Five Ways to Build Parent Engagement at Your School - Part 2

This is the second in a five-part series on how to build parent engagement at your school.

Parent engagement has never been more important for our schools and our students. Our schools and our students desperately need parents to be engaged and invested in the educational process, truly engaged and not just working the concession stand or serving on the booster club. Our schools need parents who know what's happening at school, who support the process, who want students to be challenged and held accountable, and who seek to partner with the school. Our students need parents who want to know what's going on at school, who support the school at home in front of the students, who model life-long learning, who don't make excuses for their students and who value education. Seasoned education veterans know from experience what a difference parent engagement can make and research supports this (see Amanda Ripley's The Smartest Kids in the World, for example). The challenge, of course, lies in getting parents engaged.

2. Build parent engagement through positive communication.
One of the most meaningful and effective ways to engage parents also happens to be one of the easiest and least expensive. Positive communication with parents - whether from a teacher, a coach, or an administrator - works wonders for engagement. When you communicate good news, words of encouragement or other positive feedback, you build bonds and bridges that may become invaluable down the road.

Every parent longs to hear something positive about their children. Every parent. Without exception. Certainly there are parents who expect others to gush over their children without ceasing because, as everyone can plainly see, their children are the best, brightest, strongest, fastest, and so on. At the other end of the spectrum are parents who, for whatever reason, rarely hear anything positive about their children. Every parent on the spectrum will respond positively to positive communication about their children. You may encounter some parents who are surprised to hear what you're saying, but they will value your feedback. Through positive communication, you are saying to the parents that you are the child's advocate and the parents' partner. When you demonstrate this to parents, they will engage.

An important point to remember when making positive communication with parents is how to communicate appropriately. You always should make an effort to offer encouragement and validation instead of empty praise. For example, you should be strategic and intentional about complimenting effort, honesty, work ethic, improvement, diligence, grit, responsibility, dependability, strong performances and the like. When you communicate with parents about these and other similar things you observe, you reinforce and affirm the behaviors and qualities you'd like to see more often. On the other hand, you should avoid praising intelligence, brilliance, talent and other qualities over which the student has no control. Praising these qualities is the equivalent of praising a child's beautiful blue eyes, big muscles, trim figure, or other vanity-related quality. In fact, by praising things over which a child has no control (i.e. intelligence or talent), you actually are setting the child up to reduce effort and identify with a label (see Carol Dweck's research).

By using positive communication with parents, you gain parents' trust, a key factor in building engagement. When you provide appropriate positive feedback to parents about their children, you demonstrate to them that you know your students (their child/children, specifically) and that you are watching for positive desired behaviors. Many parents dread the appearance of the school's number on Caller ID or the school's email address in the Inbox. This dread stems from the sense that school communication tends to be negative (Johnny misbehaved, forgot his assignment again, etc.). This dread also comes from the perception that teachers and administrators often are out to get kids, to catch them being bad. When you communicate good news to parents, you help alleviate this dread and dispel the notion that your school operates with a "Gotcha!" mentality. The earlier in the year you can develop a habit of positive communication, the better you can build trust with the parents.

Here's a brief list of items worth communicating to parents:

• Improved effort on assignments
• Improved behavior in class
• Citizenship or service in class or at school
• Excellence in a presentation, performance, assignment, project, etc.
• Engagement or participation in class
• Examples of respectful, polite or courteous behavior
• Examples of exceeding expectations
• Examples of grit, resilience, effort or determination

What's the best way to communicate in this manner with parents? There are at least four ways, the first of which is the least effective and meaningful (although still a step in the right direction). You can email parents quickly and easily. While email must be considered the least personal, it still can be an effective way to send good news to parents. Second, you can send a handwritten note home, either with the child or via snail mail. Handwritten notes seem to be a thing of the past and, therefore, hold significant value for many parents. While email messages may get lost or deleted, a handwritten note can be saved forever. You can make a phone call and speak directly to the parent(s). Making a phone call to a parent to brag on his/her child will make that parent's day, and this is a quick and easy thing to do. The fourth way to communicate positively with parents is to be ready with good news at events like open house, concerts, carpool, athletic events and other school functions. Looking a parent in the eye and smiling while you shake his/her hand and deliver good news can be incredibly meaningful.

A good teacher, coach or administrator can find something positive and meaningful for every student, and should make the effort to communicate this to parents. Such communication will build trust and engagement and will demonstrate to parents that your school makes a habit of looking for the good in students. Positive communication also will come in handy down the road if you ever need to communicate not-so-good news. Think of positive communication as making deposits in a bank account. Making a withdrawal works much better if sufficient deposits have been made already.

You really have no reason or excuse not to practice positive communication regularly. Making such small investments will pay huge dividends in a variety of ways, especially in terms of building parent engagement. Guaranteed.

Five Ways to Build Parent Engagement at Your School - Part 1

This is the first in a five-part series on how to build parent engagement at your school.

Parent engagement has never been more important for our schools and our students. Our schools and our students desperately need parents to be engaged and invested in the educational process, truly engaged and not just working the concession stand or serving on the booster club. Our schools need parents who know what's happening at school, who support the process, who want students to be challenged and held accountable, and who seek to partner with the school. Our students need parents who want to know what's going on at school, who support the school at home in front of the students, who model life-long learning, who don't make excuses for their students and who value education. Seasoned education veterans know from experience what a difference parent engagement can make and research supports this (see Amanda Ripley's The Smartest Kids in the World, for example). The challenge, of course, lies in getting parents engaged.

