Participants 11
Principal Meets with Teacher’s Parents
Principal, Andrew, needs to understand the student population before he begins drafting the School Improvement Plan. Teacher, Amelia, is the last class of parents he needs to meet with. He will have them fill out a questionnaire and open the discussion of student learning at home and in school.
Amelia hosts a family reading night in the classroom. It gives parents the opportunity to read with their children and converse with the teacher and principal. The teacher hands out a home–school survey for the parents to fill out. As the parents are filling out the form, Andrew facilitates discussion with parents based on their answers. Some parents choose not to share, but others are happy to discuss obstacles they may have. The biggest obstacle is that most parents said they do not know what the child is learning in the classroom and when they ask their child they reply with “I don’t know.”
Andrew, Amelia and the parents discuss ways they can get to know what their children are learning. Amelia suggests creating an e-letter that shares what they will be working on through the week, but some parents said they do not have an email. A newsletter that is printed every week with school events, what the child is learning in every subject and questions that parents can ask was the agreed upon method.
Over the next two weeks Amelia has sent home the weekly newsletter to parents. It has been printed on bright coloured paper to stand out. When a parent saw Amelia after school, they thanked her because it was easily identifiable within the other papers and they can ask their children specific questions about their learning. The parent even said she helped her child when she did not understand the difference between a linking verb and helping verb.