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Ms. Frizzle is a 54 years old elementary school teacher. She has been teaching the 1st - - 3rd grade for 23 years. Ms. Frizzle thinks that good communication with the kid’s kids' parents is a crucial and will affect the student’s students' grade and behavior in school, especially in the if a kid is having difficulties. On a regular basis she meets parents twice a year during PTA, and unless the circumstances require she would rather not meet with parents in person. She would prefer to inform parents in an indirect way (note, email, etc.) as long as this won’t take too much time.
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Teacher 2
Ms. Ratburn is a 27 years -year-old 1st grade teacher in Israel. She recently received her degree in education and this is her first year teaching. Ms. Ratburn dedicates around 2-3 hours per day to talk to parents, and each conversation takes about 20 min. She would like parents to be more involved at home (for example helping their kid with homework), and less involved in the school disciplinary process. She wished she could tell if parents are involved in their child education, and if they are aware of notes and information that was sent to them via their kid. She would like to reduce the amount of time she spends on in person conversation every day and move those to a digital medium (e.g. email).
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Mrs. Crosswire is the mother of several children, five of whom are in school between grades 2 and 11. She says, “I have no clue what they’re doing in school....It seems that you have to wait until parent-teacher conferences to really know what’s going on unless your kid is a talkative kid.” She currently speaks to her children’s teachers twice a year at parent-teacher conferences. She does not feel the need to have additional dialogue with the teachers, but she would like to receive notes from the teachers on a regular basis (perhaps once a week), just to let her know how her children are doing. In addition, she thinks the teachers should solicit feedback every so often (perhaps monthly) to check that the work is on a good level for each child. She also wants to be able to contact the teacher easily when her child is having a problem. Currently, in order to contact a teacher she needs to call the school office and leave a message for the teacher to return her call, and often the message never reaches the teacher or the teacher does not call her back. She would like to be able to use email to communicate with teachers, so that the teachers can respond at a convenient time even if Mrs. Crosswire is at work, and she can reply at night.
Mrs. Crosswire gave one traumatic example of how a lack of communication between school and home had a negative impact. Several years ago, one of her daughters, Muffy (who was in 5th grade at the time), never received a flyer to bring home about needing to go to the school’s other building one morning for a special activity. Muffy was dropped off her regular school building as usual, but because of the special activity there was no one there. She ended up being left outside by herself for 2-3 hours, in the middle of the winter in the cold and snow.
Parent 3
Mrs. Baxter., who lives in Belgium, and who is a mother of 5 with one child in Elementary School and another in Middle School. She thought it “very important” "very important" to communicate with her children’s because “a "a teacher spends more time with your child during his or her waking hours than you do”do." She also said that communicating with a teacher can tell you if a teacher is competent. She did not feel that it was major challenge getting in touch with the teachers. She could call the school’s office and the teacher would usually call her back within 24 hours. Mrs. B. Baxter thought that communicating with a teacher twice a year (besides the biannual PTA meetings) was sufficient to find out about her children’s academic performance and social integration. However, she also thought that communicating with teachers on a monthly basis is not a bad idea but that “You can’t drive teachers crazy. You shouldn’t shouldn't micromanage every aspect of your child’s life.” She thought her children’s work improves when she communicates with their teachers because “a parent’s involvement motivates the child to excel.” Mrs. B.’s Baxter’s preferred method of communication with teacher is with a phone call because “on the phone you get a more personal and unguarded response from the teacher where you can more accurately gauge how your child is doing. An in-person meeting is too intense and is more difficult to schedule.”
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