School communications are an ongoing challenge for parents, teachers, and administrators. They can be a source of frustration if there is the perception of too much communication and if there is not enough communication. There are now many vendors who are marketing solutions to support smoother school-home communications. Take a look at my presentation for an overview of why we should be paying attention to these communications and what some of the trends are in the communications solutions.
(A1) School-Home Communication
6 responses to “(A1) School-Home Communication”
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Hi Janice,
Communication between the school and the parents is a complex issue. The solutions should bring families that are out of school closer together. On the other hand, strengthen and expand contact with parents who are present in school life. In my personal experience, I follow my children’s school routine exclusively by email. I would love to be able to participate more in school life, even living on another continent.
Hi Alexei,
Thanks for your comments. This year in particular it has been challenging to connect families with the school. At our school we are now fortunate to have most of our families back in the country, but still have some families who are choosing to keep students at home and have had to limit access to our usually welcoming campus. Your situation is difficult and you are not the only parent out there who feels disconnected. I work in admissions and manage our after-school activities program and the pickup time has traditionally been an opportunity to connect with parents and get a sense of the tone and thoughts within the community. Without that regular face-to-face connection and with consideration of the overload of information that parents have been receiving, we have not had nearly the same level of interaction in order to build community or even gauge community attitudes. What we do know is that families are overwhelmed with information from multiple channels and still feel disconnected and like they don’t know what is happening.
Hi Janice,
Your point about flooding the parents’ mailboxes with emails reminded me of when we went fully online for teaching in BC last spring. I was sending out a mass parent email once a week to keep them updated about what was occurring for class that week, as well as emails to let parents know if their kids weren’t engaging in learning, and many parents never responded. One parent I ran into outside of school told me that she was getting so many emails from teachers that she just started deleting them because it was too stressful. As an anglophone living in Quebec two years ago, I fully appreciated that my daughter’s teacher used ClassDojo to communicate with parents. I could just apply Google Translate to all messages and see them in English to make sure I fully understood. When we consider that the language that students are learning in may not be the language used at home, this is an essential communication tool.
Thanks so much for your comments Lori. Your story about the parent deleting the emails rings so familiar – how can we be informative without being overwhelming? The language translation with ClassDojo sounds so helpful. My school has a fairly high percentage of non-English-speaking parents and that can be so challenging from the admissions process through to classroom and school communications. Anything that can simplify and clarify would be welcome.
Hi Janice:
This is a neat looking Prezi. Assessment of apps for mobile devices has also been a topic on my mind. I could not find any metric to assess, which is why I created one of my own. Assessing apps is very important to determine what is happening in the classroom and if any benefit can be identified using the app. Though apps are very useful, the one thing we do not want them doing is becoming a crutch in the learning process.
Thanks Brittany,
There are so many apps available for so many purposes it is difficult to know what to choose. As with any technology, you’re right that we don’t want them to be a crutch and we also don’t want to adopt them just to be using a cool new app. I look forward to reviewing your assessment metric!