Maintaining contact with families

This is my response to a Randy Sprick video I viewed on maintaining contact with families. It was interesting and gave a lot of good advise.

Randy Sprick started the video by saying that some families are difficult, but the more effort we put in the better off we are going to be. He recommends doing the following things to initiate contact. Try to establish a relationship before the first day of school. Create an opportunity for face to face contact. If that is not possible make phone contacts as the second choice. You can find out from your colleagues who the toughest kids are and make contact with those families. Set up that the first contact as an introduction, so you are not making initial contact when there is a problem. Send out a letter that introduces you to the families. Another option is to send home a DVD that gives a walk through of your classroom and tell about yourself and your school and classroom goals and expectations. If you can’t make one for every student, make four copies, have students take them home to view them, then have them bring so you can send it out with other students.

You should create a plan for ongoing contact. Send home a letter that describes your management plan. Produce a newspaper or newsletter every other week. Use your class roster and rotate contacts. If it has been a couple months, contact the family to let them know how the student is going. Let the parents know that you are looking forward to have their child and working with them as a partner.

At the beginning of the school year of had a brief write up about myself with my email and phone number on it ready for the open house. There  I met many of the parents, got the best contact methods from them, and found out a little bit about their children. I also got more information about accommodations for that student, such as a student I have who has hearing aids needing to eat in the learning center rather than in the cafeteria. I also try to make phone calls home about students when they are doing well. In order to increase the amount of updates that parents get about their student’s progress, I also send home the child’s scores after their progress monitoring, so that the parents are able to see how they are doing.

Something that I would like to get better at in the my classroom is sending out a monthly or bi-monthly newsletter. This is a task that I could also engage my older students in helping me with. I feel like more positive feedback about their student would be helpful to the parents and help increase positive relationships with the school.