Parent Contact

Parent contact looks very different in middle and high school compared to it's elementary counterpart. I can only assume it is because in elementary school teachers have 2 classes max compared to our 6! Therefore, it is more difficult to keep in touch with 150 parents (not that keeping up with 50 would be easy either!). What ends up happening in my class is that I respond to the parents that e-mail me, and end up mostly contacting a parent first if something has happened (behavior, excessive absences, missing work, etc).

Don't get me wrong, I communicate with parents on the whole--I send out e-mails to let them know what is going on in class that week or during a specific unit so that the parents are well-informed as to what is going on, but that's not as personal as I would like it to be.

I know some parents of students who have have been "troublemakers" in previous grades are fans of the notion "No News is Good News!" But, I plan to change things this year...

This idea is adapted from this pin

I just ordered 250 of these post cards from Vistaprint and I am so excited to use them! The first week of school, I am going to have each kid write their parent(s) name and address so that it saves me time. Then, each week , I am going to choose 4-5 postcards to send home at random. I will find something positive about every child to write and send home. For some parents, this may be the only good thing they have heard about their child in YEARS and would mean the world. Others already know that their child is perfect and will still love the affirmation. It is a WIN-WIN!

All it will take is an extra 15 minutes or so on a Thursday afternoon to make sure they go out in Friday's mail...and everyone has 15 minutes to put a smile on someone else's face, right?

I used a pre-made design that can be found here. I customized it a little bit to put all the information that I wanted on there. I also had a coupon (just google vistaprint promo codes!) and this made these super cheap. 

I cannot wait to use these to enhance my parent communication. What great idea do you have for great parent communication?

Happy Friday!