Episode 36: Improving Parent-Teacher Communication

How do you feel about your level of parent-teacher communication? Are you on top of your phone calls to parents? Does an email rarely go untouched in your inbox? Is communicating with parents your teacher superpower?

Or, are you like this week’s listener, who feels overwhelmed by parent-teacher communication expectations? Feeling parents (and probably administration) expect more than she is able to give, and struggles to find time to add more parent-teacher communication into an already bursting-at-the-seams schedule. In this episode of the podcast, we’re sharing our thoughts on parent expectations of teachers and the realities about the amount of time we can reasonably devote to parent communication. We’re also offering up a few suggestions as to how to manage this important, but time-consuming, part of the job in a way that honors the need to include parents, while also recognizing the difficulties of communicating with nearly 200 parents (sometimes sets of parents) each year.

Parent-Teacher Communication Freebie!

One way to streamline your parent-teacher communication process is by using templates to systematize parent emails. Rather than starting each parent email by staring at a blinking cursor on a blank screen waiting for inspiration to strike, we use templates we can personalize and modify for each parent-teacher email we send. We’ve got four different templates for our most commonly sent communications and we’re sharing them with you. Get started saving time today!