Making Parent and Teacher Communication Easier in the High School Classroom

When we reflected on our first year after leaving the classroom, Kate shared that she wished she’d treated parent and teacher communication as a tool rather than an obstacle.

Neither of us was good at or enjoyed cultivating parent and teacher communication, and while some teachers are great at it, we don’t think we’re alone.

High school teachers often juggle large class loads and many students (for us, it was common to have six classes of 35–40 students each year, making us responsible for over 200 students). And parent and teacher communication is only one part of a job with impossible demands, making consistent parent and teacher communication feel daunting.

Yet we know that positive parent and teacher communication is incredibly valuable: when done well, it can build trust, improve student accountability, and reduce misunderstandings. Parents and teachers become a team working together to help each student reach their fullest potential.

We’ve both had opportunities to see the value of this from the other side—Kate as a parent and Steph as a tutor. When we were in the classroom, we often assumed parent and teacher communication would be hostile and approached it as a chore (usually with a defensive stance). But many parents just want to know what’s going on and help their students succeed. It’s frustrating when you’re genuinely trying to help a student who is trying to do their best and you can’t get a response from a teacher.

As daunting as cultivating positive parent and teacher communication can feel, it is possible, and today we’re sharing simple, realistic strategies to make parent and teacher communication more manageable and effective for secondary teachers.

Shift the Mindset From “Big Task” to “Small Systems”

One of the biggest obstacles for us when it came to parent and teacher communication is that it always had to be a big chore. “Communicating with parents” meant communicating with every parent at once. 

Our school’s progressive discipline plan required us to make parent contact for each student’s second and third missed assignments. This meant that sometime in late September, we were going to have a date with the phone and an enormous stack of missed assignment cards as we called parent after parent to let them know their student had missed an assignment. Of course we procrastinated, and of course this made it significantly worse.

Instead of viewing parent and teacher communication as an occasional (and dreaded) event, it helps to reframe communication as an ongoing practice, something we’re always engaged in as part of our workflow and classroom routines.

Consistency is far more important than quantity. Few parents want to hear from a teacher every single day, but parents who know they’re getting regular updates on their student’s progress will be less likely to email you in a panic or they’ll be more informed about you and your classroom when they do.

You don’t need to reach every parent every week—that’s impossible. But small efforts do add up, and you’ll be surprised by how much parent contact you’re able to maintain.

Related to this, separate the ideal from the possible. Would it be great to have regular one-on-one conversations with every parent about their child’s behavior, progress, and home life? Sure! But that’s not realistic (nor do most parents want that). The more you can weave practical and consistent parent and teacher communication into your weekly routine, the more likely you’ll be to keep it up.

Establish Your Communication Norms Early

It’s essential to set expectations at the beginning of the year (or semester). Whether it’s in your syllabus, an introductory email, or part of your Back to School Night presentation, tell parents exactly how you plan to communicate with them during the school year. Will you send weekly emails? Will you post weekly agendas on your LMS? Will you leave comments on the grade portal each week? When parents know what to expect, they can look out for it, and they’re less likely to reach out in frustration because you haven’t contacted them in the way they expected.

Tell parents how you prefer to be reached—if you don’t want phone calls, don’t share a phone number. If you prefer email, share your email address on your syllabus and at Back to School Night. If you communicate through an app or LMS, tell parents that.

And tell parents what your “email hours” are or what reasonable response time they can expect from you. Not only does this model boundaries for parents (and students), but it heads off complaints that you’re not responding quickly enough.

As with classroom management, being proactive about communicating your plans and expectations is often far more effective than reacting once problems arise.

Use Tools to Save Time and Stay Organized

One of the best ways to make parent and teacher communication easier and more manageable is to use tools rather than starting each parent contact from scratch.

Use email templates.

Create templates for typical emails that you send out regularly. We recommend having four (and have templates for you!): the positive or complimentary email, the initial concern email, the repeated concern email, and the academic dishonesty email. These are the four we sent most regularly, but you may need to have different emails for each class.

Keep a parent communication log.

Whether it’s a simple spreadsheet, a digital tool (like a quick Google Form that filters responses into a Google Sheet), or even an old-fashioned notebook, have a way to track any contacts you’ve had with parents.

On the positive side, this helps you know which students you’ve already contacted so that you know where to pick back up next time you sit down to communicate with parents.

On the negative side, this provides you with a record of how many times you’ve contacted a parent and what you’ve discussed. This record helps when you attend a parent-teacher conference or have to respond to an angry email about a low grade.

Use your Learning Management System (LMS) to communicate.

It’s easy to think of your LMS as a virtual file cabinet/gradebook or merely a portal where assignments go out and come back in. But if you can start to view your LMS as a communication tool, you’ll enhance your parent and teacher communication without creating tons of additional work.

