User Observations & Interviews
Please note: all names have been changed to preserve anonymity.
Problem Statement
There is unsatisfactory communication between teachers and parents. Oftentimes, important information does not flow efficiently and reliably between teachers and parents.
Parents complain that they are not aware of all their child’s assignments or of the activities in which their child participates.Teachers complain that they have a difficulty getting items like permission slips back from parents. Parents have a hard time reaching teachers and teachers are sometimes overwhelmed by overly-involved parents.
User Observations & Interviews
Please note: all names have been changed to preserve anonymity.
Teachers
Teacher 1
Ms. Frizzle is a 54-year-old elementary school teacher. She has been teaching the 1st - 3rd grade for 23 years. Ms. Frizzle thinks that good communication with the kids' parents is a crucial and will affect the students' grade and behavior in school, especially 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. Ms. Frizzle also indicated that non personal communication with parents is an issue. Ms. Frizzle has to communicate a lot of information to parents such as grades, permission slips and so forth, this communication is time consuming and miscommunication leads to a lot of frustration and delays.
One example of a good communication was an email she got from a student’s mother. The mother told Ms. Frizzle that during a family vacation, her daughter was able to recognize a flower they learned about in science class, and was very proud that she could teach her mother something new. The mother thanked Ms. Frizzle for creating this mother-daughter moment.
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One example of bad communication was a parent who called her late at night to her private cell phone to ask for explanations on the homework that is due tomorrow. Ms. Ratburn thinks that some parents do not understand proper boundaries between work and personal life.
Teacher 3
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 later, 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.
Mrs. Krasny mentioned one example of failed communication that occurred with a child in foster care. The child was most likely in a transition phase between foster families, such that his foster parents at the time did not care much about his performance in school and the social workers were not always with him to provide help and support. Consequently, whenever he had problems in school, Mrs. Krasny had no one to communicate with to solve the problems. As a result, the child's performance in school decreased significantly.
Parents
Parent 1
Mrs. Read is the mother of several children ranging in age from nursery to 10th grade. She feels that it is extremely important to be involved in her children’s schoolwork. There is generally sufficient communication between herself and her children’s teachers. For younger children, the teachers often send daily or weekly notes about what they did in school, and the parents sign their children’s assignment notebooks each night after making sure the children completed their homework. Mrs. Read speaks to the teachers at parent-teacher conferences once a year, and calls or speaks to them informally every few months to check on how her children are doing both academically and socially. It is easy to reach the teachers because they all have personal voicemail boxes on the school phone, and at back-to-school night they tell parents the preferred way to reach them, whether it is calling them at home or on a cell phone or leaving a message on their school voicemail.
One of the Read children, D.W., often forgets things in school, such as her spelling list (although the assignment is written down in D.W.’s planner). Although Mrs. Read would like to be able to easily access such assignments when her children forget to bring them home, she also thinks that it is important for the children to learn responsibility. Also, her fifth-grader, Arthur, sometimes receives writing assignments orally, which is a problem since, as Mrs. Read says, “it gets lost in translation.”
Although Mrs. Read feels that she is sufficiently involved, she says that it takes a lot of effort to keep up with all of it, and one of her challenges is making the time to do it.
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