Call Parents Sooner Rather Than Later

November 12th, 2008 By: Diane Trim in Adolescent Development, Articles, Classroom Management, Learning Community

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Brad was a pill in fourth period. You talked with him, you moved his seat, and you kept him after the bell rang. That was yesterday. And today. It was last week, too. Brad’s behavior is disrupting learning in your classroom and you need to call home. Now.

No one wants this phone call, not you and Brad’s mom. The longer you wait, the worse the situation becomes, though, so don’t postpone parent contact.

Suzanne Tingley, author of Dealing with Difficult Parents, said it’s best to let parents know sooner rather than later that a student is having academic or behavioral problems. “If the student is in trouble, in any way, whether it’s disciplinary or whether it’s academic, you don’t have to wait until parent conferences to let the parents know,” Tingley said in a recent Inside the School online seminar. “If a student is struggling in math or reading, or getting along with people, a call home can help, or at least show parents that you are on top of the situation.”

Locate the parents’ contact information, find a quiet place, and make the call. If you’re calling the parent at work, be careful about the student’s privacy and don’t identify yourself beyond your name and the school’s name to the parent’s colleagues. Ask the working parent if this is a good time to call about a school-related issue. Overall, don’t worry about calling a parent at work; it’s better to call and forewarn the parent of a problem than to let the problem fester.

“At the secondary level, I can tell you from my years in administration, that no parent is as angry as the parent who hears that his or her child is failing a course needed for graduation and it’s too late to do anything about it,” Tingley said. “So I’m not saying that timely information will necessarily correct the problem, but I am saying that it will protect you from the charge that you didn’t tell anybody about it and so the child didn’t have anything that he or she could do about it.”

The purpose of the phone call is not to vent your frustrations, but to work together with the parent to help the student. It’s helpful to write down the specifics of the phone call in advance so you don’t become sidetracked.

“It’s hard to give information to parents that you know that they don’t want to hear,” Tingley said, “but it’s a lot worse if you wait. You never know how parents are going to react to negative information. You don’t know if you’re going see tears or anger, or there might even be threats, but nobody wants to hear that their child is at the bottom of the class, or that she’s a bully, or that she needs to show more respect for the teacher or for other students. But it’s part of the teacher’s job to give feedback, and to give it as honestly as you can.”

Tags: Adolescent Development, behavior, Classroom Management, parents, phone calls

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