The interactions between students, teachers, and parents have always been of paramount importance because student’s success entirely depends on it. Effective communication between them is possible under one indispensable condition: they must share an understanding of both achievements and expectations.
Every communication plan has certain tasks and criteria of estimation. Probably it would be advisable to expound on the above-mentioned points because without understanding these crucial notions, the development of the plan would be practically useless.
As far as the goals of the communication plan are concerned, we can say that they are very numerous. However, the principal aim is to establish continuous and constructive communication between students, teaching staff, and parents (or sometimes guardians). The key principle is that parents should be able to take part in the decision-making process. In other words, they must not be just passive viewers. It also should be taken into account that a good communication plan must provide timely updates as to student’s progress in studies (Stoiber, 93). Moreover, it should not be just one-way communication, which means that there should be some feedback from parents or guardians. The overwhelming majority of educators believe that the student should not be excluded from the communication between teachers and parents; they usually describe the interactions between student, home, and the school as some triangle (Morgan, 102).
It is of the utmost importance that a communication plan should involve all possible means of communication. They are phone contacts, written communications, teacher-parent meetings, home visits, and maybe some social events. These are the traditional means of communication; now we can also add some new ones such as e-mail and skype. In the world of high technologies, it is possible to resolve any problems. For instance, if a parent is currently living abroad, the only way he or she can keep in touch with the teacher is through the Internet. Therefore, the plan should contain information as to the office hours of a teacher.
Now that we have outlined the main principles and goals, it is necessary to apply them because theory cannot be separated from practice. First, the very word plan implies some sort of schedule. Thus, the communication plan must provide a timetable, according to which parents, students, and teachers can coordinate their collaboration because it is not always possible to find a suitable time for both sides. As had already been mentioned before, the plan should provide updates about the student’s achievements. Perhaps it would be very much prudent if the parent that parent is able to gain immediate access to the school database in order to know the results of his offspring and perhaps take some preliminary actions. Thus, the results of the student should be continuously entered into the database.
One of the basic principles is that parents should be involved in the decision-making process. In fact, it is easier said than done. Perhaps this problem can be resolved in the following way: there must be some kind of committee, whose sole task is to discuss the suggestions and proposals made by parents.
Thus, we may arrive at the conclusion that developing a home-school communication plan involves a great number of nuances, and none of them can be disregarded. However, we can say that the main condition of productive communication is the active participation of both sides.
Bibliography
Betty Y. Ashbaker, Jill Morgan. “Paraprofessionals in the Classroom” Allyn and Bacon, 2005.
Paul R. Burden, James Michael Cooper. “An Educator’s Guide to Classroom Management”. Houghton Mifflin, 2004.
Karen Callan Stoiber. “Handbook of Group Intervention for Children and Families” Allyn and Bacon, 1998.