Some parents are easy to communicate and partner with. Others...not so much. I've worked with parents who would agree to everything we suggested in the meeting but not follow through on any of it. Others who would argue about anything and everything. Parents who think their child is perfection personified and that any issues must be my fault.
A System Saves Time
One of the most difficult parts about emailing parents is thinking about what to say and how to say it. I've had plenty of times when I just sat and stared at my screen for 15 minutes, staring at the blinking cursor, and not sure what to write after the Hello. After I had been teaching for a little while, I started going back to old emails that I had written and copying those over with some tweaks. That evolved into using email templates that I could grab and customize for each situation.
Action Steps
- Make a list of the 5 email categories you send the most often.
- Look through your past emails that fit these categories.
- Consider what worked and what needs to be tweaked. Draft a template and save it somewhere easy to access.
- The next time you need to send an email in that category, use the template as your base.
The Bank
As a special education teacher and administrator, I had to send LOTS of emails to parents about student concerns or behavior incidents. Many of my parents had experienced years of negative phone calls and emails about their child and were hesitant to even answer the phone. When they did answer, I could hear the defensiveness in their voice. They were expecting bad news and criticism.
If your families are already defensive when you reach out, you can't form a good partnership. They're going to take everything you say through a negative lens. Any suggestions you make are going to come across as criticisms, even if you say it as nicely as possible.
The answer to this problem is to bank up positives. I don't want you to see this as purely transactional; there are many benefits to noticing and pointing out good things students are doing. It will help you see the whole child and make annoying behavior a little less annoying. It helps train your brain to see positives in addition to the unignorable negatives.
We tend to overestimate the number of positive contacts we make and underestimate the negatives. You'll need to track both. You also need to devise and follow a system to make sure you get all those positives in.
Action Steps
- Choose your method for noticing positives. I keep a list of my caseload and pull out 3-5 students each week to focus on. I try and randomize this list a bit so the positives don't come across as scheduled (even though they really are).
- Keep track of positives to negatives. I find a spreadsheet is the easiest for this. You can also print out a grid with the student names and color in boxes or use + and - marks. Use a method that works for you.
- Keep the reach-outs brief. They can be a short phone call, a note home, or an email. Only include the positive thing you noticed. For example: I noticed Johnny helping out another student today in math. The student was struggling with what to do for the next step and Johnny paused in his work for a minute and explained it. I appreciate how collaborative he was.
The Difficult Emails
You will sometimes need to contact parents about concerns. If you've built up a positive bank, you're already going to be a few steps ahead. You'll still need to be careful about how you word things to ensure parents hear your message and are more likely to help. I've developed a framework you can follow.
The Parent Email Framework
- Open with partnership: Establish a shared goal
- State the facts: Describe what happened objectively
- Name your action: Explain what you've done or will do
- Invite the parent in: Create an opportunity to collaborate
- Close with the relationship: Keep the focus on the student
Doing Their Best?
I know many of you have had to fill out child protection reports or have worked with parents who just don't seem to care. It's easy as teachers to get a little judgey, but we need to remember that we're not all playing with the same deck of cards. That student you have with a cognitive impairment? She might become a mom someday. She's not going to have the same capabilities as the teacher mom down the hall.
This really hit home to me when I took in a couple of boys who were removed from their home due to severe neglect. They were extremely undernourished, often absent from school, and were in a constant state of anxiety. You better believe I had some thoughts about their parents! The dad was in a different country and Mom was raising them alone.
I had to work with Mom as part of the guardianship, as the goal was reunification. I quickly realized that this mom was truly giving her very best to her sons. She loved them and wanted the best for them. She also had a cognitive impairment and challenges from substance abuse and trauma.
She couldn't read or understand the letter about her food stamps, so she didn't respond to an important requirement on time. She lived in a tiny apartment that didn't have a refrigerator or stove, so relied on microwavable and shelf-stable food and often ran out of food stamps before the month was up.
Was her best enough to give the boys a safe and nourishing environment? Absolutely not. But here's the lesson: browbeating her about being a better mother wasn't going to improve anything for the kids. Instead, I did what I could to give her some more tools in her parenting toolbox. I didn't fix everything, of course, but the net balance was positive.
The next time you have a parent who doesn't seem to care, look at what barriers they might be facing and see what you can do to work around them. A couple of small actionable steps that are within their ability and capacity will get you at least a little way down the path.
Resources
If you would like a full parent communication kit with email templates, a communication dashboard, email framework guides, and more, check out my Parent Communication Pack. Feel free to forward this post to your administrator if you feel like it's something that would benefit the school. I also have a school license available that includes a training PPT. The idea is to reduce friction for teachers, save time, and have more positive partnerships with parents.
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