In addition to reading about and reflecting upon positive communication strategies, I have developed an artifact in the form of an introduction letter and a Family Involvement Plan. That assignment helped me to learn how important that initial communication is, what kind of information is appropriate, and how much is too much when writing to parents.The Family Involvement Plan I developed as a part of this course will be a valuable reference for when I find myself in a situation with a family where a personalized involvement plan will be necessary.

Monday Folder- I will establish weekly written communication between home and school. Important parent information will be translated into Spanish so the parent will be able to use the information. The Monday folder is intended to be a one-stop-shop for school information to avoid peppering parents with announcements and information all week long.

Phone Calls- Used as a reward, positive phone calls to the parent with the student present will improve positive communication. When necessary, and when a face-to-face meeting is impossible or impractical (i.e. a matter that requires immediate attention), I will make a phone call home regarding a concern with a student.

Parent Connect- (student learning) Parents can check student progress and daily assessment data via the Web so they can better support efforts at school. I will be responsible for keeping my student data current on the system. I will also be responsible for promoting this resource to parents every time we come in contact.

Parenting

District Resources- Our district Web site has an entire section dedicated to parenting resources. Whenever possible, I will promote awareness of this valuable tool among the parents in our classroom. If parents are unable to access the resource, I will have a folder of printed copies available upon their request.

Community File- In addition to the resources provided on the district Web site, I will keep a files of brochures, pamphlets, and information from community organizations that parents and families may need to access throughout the year.

Family Pictures- Parents and students will be asked at the beginning of the year to supply pictures of their family. The pictures will be displayed around the room on bulletin boards, taped to student desktops, and compiled into a classroom family photo album to promote a community environment. The album will be a teaching tool when talking about types of families in social studies, graphing brothers and sisters in math, inherited traits in science, and writing activities in language arts. There will be opportunities throughout the year to add new photos to the album taken by the teacher or even students.

Student Learning

Family Night- At the beginning of each semester, I will participate in a campus-wide family night. Since this evening is scheduled until 8:00, most all parents will be able to attend. The purpose of this open house is to get parents into the school with their student, but we will also present the curriculum map for the coming semester. It is important for parents to know what the school expects of their student academically so that the student can be supported at home.

Family Fun Packs- Each Friday, a different group of students will be sent home with a Family Fun Pack. Inside the backpack, I will have prepared games that the students are familiar with that families will play together. As often as possible, the games will be tied to what we were learning that week. Also in the pack is a disposable camera for the students and families to take pictures of their Family Fun Night. On Monday, the packs will return to school and I will develop the pictures and add them to our family album.

Volunteering

School Supplies- Parents with little spare time can get involved by volunteering school supplies for the classroom. This is a good opportunity for busy mothers and fathers to contribute to the classroom community with little money or effort. I will send home a classroom needs list of low-cost items and a recommendation of where to purchase them. Example: pump hand sanitizer ($1.00 Dollar Tree), number 2 pencils ($1.00 Dollar Tree).

Classroom Activities- Parents with more free time will be welcomed and encouraged to volunteer in the classroom for field trips, science demonstrations, holiday celebrations, etc.

Thank You- Whenever a parent or family volunteers, a student will be chosen to write a thank-you card for the family that volunteered to build community. Everyone in the class will sign the card and we will mail it home to the family.

School Decision Making and Advocacy

School Board Meetings- I can personally invite parents to the school board meetings in newsletters, phone calls, and face-to-face conversations. By promoting this important outlet, parents will increase their awareness, which is the first step on the way to taking action.

Parent Forum- The school board also hosts special nights each quarter just for parents. At these forums, the board members present information about district goals and performance to parents and parents get an opportunity to ask questions, make comments, and suggest ideas of their own.

PTA- Parents will be encouraged to become a member of the Parent Teacher Association. As a member myself, I can provide resources and materials from the organization to individual families not part of the organization for financial or time reasons.

Mother: A single Hispanic woman working two jobs to support her three children with an income of $30K a year. Mom values education and cares well for her children, but rarely has time to attend school functions or conferences. Her English language skills are conversational; she is unable to read or write in English.

Father: All three children have the same father, but he is no longer a part of the family.

Student: The oldest of three children, female, 10 years old. In school, this student struggles with language arts and is easily frustrated when reading independently. A bilingual student fluent in both English and Spanish, the student speaks almost exclusively Spanish at home.

