Parent Teacher Communication

 

 

The Parent Point of View

To parents, their child is the most important person in their lives, the one who arouses their deepest passions and greatest vulnerabilities, and the one who inspires their fiercest advocacy and protection. And it is teachers — society's professional adults — who are the primary people with whom the parents must seek alliance and support in the crucial work of child rearing. Parents must quickly learn to release their child and trust that he or she will be well cared for by a perfect stranger. This is a hard thing to do. All of the parent's expectations and fears, as well as their own memories — positive and negative — of school experiences, get loaded on to encounters with teachers.

Negotiating Conflict

The best way to communicate empathy for parents, and to keep the child in focus, says Sophie Wilder, the teacher of a combined fifth- and sixth-grade class at an alternative public school, "is to mine the parents' wisdom about their child, to learn all that you can about how they see their child." ...she believes that teachers see only the narrowest slice of a child's capabilities and temperament and that it is critical that teachers seek parents' insight in a specific and grounded way that provides useful evidence to the teacher.

 

The Goal

 

When parents and teachers begin to trust each other and recognize the mutuality of their concern for the child, it is like "close neighbors chatting over the back fence." It is a conversation that is embracing, not adversarial; collaborative, not competitive; and a bit casual, not too proper or formal.

 

From Building Bridges From School To Home by Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot, published by the Scholastic Instructor

 

 

Communication Resources

 

Advocating Effectively to Resolve Disputes

http://www.ldonline.org/article/14617

 

Good Communication Between Parents and Teachers Has Many Benefits

http://www.magellanassist.com/mem/library/default.asp?TopicId=29&CategoryId=0&ArticleId=58

 

Parent-teacher Interviews

http://www.education.vic.gov.au/aboutschool/studentreports/parentteacher.htm

 

Parent-Teacher Conferences: Suggestions for Parents. ERIC Digest.

http://www.ericdigests.org/2000-2/parents.htm

 

 

Preventing and Resolving Parent-Teacher Differences

http://www.kidsource.com/kidsource/content3/parent.teacher.3.html

 

 

 

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