Belief about school-parent communication
Effective school-home communication is essential and assists parents and teachers to do what is best for children with disabilities. The institution has various methods of communicating with parents, but it chooses to use methods that best suit parental and its needs. Generally, the school has a Web site for general information about enrolment and other specific areas.
The teacher noted, “the institution rarely uses phone calls, except in cases of emergencies”. In addition, it uses e-mails selectively because of the digital divide and low response rate among parents.
The teacher noted that the institution provides “notices and newsletters for regular communication through students to their parents”. Newsletters are effective for general activities at school and show how parents can participate in them. The institution also encourages parents to check their children’s schoolbags for weekly notes because some children may give such notes several days after when they are no longer relevant (National Council for Special Education, 2011).
The school also uses children’s daily report book, which has a note section. Teachers can write their comments about the child’s progress and challenges. Children must provide daily reports to their parents on a daily basis. Once parents have reviewed the teacher’s comment, they must also acknowledge and provide comments if necessary. The teacher notes, “the Children’s daily report is effective means of communication between the class teacher and the parent because both parties must comment on a daily basis about the learner”.
The school also has patent-teacher meetings at the end of every school term. The school encourages parents to attend these meetings in order to keep in touch with learning achievements of their children. Children also learn that their parents care about their education through these meetings. Parents learn about academic and social progress of their children, assess learning environments, know teachers, and review plans for the child education. However, there is no resource centre for the school, which is available at the community.
The institution also has a pupil report for the child’s academic progress. The report is mandatory at the end of every academic term. It also has the school principal’s comments and proposed ways of improving learning. Overall, these are effective communication strategies between the school and parents, but the teacher believes that the daily report from school to parent works well, while e-mails are not effective.
Teacher communication ideas in classroom
Based on outcomes of this interview, a good classroom should improve on class-parent communication. The classroom shall encourage the use of a weekly folder, which parents would receive through their children every Friday. This would enhance communication and cooperation between parents and the school.
The weekly folder would act as a primary means of communication between the teacher and parents. Parents can use the folder to review their children’s social, physical, academic achievement and reinforce them. In addition, there would also be a daily report from the class teacher. Parents must sign and add comments about their children.
A classroom newsletter would also serve as a communication tool between the teacher and parents. It would announce classroom upcoming events, parents’ reminders, homework tips, or acknowledge parents’ contributions to learning. The teacher would encourage parents to provide relevant information about their children’s special needs.
This would assist the teacher to meet specific needs of learners (Lavoie, 2008). At the same time, it would ensure that teachers understand other factors that affect children outside the school environment (Powell and Driver, 2013).
References
Lavoie, R. (2008). The Teacher’s Role in Home/School Communication: Everybody Wins. Retrieved from http://www.ldonline.org/article/28021#top
National Council for Special Education. (2011). Children with Special Educational Needs. Retrieved from https://ncse.ie/
Powell, S. R. & Driver, M. K. (2013). Working with exceptional students: An introduction to special education. San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint Education, Inc.