Parents are an important piece of the puzzle to a positive classroom community. Today I'm sharing 5 seasoned teacher tips to help you achieve a smoothly run classroom community made up of happy students and grownups!
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This is the social studies teacher podcast, a show for busy elementary teachers looking for fun and engaging ways to easily add social studies into their classroom schedule without feeling overwhelmed or pressed for time. I'm curious to know if you southern teach an educator and mom who is passionate about all things social studies, I love sharing ideas and strategies that are low prep and easy to implement. So let's dive in together.
to the very first episode of:
So I'm going to talk about five tips that have worked for me, the first tip is to practice reassurance and patience. Practicing reassurance and patience will help you avoid a lot of problems in the long run. This is the easiest to do at the beginning of the year, when you're still feeling fresh and energetic, and not just the beginning of the school year, but also the beginning of the actual year, the new year. So you're starting out in the next couple of weeks new semester, this is a really great time to start on a strong foot, you can bring confidence to worried parents right at the beginning so that they're not nervous later on, for example, when parents might email or call you right at the beginning of the year to talk about their children's needs. Think about their concerns with collaboration in mind, how can you incorporate strategies from home that work for them? How can you make this a team approach so that parents have buy in to support your teaching style. If you dismiss their worries, right from the get go, it will only make them feel like you may not care. This doesn't really set us up for positive communication at all. So do take a few minutes and gently help them understand and reassure them that everything will be okay. They usually most times than not, are just really wanting to know that we care about their children, and that we will have their best interest at heart. So whether you're doing this at the beginning of the school year or in January, you just want to make sure you practice that patience and reassurance.
The second tip I have for you is to be firm, but kind. So ask yourself this question. Who is the expert in the parent teacher relationship? Who is the one leading the classroom? And who is the one doing the work? The answer is you with students who are struggling or with parents who might be being rude, it is very important to hold firm to your value so that everyone can be on the same page. This of course needs to be done with kindness, being firm, but kind means that you are being reasonable in your expectations, because people can definitely sniff out unreasonable expectations from miles away. There will always be those parents who will never be reasonable in response. But in order to get the reasonable parents on your side, you need to make sure to be reasonable to so while you can't get everybody to be on your side, you can get the more reasonable parents on your side. And that is just to kind of get that firm that kind demeanor.
Now, the third tip I have for you is to set clear boundaries. In many other industries having office hours is completely normal. But for whatever reason, teachers are expected to be available to parents and students and admin. Pretty much all the time, we're expected to share sensitive information about other kids to other parents, it's just a really weird thing. In order to protect your time like a mama bear, you can set boundaries for when you respond to questions or requests. You can provide a schedule that might match up with your prep times or your office hours can be an hour before or after school for sensitive information when parents are trying to pick like Oh, my child was told by so and so that blah, you know, going into like what other students are doing and what other grade students are having. That is definitely a big no, we do not want to share classified information and we want to make sure we're clear on what we're allowed to share. Establishing these boundaries early will make the rest of your year run much more smoothly, and parents will be less likely to push your buttons because they know what to expect, which also allows for more positive communication.
The fourth tip I have for you is to create some type of FAQ page or section on your teacher webpage. This is super helpful because you might have several parents emailing you with the same questions multiple times throughout the year about how your classroom operates like the deadline for retakes or when certain assignments are due. So having this handy with commonly asked questions on your website will give you a place to refer them to there is definitely not a need to re Explain yourself 15 times to the same parents. Just send them to that link to your FAQ and it's a definite time saver.
The fifth tip I have for you is to pick up the phone. I know, as a parent, it's the ORS thing to get a two page essay explaining a conflict that happened in class, your heart sinks, when you see those types of messages. The same can be said the other way around. We, as teachers hate receiving long messages from parents at 8pm, at night with no sense of tone, we cannot read it in the actual sense, it could be coming off as sarcastic or rude. And it's just really great way to quickly Miss communicate each other's intentions. So that is why for important matters, make sure to pick up the phone and call the parent. Direct phone calls from the school not from your cell phone, are the best way to communicate matters that are urgent or important rather than sending a long email or reply. There are several reasons for this. Number one, you don't have to think and rethink of how to write something down, that won't offend, you don't have to worry about the email getting forwarded to the wrong person or just screenshotted and sent off to other parents in your class. And both sides will hear tone and intent in each other's voices, which leads to more openness. And then additional bonus, it's a lot faster, trust me, once that phone call is done, you can always send a quick email to follow up with a summary of what you talked about. So that at least you have a record of what you both agreed to. And you can see see admin if you need to, to just kind of like make it even more in tip top shape, you're covering your bases. So doing this can give parents a sense of security, which can lead to more positive communication.
So hopefully this gives you some ideas on what can be done within our control to build positive parent communication. I know that this is a two way street. And so you can win some you can lose some but at least you're taking the initiative. And hopefully this episode helps with that. If you'd like to hear more related to parent communication, and also just how to respond and prepare for different types of parents who might come through your classroom, I encourage you to check out my free podcast series. It's called the essential classroom community. And it is hosted on a course platform. It's completely free. So all you have to do is go to the southern teach.com forward slash podcast series. It does also include a one hour PD certificate, so you can listen to the different trainings and get that PD certificate.
All right. Hopefully you enjoyed this episode. Happy New Year. And I hope you have a wonderful rest of your winter break and the rest of your week. Thanks for listening to the social studies teacher podcast. If you enjoyed listening to this episode, hit that subscribe button and leave a review. I would love to hear your thoughts. You can also find me on Instagram at the southern teach. I can't wait for you to join me in this episode for more teacher tips and strategies.
