Observations and Interviews

Sophia, Teacher

Sophia 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. Sophia 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

Tricia, Teacher

Tricia 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, Tricia 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

Amber, Parent

Amber has a child in the Kindergarten and the fourth grade. She finds that communication with her student's teachers to be essential to their academic success. Her student's teachers update her via email and phone call to notify her of any changes in her student's performance. She also often makes trips to the school to checkin with teachers about her children's development. While in person communication is her preferred method of contact, she also values the regular report cards that the school sends monthly. Amber attends many of the school functions to further gather insight into the classroom environment, including orientation at the beginning of each semester and open house towards the end of the year. Additionally, she would like to learn more about how her children behave and interaction socially inside the classroom. Although not possible because she is a working parent, she says this will allow her to understand if the lessons she teachers her children at home are being "translated to the real world situations that they encounter on their own."

Lessons Learned:

• Frequent digital communication is preferred by the teachers, but in person interactions are invaluable to some parents
• Behavior and social interactions are just as important to parents as academics and attendance

Note: Names were changed to protect the identities of all interviewees.

User Classes

Teachers in contact with parents in a day-to-day basis

• Believes a two-way communication between parents and teachers is essential
• Reaches parents by phone, email, text messages
• Contacts parents regarding attendance, behavior, grades, and homework
• Needs efficient communication and a way to encourage parent accountability

Teachers in contact with parents in case of emergency

• Reaches parents primarily by phone
• Contacts parents regarding bad behavior and failures
• Needs guaranteed means to contact parents who may be hard to reach

Active Parents

• Checks child's academics on a monthly basis
• Attends almost all school events and potentially seeks further involvement
• Needs frequent updates on child, especially in time sensitive situations
• Needs to know child behavioral habits and performance in comparison to peers

Less Involved Parents

• Variety of causes for lack of involvement: busyness, apathy, etc
• Communication is infrequent and irregular
• Aware of poor academic performance or behavior issues
• Tools for communication may change frequently and without notice
• Needs more regular communication that isn't time intensive and support for a variety of platforms (ie internet, mobile, mail, sms)

Note: Although all of the parents we interviewed fall into the Active Parents class, we acknowledge from the teacher interviews that there are likely parents that fall into the Less Involved Parents class.

Needs and Goals

Efficiency:

• Parents and teachers generally desire either more frequent, stable communication or simpler tools to communicate.
• Parents and teachers often have busy conflicting schedules making direct communication (i.e. phone calls) extremely difficult to schedule.
• Empower parents and teachers to bridge different technology platforms without wasting time.

In-depth Insights:

• Parents want insights into their children's social behavior as well as academic behavior.
• Enable parents and teachers to see trends of students over long time periods and between grades.