Home-School Communications — Creating An Inviting Climate

A recent survey of parents found 72 percent want to be more involved in their children's schools. If invited, parents and guardians can play a valuable role in students' learning, offering support and reinforcement for academic and behavioral goals. Home-parent-family-school involvement expert Miriam Georg has collected examples of successful programs for enriching family-school communications. Innovative examples include:

Six Week Checkups

Teachers should communicate with parents every six weeks, through telephone if possible, to convey positive comments about students and highlight special school activities. In the middle school or high school, teachers are responsible for calling only their home-room students' parents. Research shows parents only hear from teachers when there is bad news. These checkups serve to instill parents' trust in and goodwill toward teachers.

Coffee Klatches

These informal get-togethers serve as a way to bring parents together, develop support networks, and discuss school and parenting issues. The sessions may be led by parents with teachers or school leaders invited periodically to discuss issues or answer questions about the school. They may be at school or at a community center close to parents' homes.

Hire an Assimilation Coordinator

An assimilation coordinator meets with every new family to assimilate the parents into school activities. The assimilation coordinator also helps parents find support services in the community or puts them in touch with other parents in their same situations. As an example, the coordinator would connect a non-English speaking family with a bilingual family in the school.

Potluck Nights

To accommodate busy schedules, Thorndike Maine's School Administration District #3A offers Potluck Nights to foster communication between teachers and families.

Parent of the Day

Have a bulletin board where a parent can be honored each day or week (possibly by grade level). This parent receives a free school lunch that day, a tour of the building, a book on parenting, a visit in his or her child's classroom, a chat with the principal, a previously arranged break from work to attend school, and a picture taken for the bulletin board.

A "Catch Me Being Good" Call

On a day when children do especially well in some aspect of their learning, the teacher takes a phone break and calls the parent to let the student tell the parent of his or her success, and the teacher adds congratulations.

Source: Miriam Georg, Creative Director for Performance Learning Systems, 2400 Garden Park Court, Arlington TX 76013. Email Miriam (insert email link to: mgeorg@plsweb.com).