Improving Parent-Teacher Communication and Relationships
In the 2005 MetLife Survey of the American Teacher, researchers found that 70 percent of secondary school teachers think that the relationship between parents and teachers is adversarial. Twenty percent of teachers found their relationships with parents to be somewhat or very unsatisfying.
“It seems obvious that parents and teachers should work together,” said Suzanne Tingley, author of Dealing with Difficult Parents. “After all, both parents and teachers have the child’s best interest at heart. Both want the child to be successful and both understand that the child has a greater chance of being successful when the home and the school work together. Unfortunately, despite their shared goals, parents and teachers sometimes run into conflict about how to reach those goals.”
The Survey of the American Teacher found that 97 percent of teachers strongly or somewhat agree that effective teachers need to be able to work well with students’ parents. However, just 37 percent of secondary school teachers surveyed said that parents come to parent-teacher conferences.
“Teachers appreciate parents who attend conferences, plays, games and other events in which their child is involved,” Tingley said. “At the secondary level at parent conferences often the parents who show up are the parents of kids who are doing really well. Often times, parents who need to be there decide that as kids move through the high school they really don’t need to do that anymore, and that’s simply not true.”
The MetLife survey bears this out. When researchers surveyed students, 48 percent of middle school students (grades 7-9) said their parents were very involved in their education. In grades 10-12, that number drops to 22 percent.
Tingley recommends that teachers encourage positive parent involvement from the beginning of the school year. She suggests teachers send a letter home, with the parent’s name in the salutation to make it more personal. Weekly letters to parents are also helpful to start a parent-teacher dialogue.
“Send a Friday letter,” Tingley said. “Elementary teachers do this a lot, but I know secondaries that have done this also – and it doesn’t have to be Friday. ‘This is what we did this week. This is what we’re doing this week. This is what’s going to be coming up and here’s how you can help, and by the way, if you have any questions or concerns, please call the school office and I will get back to you just as soon as I possibly can.’”
Inviting parents to call or contact the teacher might seem like a broken record, Tingley said, but parents need to know what to do and the proper procedures for contacting the teacher.
Tingley also recommends that teachers keep a Website. “This is a growing area, and actually many teachers find this to be a lot easier than letters,” she said. “An advantage to this is parents can share the responsibility of communicating by checking the website for news, and allowing parents to email you is quick and it’s timely, and you can respond when you have the time, and actually that’s often a lot quicker than calling.”
Despite the fact that 81 percent of teachers believe that principals try to involve parents in education, the fact is that too few parents are taking that role. As teachers, it’s part of our job to work with and involve parents in their students’ education, Tingley said.
“When parents and teachers work together, it’s a united front,” she said. “The school and the home are the two authority figures in the student’s life, and students really want those two sides to work together. Instruction improves when the home and school work together, or at the very least, it doesn’t decline.”
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