As I prepared to say goodbye to this year’s students and families, I couldn’t help but reflect on my efforts throughout the year to open up the lines of communication between school and home. I have always prided myself on building relationships with my families, and I make it a priority to get to know the families of my students as well as the students themselves.
I make phone calls home, and I sign the agendas each afternoon, making sure to always check for notes from the family members from the previous day. I meet and greet students and their loved ones at the start and the end of each day. I also send out newsletters and emails to continually involve families in the education process.
While I’m sure these efforts are enough in their own right, I can’t help but feel there is still more I could be doing.
A few years ago, the Westbrook School District started an initiative using daily learning goals to provide students with kid-friendly vocabulary to better help them understand what they were learning in each subject of the day.
Having used these daily learning goals for a few years, I noticed they were opening up communication between home and school. At home, my students were able to talk about what they learned at school because these learning goals gave them the vocabulary to be able to do so. Many parents shared this with me, and I have continued to structure my classroom with learning goals.
But still, is there more I could be doing? It was with that thought at the back of my mind that I came across a tweet from PBS that sparked my interest. I am always on the lookout for new ideas on how to strengthen and foster the school and home relationship and this PBS tweet intrigued me:
The article lists a variety of specific questions for parents to ask their children at the end of the school day, in place of the old standby, “How was your day?”
For example, “Did Mrs. Brokofsky call on you in class today?” “Did anything funny happen today?” “What did you like best today?” “Who’d you sit next to on the bus?” “Is there anything really hard for you?” or “What did you learn in English today?”
I love some of these questions, and deeply hope that they provide families with more than just a “fine” response — perhaps even a complete sentence — or even an entire conversation.
I shared these questions with families at parent-teacher conferences this year as another way of striking up a conversation about school at home, and I hope they sparked more in-depth conversations about school and learning. Kids really do say the darndest things, if only given the opportunity to do so.
Sarah Brokofsky is the 2014 Cumberland County Teacher of the Year. She teaches grade five at Westbrook Middle School.