Recently, during the roll-out of the new evaluation tool,
our superintendent mentioned that eventually we would be pulling into our
teacher evaluations, student and parent feedback. He used the phrase “parent
engagement.” Engagement is a big buzz word in education of late and it has me contemplating
how to “engage parents.” Engagement is
more than connecting, involving, or getting feedback. To engage is to engross, secure, charm,
absorb, and attract parents. I began thinking about how I can attract and
engross parents.
Photo Source: Freefoto http://www.freefoto.com/preview/04-08-5/On-the-Phone
An opportunity soon arose when planning for our (I am
co-teach a class this year) Digital Citizenship unit, it dawned on me that this
is an area that nearly every parent in the country has concerns about. I
enlisted the help of the administrative assistants to get me the parent’s phone
numbers for each of our students. I set a goal to use the time between 2:30 and
3:00 each day of that week to call all our parents. This short after school
period was the quietest of the whole day in the library, and I knew there would
be fewer interruptions. My plan was to introduce myself as their child’s Digital
Technology teacher and then say this,
“We are beginning our Digital
Citizenship unit which covers topics like online safety, digital reputation,
privacy, and cyber-bullying. I know these topics are concerns for parents in
general, and I was wondering if there was something you specifically wanted us
to cover?”
This is my twentieth year teaching, and this exercise was by
far the most wonderful parent-teacher experience of my career. The parent’s first
reaction was stunned silence. I don’t think any of them had ever been asked by
a teacher to guide curriculum. All but one parent had concerns. Each shared a
story about an “online” issue and thanked me for addressing these topics in
class. If I couldn’t speak to a parent in person, I left the same message on
their voicemail. I ended all calls with “if you have any concerns at all,
please do not hesitate to call or email me at school.”
This was literally an experiment for which I was very
nervous. I had a horrific parent(s)-teacher interaction in 2005 during open
house when a group of hostile parents literally ganged up on me about a
difficult reading I had assign their honor’s students. I left school that night
in tears and the next day enrolled in a graduate program and within two years, I
was out of the classroom. It was so bad that a parent who was a bystander to
the scene called me the next morning herself crying to apologize for even being
in the room.
I know I am not alone, when I attend my son’s open houses or
parent-teacher conferences, his teachers are nervous wrecks, and when I try to
engage my son’s teachers in a non-parent but a collegial, teacher-to–teacher manner
their walls are so high I can’t breech them. It’s clear with every interaction
that they have been burned and those wounds are still fresh. So, with my son’s
school and teachers, I don’t interfere, but try hard to be supportive. However,
as a parent, I would cherish a teacher who would call and ask “what would you
like me to focus on this year?”
Teaching is risk-taking, and not for the faint of heart. We
must acknowledge and overcome our fears for the benefit for our students.
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