Blog #9 Home/ School Connection
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In my opinion, one of the most important aspects of teaching is making sure you have a healthy relationship with not only the students, but the parents of these students as well. Through reading several different articles, watching videos, and also attending the local board of education meeting, I was happy to see that this aspect of teaching is very prevalent in discussion. Even through this pandemic, I see an effort to try to create and sustain these relationship throughout these tough times.
Making meaningful relationships with the students in your class is a huge first step in creating a healthy relationship between you and these families in the communities, as this can lead to trust and admiration. As explained in "3 Ways to Make Meaningful Connections With Your Students", there are many ways to create these relationships, including always trying to be available to the students. This can mean being available for extra help, or even just to talk between periods, as the article explains, "My open office hours have turned into a nice plays for kids to come before classes start and just talk about what's going on in their lives"(Provenzano, 2014). This availability will lead to students trusting you more, which will lead to the parents doing so as well. After creating this positive relationship with the student, it's important to try and reach out to the parents as well, as it explains in "8 Tips for Reaching Out to Parents", calling home to report good news is a really good step to create this relationship. The article explains how the calls can "reassure parents that I'm not out to make life more difficult for their child, that I'm fair in my assessments and feedback, and that I genuinely want to see students succeed"(Cutler, 2015). There are tons of other ways to reach out as well during the pandemic that don't include having the parents come in for a conference, as explained in "Tech-Enhanced Parent Engagement", the app named "Remind" can be a helpful tool to allow teachers to contact the parents. The article states "Creating a special Remind group for parents would be an easy way for directly sharing information"(Provenzano, 2016). The relationship between the teachers and parents is extremely important, and this importance is described in the video "Principles of teaching - partnership with parents", as one of the teachers explained it is in the parents best interest to communicate with the teacher and vice versa to ensure the child develops and can maximize his or her potential.
These ideas were also touched upon during the Board of Education meeting I attended at Plainedge High School. The focal point of the entire meeting was to make sure the children can get back in school and receive that High School experience they were promised including prom, graduation, but especially to get back those relationships between the teachers and students. Allowing many parents to be in attendance for this meeting and letting them speak their mind just shows this relationship between the teachers/administration and the teachers being strong, as they all shared the same goal of getting the students back in class. This idea of a healthy relationship between the students, the teachers, and the parents was also prevalent in the New York state mandated workshop I attended, The Child Abuse Identification Workshop. The instructors explained certain things to look out for as an educator, and some warning signs that can indicate if a student is having a troubling life at home with abusive parents. One suggestion they made was to try and create this relationship that all the articles, videos, and the board of education meeting eluded to, to get a better feel of each students life at home, and to ensure that the students are in a safe and healthy environment. As a future educator, I will make sure to create healthy relationships with not only the students, but the parents of these students as well to make it a very open and healthy environment.
Nick Incalcaterra
References
Cutler, D. (2015, August 20). 8 Tips for Reaching Out to Parents. Edutopia. https://www.edutopia.org/blog/tips-reaching-out-to-parents-david-cutler.
Principles of teaching - partnership with parents. YouTube. (2012, April 11). https://youtu.be/FRwMUnCjVrc.
Provenzano, N. (2014, February 24). 3 Ways to Make Meaningful Connections With Your Students. Edutopia. https://www.edutopia.org/blog/make-meaningful-connections-with-students-nick-provenzano.
Provenzano, N. (2016, August 30). Tech-Enhanced Parent Engagement. Edutopia. https://www.edutopia.org/blog/tech-enhanced-parent-engagement-nicholas-provenzano.
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