If your LMS comes with built-in messaging tools or auto-updates, definitely take advantage of those.

But you can also use your communication with students to communicate with parents. We’re in the habit of providing fairly detailed directions to students, and when we do this, we make it very easy for parents and/or tutors to help our students complete work at home.

You can also post a weekly agenda on your LMS. Most systems allow parents to join a class as an observer, allowing them access to the weekly agenda so they can check student progress. You can also copy-and-paste that agenda into an email to students and/or parents if that works better for you.

This approach does take a little bit of work at the front end: you have to communicate to parents that this is how you will communicate with them. Invite them to join the class as an observer in a special email or at Back to School Night. Explain in the syllabus that they can find detailed information in your weekly email, on your LMS, or on students’ handouts. Remind parents every time you send an email that they can check your LMS for updates. Once parents learn that this is how you communicate, it runs more smoothly.

Use digital tools.

If your school gives you access to an automated system like Teleparent or Parentsquare, use it. These automated messaging systems allow you to send bulk messages to all students, which is great for reminders about important due dates or the end of the grading period. Many of these systems also allow parents to choose whether they’d like to receive an email, text, or voicemail, maximizing the likelihood that they’ll get your message.

Is sending automated messages ideal? No, but remember what we said above: we’re separating the ideal from the possible. If these automated tools allow you to communicate more consistently with parents, it’s a win for everyone.

As we also mentioned above, though, you need to make it clear to parents to expect these messages from you. When your school uses an automated system, the barrage of messages from the school and from each individual teacher can get overwhelming, and parents may be tempted to tune out. But if you’ve made it clear that this is where they will get information from you, they know to pay closer attention to your messages.

Be Proactive, Not Just Reactive

So often, parent and teacher communication becomes synonymous with “problem.” We all assume that “no news is good news” and the only contact we have is when something goes wrong.

This contributes to the feeling that parent and teacher communication is a chore to dread because it’s going to be hostile or contentious.

If you’re in the habit of regularly contacting parents, with information and positive feedback, from Day 1, you’re building a positive relationship with parents that will make the tough conversations go more smoothly in the future (or head them off altogether).

These emails don’t have to be long—here’s the email Steph sent to students in AP Seminar (and cc’ed their parents) after they submitted their performance tasks to the College Board and had two weeks left in class:

It’s a quick and easy combination of praise and information that keeps parents and students in the loop.

Navigating Tough Conversations

Unfortunately, tough conversations do come up. We can head some off with regular proactive conversation, but teenagers are teenagers, and issues will arise.
Here are a few tips to help you respond:

Respecting Time and Boundaries—Yours and Theirs

No matter how many systems you put in place, parent and teacher communication unavoidably takes time, and when parents know you’re open to communication, they’re more likely to contact you with questions. It’s essential for your well-being that you find ways to manage communication without letting it take over your evenings and weekends.

Here are some strategies we’ve found helpful:

While we absolutely believe in boundaries and setting clear end limits on your workday, we also acknowledge that in a digital world, there is more of an expectation than there used to be that teachers are available to help students outside of school hours. If you have a big project or assignment coming up, you might consider telling students that you will be available until X time to answer questions (and reminding them of those boundaries in the days leading up to it) so that you’re maintaining a balance between your own mental health and the needs of your students.

We also know that sometimes your time to send emails may not line up with the time you’ve told parents that you will respond to emails. If it’s easiest for you to write all your emails at 8:30 p.m. after a break from school, dinner, and kids’ bedtimes, you might consider scheduling those emails to send during your “publicized” email hours. When students and parents see you answering emails in the evenings (or on weekends or breaks), they’ll think you’re available and learn to expect a response. If it’s important to you that you have unreachable times, make sure your own email communication goes out during those times (even if you’re not actually writing the emails at that time).

Modeling these healthy boundaries for students and parents (who need, just like the rest of us, to see that it’s okay to have unreachable times) while communicating them clearly and frequently will allow you to keep your sanity while remaining supportive and approachable.

Simple, strategic communication systems allow you to make parent and teacher communication a regular part of your routine without taking away from the many other tasks you need to do each day. The more parents feel informed, the less likely they are to lash out in anger when something goes wrong and the more likely they are to help you help their students (and let’s be honest: we all need people to assist us in that herculean task!). 

You don’t have to transform your approach to parent and teacher communication all at once: start small, creating one template, using one new tool, or sending out one proactive message. All those small steps will add up, and you’ll find you’re communicating with parents more than you’d ever thought possible.

Are you part of our Free Resource Library? If not, we’d love for you to join. Not only will you get access to four email templates you can use for parent and teacher communication, but you’ll have access to other resources and you’ll be added to our weekly email list, where we send out encouraging messages and teaching tips to help you go from a frazzled creator to a thoughtful curator.