Every school prepares for the back-to-school season. Schools make sure proper school supply, classroom shopping, end-of-summer assignments, and proper creation of lesson plans. However, another important factor that schools must consider is establishing good collaboration between school and parents. This will form the foundation for a healthy parent-teacher relationship and better communication.
Why Collaboration Between School and Parents is Important?
There are several benefits of collaboration between school and parents both inside and outside the classroom. Research indicated a strong relationship between school-parent collaboration and positive academic outcomes. In fact, parental involvement is a strong predictor of children’s academic achievement at all levels. Research also showed that the chances of students to be graduated are higher when the parents are involved.
Now different types of software have been introduced that help in parent-school collaboration. Teachers can upload daily reports of students and parents can also respond to those reports using the same platform. You can take a free school software demo with all the features available for free.
The more connected parents will feel, the more they will engage in learning with their children. Here are different ways to build collaboration between school and parents to encourage communication.
Encourage Family Engagement
To strengthen the school community, it is very important to engage the family in the learning process. Schools need to develop such strong collaboration with families that can serve as a mentor for new families. To robust collaboration, you need to encourage collaboration with the help of closed Facebook groups.
Teachers can communicate with parents and can ask parents to join parent-teacher meetings. The procedure of interaction can be discussed in those meetings early in the year.
Consider Parents’ Perspective Too
Parents’ perspective is also very important for developing a collaborative culture in schools. Special considerations need to make for families whose children need support. For example, maybe there are families who couldn’t afford field trips or other activities that involve extra cost. Schools need to collaborate with such families to ensure the participation of all students.
Zoom meetings are a better way to discuss everything with families in the COVID situation. Always remember, every effort you will make towards inclusiveness will result in a positive change in the community at large.
Move Beyond Event-based Engagement
Although, opening doors for parents and welcoming them to participate in school events like art shows and open house is very beneficial. But still, there is a need to work on collaboration among families and teachers. Schools need to provide more opportunities for families and teachers to communicate their points of view to each other.
Teachers can also brainstorm to find ways to utilize the time available during events for communication with parents. Discussions can be planned to model how parents can support their child’s learning at home.
Encourage Involvement with Children
To build collaboration among teachers, students, and parents, it is important to demonstrate ways for collaboration. Engagement is tied to instructions, have more impact on student’s success. Multimode communication can be used to inform parents about the learning objectives of the students. Through multimodal communication, parents can be provided with different ideas to enrich student’s learning at home.
Traditional homework can also be replaced with activities that promote learning. For example, to teach sorting, children can be asked to organize Laundry or toys.
Build Parents’ Confidence and Knowledge
Schools also need to build the confidence and knowledge of parents. Different ideas can be shared with parents through videos and photographs. The best parenting and teaching instructions can also be shared with parents in parents’ Facebook groups or through Instagram.
Pictures of students learning letters with shaving cream or searching angels on a walk around the school will give parents ideas to continue learning at home.
