Observations and Interviews
Lehla, Teacher
Lehla is a teacher for middle school students with special needs at a Charter School in a low-income community in Philadelphia. She contacts parents regarding absences, homework, behavioral problems, events, and grades. However, she expressed difficulty with keeping in touch with parents on a regular basis because of phone numbers that change frequently or are disconnected. Additionally, many families do not have internet access beyond their cell phones, which makes them unable to access online materials and resources that may be important. Lehla has resorted to using text messaging as the easiest form of communication with parents, but she wishes more parents were on their emails as this would streamline general communication and enable her to touch base more regularly.
Lessons Learned:
- It's hard reaching parents that have different levels of accesibility to potentially useful methods of communication
- Would prefer email contact over text messaging with parents
- Wants to see more parent accountability and follow-ups
- Ideally, she would contact parents weekly if there were an efficient way to do so
Rosa, Teacher
Rosa is an elementary school teacher at a school in Barcelona. She expressed that she finds it easy to get in contact with her students' parents. Her regular method of communicating with parents is by writing notes in their students' agendas. In urgent situations, she contacts parents by phone. She usually calls parents to schedule an in-person meeting once per semester to give them feedback about their child's performance in school, and if there is a behavioral problem she also uses the phone to schedule an urgent meeting. Because the school system in Spain assigns a "tutor" to every student to keep track of their progress, Rosa meets with other teachers on a weekly basis to discuss student performance and every 3 months attends a meeting to evaluate the students. She expressed the desire to contact parents more often so she could encourage them to collaborate on activities and homework at home with their students.
Lessons Learned:
- Urgent communication can be easily accomplished when families have consistent and reliable contact information (working, non-changing phone numbers)
- Simple approaches to communicating (ie: writing notes in agendas, in-person meetings) can sometimes serve to be more helpful or efficient than using technology
- Easier communication methods and more parental involvement could potentially enrich and enhance a student's educational experience by bridging the gap between school and home
User Classes
Teachers in contact with parents in a day-to-day basis
- Believe a two-way communication between parents and teachers for feedback and input is essential
- Reach parents by phone, email, text messages
- Contact regarding attendance, behavior, grades, homework
Teachers in contact with parents in case of urgency
- Reach parents primarily by phone
- Contact regarding bad behavior and failures
- Need guaranteed means to contact parents who may be hard to reach
Active Parents
Behaviors:
- High levels of communication with both teachers and kids.
- Attend almost all school events (Back to School Nights, parent-teacher conferences)
- Seeks further involvement through extracurriculars, PTA etc.
- Check up on child's academics on a monthly basis.
Needs:
- Understanding the child behavioral and social habits.
- Quicker notification of slipping academic and behavioral performance.
- Wants semi-frequent updates on child
- Interested in child’s performance in comparison to peers.
Uninvolved Parents:
Behaviors:
- Little to no communication with teachers and most of the communication originates from the school
- Generally aware of grades and behavior but not enough motivation to get involved enough to solve the underlying problems.
- Kids are sometimes equally ignored by the schools and teachers sometimes view the children as only trouble kids.
- Many different and usually complex situations. For example, parents may be busy, have issues with communication, or be generally apathetic.
- Parent’s tools for communication can change rapidly and without notice.
Needs:
- More regular communication, before big, hard to solve issues arise, but the communication must not be time intensive.
- Better understanding of child’s long-term trends
- Support for a variety of platforms (ie internet, mobile, mail, sms).