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Professional development activities that have proven effective will be included in Develop Your Staff. Your contributions are welcome. Send them to principal@osu.edu. Please indicate if we may use your name in the “contributor” credits.
Communicating with Parents
by Diana Williams
I recently overheard a mother talking about her son’s school while I was sitting in a waiting room. She was telling her confidante that her son’s teacher had sent a three-page form home to be filled out the same night he sent it home. She had just had a new baby and the grandmother had delivered the form from the school to the mom. The mother wondered out loud why the form had not been sent prior to the deadline or at least giving her a weekend to work on it. This illustrates how little things can upset parents and breach their cooperation with the school. With a slight adjustment on the part of the school, often these issues can be eliminated.
Use comments from parents to produce a professional dialogue with staff about how to foster two-way (home to school and school to home) communication as opposed to one-way (school to home) communication. The following process is one way a school can foster better communication with the home:
Step 1. Invite parents to a coffee klatch with the principal. Host donuts and coffee every Friday morning in September as parents drop off their children. When they come in, hand them a slip of paper that says. “If I could make one change at school, it would be…”
Step 2. At a staff meeting pass out a few of the comment sheets to each grouping of 4-5 staff members. Ask them to discuss the comments and develop strategies to accommodate the requests where possible. Ask them to be creative and think out of the box.
Step 3. Prioritize the concerns and develop a plan for action for selected strategies.
Step 4. To let parents know that you are taking their concerns seriously, you can select a few to run in the newsletter and to discuss what the staff plans to do about the issues. A further extension is to take the ideas to a school reform committee composed of parents and parent leaders to work on the issues.