Siblings: Both are boys, ages 7 and 3. The youngest attends childcare provided at reduced rates by a local church. The middle son attends school with his older sister. Both school-aged children ride a bus to school because they do not live within safe walking distance.

Teachers/School: First year educator teaching departmentalized curriculum in math and science only. The teacher has the primary student for only two hours each day. Concerns from the student’s reading scores have caused the teachers to request multiple conferences in person with the mother, but she has been unable to find an agreeable time. The school has already begun intervention for the student in language arts

The following goals have been set for the student and family outlined above:

1. Inform parent of student progress, needs, and classroom/school news
2. Provide opportunity for parent to support student learning goals at home
3. Increase school-related communication within family (parent asking about school, child volunteering information about school, etc.)
4. Successfully schedule at least one face-to-face conference with parent to increase physical involvement
5. Increase positive 2-way communication between home and school

Designing a comprehensive family involvement plan is important and will be a valuable resource as long as it has been developed with a specific family in mind. We know that the makeup and lifestyles of families are as wide and varied as the students that come into our classrooms every day. Without carefully considering the individual family, the most comprehensive family involvement plan in the world will be useless and wasteful if it isn’t practical and realistic in the context of the family for which it is intended. For a family involvement plan to be successful and beneficial, the classroom teacher must know the families in his or her classroom on a personal level and have the creativity to do less with more.

The section I was troubled by begins on page 610 and is called “Frequent Causes of Tension Between Parents and Teachers.” This section lists and describes seven types of undesirable parental behavior that teachers will most likely encounter: Late Parents, Releasing Parents to Noncustodial Parents, Lack of Respect, Sick Children, End-of-Day Problems, Parents Asking for Special Treatment, and Disagreement over Readiness.

Most of those types of behaviors, I agree, are troublesome to teachers. I would be embarrassed as a professional if one of my colleagues were to openly complain about having to wait around after school with a student. I’ve seen this happen in front of the student being waited on at the time and, even worse, in front of other students. This leads me back to the philosophical question of what kind of teacher do I want to be known as? In this situation, I want to be known as a gracious and accommodating professional not put out by having to go above and beyond (even to extremes) to ensure the safety and quality of education for my students.

I was also shocked to read the “Lack of Respect” heading. How dare any professional public educator demand respect from parents, and how dare any professional public educator “complain that parents fail to treat them with respect.” I am embarrassed by this. As educators, we have chosen to become public servants within a community. As such, the job we do should not be to acquire the respect and admiration of the public. A master teacher is humble. Any respect we are shown should be earned by our actions, not by the status of our career. Isn’t this what we are taught when learning how to manage students? Respect is earned. The cases that are bound to occur where a parent is disrespectful to a teacher are unfortunate, but the kind of teacher I want to be would shoulder that burden and carry on. Better yet, a teacher may turn to personal reflection to see if there is some reason within control to explain why the parent behaved in such a manner toward him or her. Still, if there is no reason to be found, the right thing to do is to carry on. This was not a point that was made in the chapter, and I think it is a grave omission.

All of that aside, you can’t argue with teachers being troubled by situations involving custody battles, etc. I appreciated the information, and I found it to be useful. Particularly, the advice for how to handle delivering “a bad report” at the end of a school day was something I found to be wise. Good reading.

Student teaching in Aldine was definitely a challenge. There is a language barrier when dealing with parents (and sometime students) that I had to grow accustom to. In addition, there is a culture barrier. These things couples with social diversity from varying socio-economic statuses creates a great deal of pressure for the educators responsible to the students there. I’m a Hoosier country boy moving to the fourth largest city in the United States. If I am incapable of dealing with diverse backgrounds, then I have no business teaching that population. So, I had better equip myself with the knowledge and skills necessary to reach families from diverse backgrounds.

One of the tools I have acquired to better understand and serve families from diverse backgrounds came to me during my Urban Semester experience at Ball State. We studied the research and philosophy of Dr. Ruby K. Payne, and our class was fortunate enough to be able to hear Dr. Payne lecture on her findings. The information I learned was invaluable! The following is an excerpt from a reflection written after attending Dr. Payne’s lecture:

“No significant learning occurs without a significant relationship.”
I’m going to have to ponder the full meaning of this. There is so much to think about. I think this means that we need to work to build significant quality teacher-student relationships with our students in order to be effective teachers. From what I’ve learned from Dr. Payne, people in poverty especially value and rely on relationships before nearly everything else. I can’t tell an student who is growing up in poverty that they need to memorize their multiplication facts because it will help them get a good job. They’ve already given up on that, and they’re only interested in learning those facts if I have taken the time to establish a relationship with them. That’s an earned status in poverty, by the way.

