Spark Student Motivation: Sweet Notes Sent Home!

I have wanted to link up for this FOREVER...but on the weekends I am so drained from the whole week of teaching, I can't think of anything that I do that is motivating! PLUS, I am beyond exhausted so I just want to sleep/watch TV/do nothing, etc. I don't know what has gotten into me today, but I was up early and getting things crossed off my to-do list! I am even going to set up as many blog posts as I can for this week. I literally miss blogging. 

ANYHOW--I am for sure not the first person to do this for my students nor am I the first to blog about this, in fact, this is the second time I have blogged about sending sweet notes home. You can read the other post here.

At my school, we are required to call/email home with 3 positive things each week. I have 180 students, so 3 calls/emails a week is easy! I decided that instead of an email, I would send a postcard. This is what they look like:

I decided that since I have 6 classes, I would send home 6 a week, one from each class. I know the easy thing to do would be to send them to the "better behaved" students, but I started with the students who are acting out or who never really had a positive bond with a teacher in middle school. So many of my students are really sweet kids when you sit down and get to know them. The first week of school, I was terrified that if some of them were this badly behaved the first week of school, what would my life be like in April? Or better yet, June?! 

Let me tell you something--the kids who have received a post card with just a simple message like "Johnny had a great week in math!" or "I am so excited that Sarah is in my class this year" have done a complete 180 and are now some of my top students! Everyone is competing to get a postcard...and I teach 8th graders! These are the 13-14 year olds whose hormones are so out of whack you never know what kind of students are going to walk into your room on any given day. I know. I am still shocked. BUT, I am knocking on all kinds of wood so that I can keep the positive energy in my classes going. Some days I just sit back and think to myself, "I can't believe that they actually learned something today!"

I wish I had started using these earlier!

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!