Tips for Parent Teacher Communication
© Amy Horn
Middle school teachers know why it's important to communicate with parents, but sometimes they need help with how to do it. Parent-teacher communication tips can help.
My recent article, Parent Teacher Communication,stresses the importance of communication between parents and teachers. It's easy to tell teachers that they should talk to parents. But it's difficult for some teachers to actually do it. Tips to improve or even implement parent-teacher communication can be helpful. It's important to remember that you don't need to reinvent the wheel when it comes to talking to parents. Teachers have been there, done that for years, and their experiences in parent-teacher communication can help serve as a do's and don'ts list from which all of us can learn.
One of the benefits of working at a middle school is working on a team with other colleagues. They understand the board of education, administration, students, and parents with whom you're dealing. Your team members can be a huge support. They can offer suggestions on communicating with parents; they can give you forms, scripts, or frameworks that have guided their conversations with parents in the past; and they can contact parents with you.
Along with the advice of your team members, there is plenty of advice out there from other teachers and educational experts. Below, I have listed five websites to help make your parent-teacher communication easier and effective. The first four sites listed provide tips and ideas to help you communicate with parents while the last site provides an actual letter you can share with middle school parents that will help parents communicate with you. Parent-teacher communication is a two-way street and hopefully, the ideas shared here will help everyone move in the right direction.
