Ways to Keep in Touch with parents

If you are a tech savvy teacher (or you pretend to be) there are a lot of ways to connect with parents:

Remind101 is a service designed with teachers in mind. It essentially lets parents sign up for their student's class. From them on when you want to send a reminder, "Students will be reading at a nearby preschool next week! See if your child wants to practice their book with you."
Pros-
It's free! No need to wait for your tax refund.
It respects privacy: your number is never shown to any parents and their numbers aren't revealed to you.
It's easy! It walks you through step by step.

Cons-
It is only available in the US and Canada... so that leaves me out of this loop.

If you use a site to record grades, or monitor behavior (Engrade, ClassDojo, Blackboard) they usually have a way for parents to log in and access the site.

Sometimes this is more passive on your part. You keep the information up to date and they make the decision to check it or not. That's what something like Engrade and blackboard offer.

 ClassDojo is also passive, however it also lets you send your reports to the parents. For example, if you are reacting to a particularly good day with a trouble student you can send the report to a parent so they can praise their child as well!


These programs are great because if you are already using them, it doesn't require much more effort to allow the parents access. It also makes your class a lot more visible. Students can't claim they don't know why they are failing, or that the teacher doesn't like  them. Their actions and grades are all very transparent.

You can create a class website, blog or twitter too! These take a bit more effort as you have to maintain them, but I find they are great for students who lose papers or need reminders. I love using Twitter. It is fast, easy and most of my students are addicted so it works well.

It is also nice for those less tech savvy teachers because it really doesn't require that much know-how to make a twitter account and get started.


No computer access?
If you simply cannot access technology (or you don't think your students' parents can) you can still connect with your students' parents in others ways:

I have talked about how I send a letter home the first week; this way, parents know what I expect and how to reach me.

My mother always sent out a monthly (or was it weekly) newsletter to her students.

My school had a weekly "Family Envelope" with reminders of school events, class assignments and other must know things. Parents would sign whatever was inside the envelope and return it to the school with the student. Sometimes they includes little "password questions" randomly. If a parent spotted it, they would answer the question and send in the answer. This would put their student in a drawing for free homework passes, free dress days, etc.

What about you? How do you keep in touch with parents? Does it work? What would your ideal system be? I'd love to hear form you in the comments, or on Twitter.

Maintaining Contact with Parents

For the life of me I can't remember where I heard this story. It could have been from a colleague, a friend, a teacher, or a blog. Essentially the story goes:

A parent came in to complain about her child's grades and how the school needed to be doing more.  The employee looked at her and said, "Name three of your child's teachers." The parent paused nodded her head and said, "I see your point, have a nice day."

The moral of the story is that parents tend to only get involved when things go bad, when they would be more useful getting involved from the start!

On the first day of class we do several things. I have a PowerPoint where I go over class expectations and rules. Then they fill out a gap fill restating the rules. The final part is to take the paper home to their parents. The bottom of the paper is a short letter (in Spanish) to the parents. It explains that they can access engrade, or twitter to get a hold of me in addition to my e-mail. I also offer to speak with them in Spanish if they don't feel comfortable in English.

This way, right away I have opened up the channels of communication. Not all parents choose to contact me, but I know that I gave them the option to get involved from day one.

This year when I sent out the letter I received an e-mail that very night from a mother sent from her iPhone. It was written in Spanish, but the loosely translated it said, "Hello. It is very nice on your part to introduce yourself, and it is very nice to meet you. I am the mother of (student). This is the first time that a teacher has shown this kindness. I wish you the best."


I know it is silly, but notes like that really make me feel like I am on the right track.

There are some more suggestions here. How do you make sure that your parents stay up to date with your class?

Help Your Students Turbo Charge their GPA

I just found a book called, "How to Turbo Charge Your GPA: The Lazy College Student Solution "Cheat Sheet." The author, Victoria LeVane Cayce, had a self-proclaimed tough childhood. SIn education she had to deal with being dyslexic and having ADD. However, she managed to put all of aside, and managed to graduate with
honors. For more on her background check out her book Beautiful Scars: Moving on and Creating a Joyous Life from the Ashes of Childhood Abuse (pictured on the right). 

The book, How to Turbo Charge Your GPA: The Lazy College Student Solution "Cheat Sheet" (Learning How to Learn) gives students some solid advice for studying and even gives teachers some reminders on how to give effective lessons.

First she reviews what she feels most students know, "Read the assigned text before you go to the lecture. Start studying the most important information first. You will also need to study often..."

Then she goes into her own advice, a lot of it is helpful and she is quite humorous. As a teacher here are some things I took out of it to help students.

1. VISUALIZE! Have students write down the GPA you want. Also have them track every grade they earn. I use engrade to help students see their grades.

2. Make things memorable. Move students to the front of class to help them focus if they get distracted easily. More importantly I feel like teachers can do their part to do this as well by making unique lessons with vivid visuals or audios students can use to remember what was being taught.

3. Pre-Test Teachers can help with this by giving pre-tests, you can either make it optional, for extra credit or as part of a homework grade.

4.   Memory Aids I usually have my students do these with vocabulary words. This is where we have them make an initialism, picture, or sentence to remember.

• Such as, "Ameliorate" Amelia the nurse makes people feel better.

5.  Enjoy it I have discussed the fact that birdsong seems to help people be more productive before. That's because people feel safer and happier. If you can play some birdsong in your class or maybe burn a nice smelling candle before class students may associate learning with something pleasant.

Her book offers lots of other advice for students to follow (Zen thinking during tests, The Fast and the Furious Study method, Why not to cram etc.)and many students may find this a quick and helpful read.

If not, as least they can have a teacher who makes it easier for them to raise their GPA.

What's the book you suggest students read if they need some help? Or what's the one tip you give students to boost them a bit?