A good method of teacher-to-parent communication is vital for the proper education of students. This past year, some of the typical methods of communication between teachers and parents were not available. Many teachers relied on face-to-face conferences with parents to hold a meaningful discussion on how their student was doing in class. Of course there were solutions to this issue, which I believe teachers can still make use of going into future school years.
One simple solution to the absence of parent-teacher conferences was the usage of video conferencing technologies. In some ways, this form of conference was better to fit into parent and teacher schedules alike, as well as providing an easier way to access a one-on-one conference. In these conferences, teachers can utilize screen sharing to discuss grades and assessments as they would do during an in-person conference.
In addition to switching to virtual conferences, educators found other meaningful ways online to foster greater parent involvement. Some examples that I noticed educators making use of that I will using in my future classroom are inviting parents to join either our online classroom and/or creating a website of my own to update parents on what's going on in the classroom. Like other teachers, I will also get parent emails to send out weekly class newsletters on what's going on in class. In addition to this, I know that I'll be offering office hours to parents for private video conferencing or phone calls for them to reach me, as well as offering both in-person and virtual parent-teacher conferences in order for parents to select what works best for their time and schedule.
Overall, teachers were aware of the importance of parent communication pre-pandemic, however through the pandemic teachers found great ways to still foster the same communication, and as in many other areas of education, I believe that educators should still utilize some of the procedures that proved to work well when the virtual format was the only means of communication.
Image source: https://www.istockphoto.com/illustrations/parent-teacher-communication
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