Running head: TEACHER-PARENT COMMUNICATION 1

Teacher-Parent Communication

Student’s Name

Institutional Affiliation
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Teacher-Parent Communication

Identification of the Problem

I had an opportunity to volunteer at Smith Magnet Elementary School in Garner, NY. There, I

interacted with many students with behavioral problems, and their academic performance was

worrying. However, their parents were not concerned with their performance of behavioral

challenges. They could not attend social functions such as school conferences and parents'

meetings. About 85 percent of the students were Hispanic, and the majority of their parents do not

understand English. However, the school does not have a Hispanic teacher or a bilingual staff that

can translate. As a result, there is a communication barrier between parents and teachers, which

has resulted in detrimental consequences of children performance and social development.

Excellent two-way communication between parents and teachers is necessary for students to

succeed in education. The interface enables both parties to monitor the progress of students

because parents and teachers spend significant times of the day with students. It keeps both parties

aware of the development and challenges that they encounter both in school and at home. It can

be an essential strategy of understanding and dealing with behavioral disorders like anxiety and

depression among students.

Plan of action

Teacher-parent relationships should be started at the beginning of the school year. Teachers should

make initial contact with parents, know more about the students, and hear from them the best way

they would like their children to be handled. Most parents are intimidated by the school

environment, and if the teacher contacts them early enough, their worries about the school may

ease.
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Teachers should communicate more often with parents. After the initial contact, the relationship

may fade away if constant communication is not maintained. The strategy may require the school

to embrace different communication channels like school or class blogs, podcasts, television,

social media, emails, phone calls, applications, voice tools, and in-person meetings. Teachers

should vary the communication tools as much as possible and diverse from the contemporary

newsletters, and phone calls used by most schools. With that, parents may develop an interest when

they are regularly updated about the progress of their children.

Teachers and the school staff may need to give positive responses and reports to parents about

their children. Most parents are called to the school when their children are in trouble. However,

making it a routine to give parents positive reports about their children would boost their morale

and willingness to engage with the teachers. The school should also hire bilingual staff that will

facilitate communication with parents who do not speak English.

Methods of getting the staff to accept the efforts of Improvement

Professional perspective: - the teacher-parent relationship is one of the best practices of the

teaching profession, which ensures continuity of the learning process from the home to the school

setting. The communication would help the teacher to understand their students from the

perspective of their parents better and improve the schooling experience of children.

Student performance perspective: - seamless communication between parents and teachers would

contribute to the long-term academic success of children. One of the primary objectives of the

school is to promote educational and social excellence of students. The institution should be ready

to embrace any measures that would see the achievement of the objective.

Materials and resources to improve the initiative

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Install infrastructures such as school databases, blogs, online social media accounts, and emails

through which parents can access and read information from the school.

Embrace a routine of periodical contact with parents concerning the progress of children in school.

The contact should not necessarily be in person, but the use of technological approaches towards

communication can foster strong relationships between parents and teachers.

The school should hire a few bilingual staff that can facilitate communication with parents in the

language they understand. The language barrier may be one of the primary reasons for poor

teacher-parent relationships.

Methods of determining the success of the initiative

Improvement of the teacher-parent relationships would be the initiative whose success would be

measured. In the course of communication, teachers should request parents to give feedback

regarding the information they receive from the school. They should also regularly contact parents

through different channels and update them on the progress of their children. The number of

parents attending meetings at school can also be a determinant of improvement. Therefore, the

methods of measurement would be:-

1. Frequency of the teacher contact with parents

2. Feedback from parents

3. Attendance of meetings