Contacting and maintaining communication between parents and teachers can be tricky to do. Rick Wormeli offers some great technology and traditional forms of communication that is bound to meet the needs of almost every parent. I love the idea that he mentioned about an online posting service. The more that the professors have used this idea in the college, the more I like it. It is easy for me to go and check my assignment, due date, resources, and contact information for my professor and it is located on one easy website. If teachers use this posting service and parents and students have access to it, it can be a wonderful thing. However, if parents do not consistently check the website, it does not help anyone. My high school attempted to use a system like this to inform parents of the major events going on in the school. My mom already knew about everything because she was involved, but our Internet was slow and a pain to use most of the time so she would not have checked the website every day. If she would have relied on just the website for her information, she would have been way behind and simply gotten frustrated. However, if used correctly and consistently, I truly believe this type of system is perfect for teachers, parents, and students. Wormeli also mentioned that e-mails work excessively well too. If parents and students have the information to contact you, they will. Teachers just have to be open to answering emails frequently, which in this day and age is almost a given.
I also love the more traditional approaches that this chapter mentioned. Simply sending home a post card with a few good things that the student has done is a perfect way to keep parents informed, but also not make them dread talking to the teacher. The more positive the experience for the parent, the more likely they are to actually want to be involved with the teacher and their student’s success in that class.
No comments:
Post a Comment