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Ms. Morgan is a music teacher at a public middle school. Over the past years, she has found that parent involvement is generally important and helpful in their children’s education. However, it was sometimes difficult to reach the parents. For example, some parents didn’t pick up their phones or their voice mailboxes were full, and some did not have e-mails. Nevertheless, Ms. Morgan had a lot of information to convey to parents, such as concert location, times, and dress codes. In addition, she would like to communicate with the parents of the children who are struggling as well as offer compliments if the students did well.
One example of good communication was when Ms. Morgan called home to speak with the parents of one of her students. The student thought that he was in trouble, but in fact, she called to say that the student performed very well in the concert. Her compliment not only resulted in the student’s better performance afterwards, but also brightened the parent’s day.
Teacher 4
Mrs. Krasny is a sixth grade science teacher. She also believes that communication with parents is important, as middle school is a transition phase between much parent involvement in elementary school and much student independence in high school. She mostly communicates using e-mails, because it's fast and non-intrusive. Mrs. Krasny also mentioned that while most people knew that there were parents with little involvement in their children’s education, there were also parents with so much involvement that they stress their children. Therefore, she indicated that if possible, she would also like to know the level of involvement of the parents.
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