Transparent Algebra: Parent Communication

As is hopefully pretty obvious by the titles of many of my recent posts, I want my Algebra class to be transparent: transparent to students, transparent to parents, transparent to everyone. While I think I did an okay job with parent communication during my first stint in the classroom, the communication was generally after the fact, dealing with a behavior problem or an academic issue. I did communicate positive information as well, but this time I want to not only communicate those pieces of information, but I also want to share more of what we're doing, as well as why we're doing it. As I plan for this, I'm primarily struggling with two things: how much is too much information and how involved should parents be.

I generally like information. Lots of information. And, as the staff at my school will attest, I'm not adverse to sending out fairly long, involved emails that try to communicate important information in (sometimes excruciating) detail. At times folks have let me know that those emails are not always helpful, because they contain so much information that they often end up going unread. So as I contemplate how to communicate with the parents of the students in my class, I worry that I will bombard them with so much information that they'll end up ignoring it. How to strike the balance between being informative but not overwhelming?

My other concern is that high school is a time for parents to step back a little and students to step up. My philosophy has always been that I want the important conversations to typically be between me and the student, not me trying to get the student to comply by going through his or her parents. Yet I also think that parents should still be involved, and usually want to be involved, just not as a referee. If I communicate too much with parents, will I undermine the students' investment in my class?

With those concerns as backdrop, here are the various ways I'm currently planning on communicating with parents.

1. I've already called all the parents to confirm their student has broadband access from home. When I did that, I asked for an email address I could use to contact them.
   
   
2. I followed-up that phone call with an initial email message with some general information about the class.
   
   
3. Yesterday I then sent a second email message, which had information for both the parents and the students.
   
   
4. As you can see from that second message, I'm encouraging them to subscribe to the class blog via RSS or email. If they choose to do that, they'll get a daily glimpse into what we're doing, as that's where I'll post any homework the students have or other important information about the class.
   
   
5. I'll be encouraging them to come to our scheduled parent-teacher conferences, preferably with their student present.
   
   
6. I'm still thinking about how best to do this, but I want to encourage them not to wait until the scheduled parent-teacher conferences, but to come in and visit before that. I want to invite them in to observe/participate in a class, then perhaps stick around after and talk with me a bit about what they saw, as well as about their student. But this is one where I worry about my second concern, is that inviting them too far in, and will that make the students uncomfortable?
   
   
7. I'll be emailing them periodically with good news, such as when their student does well on an assessment or has a great idea in class.
   
   
8. I will, of course, contact parents if students are struggling, either academically or behaviorally, if talking with the student first doesn't seem to be helping.
   
   
9. I'm trying to be pretty available for them to contact me as well, sharing my Google Voice number, my email address, and various other parts of my digital footprint.
   
   
10. I hope to share interesting things that are going on in class, some of which may not be apparent even if they subscribe to the class blog. So, if we Skype someone in, or are doing a particularly interesting activity, I'll share that out.

I have a few more ideas floating around, but I think this is the core of my plan. What do you think? Too much? Not enough? What could I do better?

Parents, We Would Love Your Input . . .

Michele Davis had a great post on her ninth grade blog the other day. It was for her students, but she didn't ask them to comment. Instead, she asked their parents to.

Parents, one of our focuses this semester is writing persuasively. We start with an effective paragraph with strong topic sentences and move to a multi-paragraph persuasive essay, literary analysis essay, narrative writing, poetry, summaries, and online writing.

We would love your input on how writing is important in your line of work.

Some good, thoughtful comments from the parents on the importance of good writing, and a great way to get parents engaged with the work their students are doing at school.

Not Your Parents’ Parent-Teacher Conferences

At Arapahoe, we hold parent-teacher conferences in both the fall (two nights) and the spring (one night). Teachers are available from 4:00 until 7:30 each night for 5-7 minute conversations with parents. Parents are strongly encouraged to attend, but it is optional.

Many teachers at Arapahoe have been frustrated by how often those conferences tend to focus on grades, with parents wanting to know what students need to do to get their C to a B, or their B to an A. We are asking our students to really focus on the learning, not the grade, so it’s frustrating when this opportunity to talk with parents so often focuses on the grade (especially because they have real-time access to teachers’ gradebooks through our Infinite Campus Parent Portal).

This year Anne Smith was one teacher that decided to try something different.

Instead of concentrating on my students' progress via their grades in class, I conducted conferences with their learning as the focus. I asked my students to reflect on their learning based on the following questions:

• Assess your learning in class so far this semester. Look at your participation, growth in writing, comprehension, etc..
  
• Where, in terms of your learning, do you want to be at the end of the semester?
  
• How are you going to get there?
  
• What can I do to help?
  
• Write a message to your parents.

The students then were asked to bring home a copy of their learning assessment for their parents to read before conferences as well as place a copy in my class drop box for me to access at conferences.

It seemed to work well.

What was difficult about this whole process was that 5 minutes for conferences was definitely not long enough. I had actual conversations with parents about their child and feel like I took away more from them about how their child is growing as a learner, or how their child needs to grow as a learner. I felt like I listened as much as I talked which is a huge change from the way I participated in conferences before. I was the one relaying all my information to the parent rather than allowing them to give me insight into their child and react to what their child had written.

Click through to her post to read samples of what some students’ wrote, and also read the 47 comments (as of this writing) from both students and parents. Because Anne took it a step farther,

I am going to ask my students and hopefully their parents to comment on this process as well. Yep, that's right I want the parents to create blogger accounts as well so they can participate in the conversation. After all, that was my goal all around to create a conversation about learning.

Definitely not your parents’ parent-teacher conferences.

From talking with Anne I think this worked very well, but I agree with her that 5-7 minutes is not enough for these important conversations (it was usually more than enough to talk about grades.) I also think we should have students at these conferences, although what Anne did was the next best thing. The more we can have students, parents, and teachers involved in conversations centered around learning, not simply grades, the better.

Blogging 1984 - with Parents

Both Maura Moritz and Anne Smith have their ninth grade honors classes (Maura's class blog, Anne's class blog) blogging about 1984. I think that’s good – and a little ironic – in and of itself, but the really cool thing is that they invited the parents to read the novel and blog along with them. The reactions from parents were interesting. Some were very supportive and excited, others were, well, defensive I guess (“I don’t have time”, etc.). Both Maura and Anne made it clear that this was optional on the part of parents, but they highly encouraged them to participate if they could. Both to get a better idea of what their students were learning about, but also to be able to provide a different perspective for these students, most of whom were born in 1991 or 1992. Keep in mind that not only was that over forty years after 1984 was written, and seven-plus years after the year 1984, but they were born after the Berlin Wall came down.

Maura and Anne started out by having the students watch Apple’s 1984 commercial, then watching the Hillary Clinton 1984 attack ad on YouTube. It was very interesting to read the students’ take on these (pretty unaware of the context of both of them), and then have some parents chime in with more information. It will be interesting to see how the parents who have chosen to participate keep up over the course of the unit.

I also like how the students provided some blogging expectations for their parents. The students are also doing some nice scribe posting for this unit.


Image Citation: 1984, originally uploaded by Mushroom and Rooster.