Communication with parents

I have been observing and participating in a Twitter conversation about the best way to converse with parents and get them involved in what you are doing. There were loads of brilliant ideas but it seemed to boil down to just a few simple rules.

1. Make good contact with the parents before the kids even get to your class/school. A brilliant suggestion was to send a questionnaire to the parents asking them to tell you about their kid.
2. Make as many positive calls as negative ones. Do you have a positive call Friday? would it be that hard to implement?
3. Be careful of your tone, both in calls and on email.
4. Keep trying, if and when something does go wrong being able to refer to the efforts you made will give you a shield.

I love the first two and will be implementing them this year. I have always taken great pleasure in calling a parent to tell them their kid is doing better or is simply just a pleasure to teach. If you have not done it for a while then give it a try, I bet you feel better!

I have to go to sort out my Coffee morning, for parents, that I run every week. My turn out is about 0.5% of the school population but it is still enlightening and fun. What other things in school can you say that about every week?

Russ