parents would be able to track their students’ averages. This alleviated a lot of the “surprises” at the end of the quarter/semester.

Call them, e-mail them, say hi in the store (I live in a town of less than 5000 so I can’t go anywhere w/o running into somebody. I saw 15 former students at the store last night. I wish I had put on some make-up!). Make sure your first contact is for something positive. Send home newsletters. I mail postcards at the end of every term to kids with a C or better. We have a math teacher at my school that calls EVERYTIME a kid doesn’t turn in homework, makes a D or less on a test or quiz, or is unprepared. Mind you we have at least 70-90 students a semester! I can’t sustain that level of contact. But she has wonderful rapport with parents.