“It is not about the choices people make. It is about whether or not they have a choice.”
This was particularly powerful. Right before Dr. Payne said this, I wondering why she was telling us all this stuff about poverty and upper class and middle class and the way we all are and the hidden rules and why we do this and why they can’t understand that…. she never said “And it’s okay.” That’s all I wanted to hear: it’s okay. Instead, she dropped this incredibly meaningful (particularly to the teacher in me) quote. To me this means that it isn’t my position to judge students from poverty.

For example, students from poverty speak in a lower register (usually intimate or casual), foul language or cussing may be used because that is how the student communicates at home. Now, my middle class values tell me that this child should not be speaking that way. But, the child has not been growing up with middle class values and to him or her, the cussing and foul language is just as acceptable as the Standard English I am trying to push. It’s not my place to make a value judgment or to try to replace the student’s register with Standard English. As a teacher, I am responsible for giving that child an opportunity to choose to use Standard English because most would agree that Standard English is the minimum requirement for getting a job placement out of a job interview, and we want this student to be successful. So it’s about choice… and that’s a slightly new twist on how I saw the role of a teacher in an urban classroom.

This idea also goes back to what I read in chapter 10 about parent-teacher conferences. In that part of the text, teachers are warned not to be an expert. We are encouraged to refer parents to other professionals who will have more sound information for issues and concerns with children. It seems that what I am learning in chapter 14 is right in line with that idea. Someone who can pull out a file folder full of pamphlets for organizations and services within the community would be someone I would want my own children to have as their teacher because it shows that he or she is truly concerned enough about my child to be equipped with the best information available. That’s the kind of teacher I’d like to be. This will be something my students’ parents can count on me for.

• external links to parenting resources on the Web
• district information useful to parents (such as district acronyms)
• Parent-Teacher Association (PTA) links
• Aldine Pathfinders (Parent Booster Organization)
• Parent Portal and Parent Connect- Internet-based parent access to student information
• “How to get involved…”
• Portrait of a Parent

I think all of those categories and resources were predictable. The last two, however, are interesting. “How to get involved” is a link to the Superintendent’s Web page where parents are notified of upcoming parent advisory meetings with the school board. At these meetings, the district discloses important information to parents about district and campus performance. What I think is neat, though, is the forum component of each advisory board meeting. Parents have an opportunity to voice concerns and provide input directly to the school board members. This appeals to me because it makes the administration accessible to parents outside the usual public forum of a school board meeting. I believe this is characteristic of a district that cares about parent communication and involvement. I would be interested to learn how attendance is at these meetings.

The second interesting link takes parents to a download .pdf file entitled “Portrait of an Aldine ISD Engaged Parent (Parents, Grandparents, Caregivers).” The information in the document is not out of line with the information in the text for this course. There are six major headings that describe an engaged parent:

1. Parenting
2. Communicating
3. Student Learning
4. Volunteering
5. School Decision Making and Advocacy
6. Collaborating with the Community

Under each heading are specific traits. I really found this to be interesting. You can download your own copy of a “Portrait of an Aldine ISD Engaged Parent (Parents, Grandparents, Caregivers)” by clicking here.

It is important to be positive when talking to parents because one negative comment can shut down the lines of communication. This fact wasn’t new to me, but after reflecting on what exactly that means in a parent teacher conference I realized that this is something I need to be aware of when a parent makes a negative comment, intentional or otherwise, toward me. As the professional, it is my responsibility to maintain the lines of communication in a conference. Even if I feel attacked by a comment, it is not professional or appropriate to take the comment personally.

In the text, a point is made to avoid negative evaluations. The technique given is to put yourself in the parent’s shoes and your first reaction to the comment about to be delivered will tell you whether or not the comment is appropriate. The author also warns to stick to subjective evaluations instead of objective statements. I think this is good advice for a parent teacher conference, but it is also applicable to professional peer reviews, constructive feedback in team faculty meetings, and meetings with administration.

For my own reference, I want to include the common pitfalls of a teacher parent conference:

1. Overly technical terminology or jargon.
2. Playing the role of an “expert.”
3. Negative or destructive evaluations about a child’s capabilities.
4. Unprofessional conversation: about others, too personal, or taking sides.
5. Giving advice- either invited or not.
6. Trying to solve all problems on the spot, or trying to force agreement.