1. Build parent engagement through literature
All students have required reading of some sort. For some students, required reading may be ABC board books or early reader chapter books, for others it may be To Kill a Mockingbird, and for others still it may be a collection of Shakespeare's sonnets. These examples, along with every other reading assignment (excluding textbooks and technical material), provide perfect opportunities for parent engagement. Kudos to parents who would read a chemistry text with their child, but literature lends itself to community reads much better than textbooks. As a school leader hoping to build parent engagement through literature, you should encourage/persuade/beg your parents to do a number of simple but valuable things.

First, you should encourage parents to read every piece of literature their children read. Seriously, every piece of literature. You should do everything humanly possible to make sure parents do the summer reading with their children. You should remind parents every time a new novel or poem is assigned, then urge them to read with their children. You could even provide extra copies in the school library for parents to check out. Whatever you have to do, by hook or by crook, get your parents to read with their children.

Second, you should encourage your parents to dialogue with their children about what they read. For example, at Open House or Parents' Night you should encourage parents to ask their children questions about the latest reading, discuss the characters or talk about what they like or disliked most about the reading. Remind parents often that having these conversations with their children actually makes their children smarter, makes their children think, and demonstrates for their children how much they value reading and learning. You could even go so far as to have your teachers send home discussion questions so your parents can have more meaningful, guided discussions about what they read.

By getting parents involved with your school's reading assignments, you're doing far more than assuring that students read or reinforcing the idea that reading is important. For starters, you're entering into a partnership in the education of children. Neither the parent nor the school can wholly educate a child. This must be a joint effort. You're also helping parents parent - you're providing a means by which the family can spend meaningful time together. Also of great importance, at least for the sake of this conversation, you're building engagement. When students and parents begin to have positive experiences centered on things at or from school, both students and parents become more likely to value and support the school, it's teachers and it's mission. Using literature as a means to that end is a great way to begin.

A Fresh Perspective on Unpleasant Things

A friend of mine recently inquired about the beginning of the school year. I explained that, with the exception of about five parents that were wearing us out, things were off to an overall smooth start. He asked how many students I had. I answered that we have about 365 kids. He said, "Five tough parents out of 365 kids... That's like five bad days in a year. Seems manageable to me." Well said. I replied immediately, "I like that, and I'm going to borrow that one so I can share it."

A Painful, Powerful Lesson About Parents

A few weeks ago, as I stood in my kitchen waiting for my wife and daughter to come inside after returning from a party, my previously peaceful Saturday afternoon shattered with a blood-curdling scream from the garage. For a moment, I mistook the sound for my daughter's squealing laughter. A split-second later, though, I realized my mistake. I dashed into the garage to find my wife and daughter screaming - my wife because my daughter was screaming, and my daughter because her right index finger had been shut completely in the car door. By the time I arrived at their sides, my wife had opened the door and freed my daughter's trapped hand. Distraught, she hugged our daughter and tried to console her. I, too, joined the group hug in an effort to calm them both, and I stole a glance at the finger in question. My daughter's grossly swollen and discolored finger took a 60-degree turn sideways at the first knuckle. I literally went weak in the knees before switching into fight-or-flight mode.

Over the next several hours, I would have done anything to make her pain go away. I looked at her disfigured finger and wished with all my might I could make it better. At the ER, I watched the doctor pull and strain to straighten and set her finger, and I wished more than ever the pain would just stop. The look on her face and the sound of her crying tore me up and haunts me even today. After we finally got my daughter home and asleep with the help of heavy medication, my wife and I collapsed in exhaustion.

After reflecting on the ordeal a few days later, I realized that my wife and I said some things to one another we wouldn't normally say and we spoke in a tone of voice we normally wouldn't use. Why? We were pushed to the brink with the stress of our child's pain. I had an epiphany. Many parents that we, educators, with whom we deal daily treat us with less respect than we deserve. Many say things to us they normally wouldn't and use a tone they usually don't. Why? I know why. So often our parents speak to us, educators, when their child is in trouble, is suffering, or is in pain. I know how I acted and reacted in a similar situation, and am I that different from the parents who send their kids to my school?

The next time a parent lashes out or tries to remove consequences or wants to find a way to fix things, remember my daughter's gnarled finger and my inability to muster grace under pressure. This new perspective may just help you handle "those parents," "those emails" and "those phone calls." True, there are some people who simply are jerks. There also are plenty who don't know what to do when their kid is hurting and in trouble.

Modeling a Successful Parent Conference, Parent Call or Conversation with a Parent

Experienced educators know that one of the keys to being successful with kids is building a strong relationship with parents. Teachers, administrators and parents must be on the same team when it comes to successfully educating kids. Convincing new and young teachers of this, however, takes some work. Often young and inexperienced teachers dread making contact with parents, especially concerning grades or discipline issues. So many times parents automatically get defensive when school personnel call home because for many parents the only news they hear from the school about their child is negative. (I'll address ways to avoid this with parents in another blog post later.)

The first question I ask teachers, especially young teachers, when they ask for help with particular students or classes is, "Have you called parents?" Without fail, new teachers cringe when I ask this, but only before we teach them how to call parents. What young teachers must understand, especially in terms of classroom management, is that a parent phone call usually fixes the vast majority of issues they deal with in the classroom.

My Dean of Students has been working with a new teacher who needed some help making those first calls home. Rather than sending this new teacher off to make parent calls with little or no direction, the Dean walked the teacher through the following steps:

• First, the Dean talked through the process with the teacher and gave some advice on how to begin the conversation, how to broach the unpleasant news and how to finish with something positive about the student.
• Second, the Dean made the first parent phone call with the teacher present; he modeled the entire process for the teacher. This was very important because it allowed the teacher to hear his tone, some key expressions and his calm demeanor.
• Third, after the Dean's phone call, the Dean and the teacher debriefed the Dean's conversation with the parent. The Dean encouraged the teacher and also gave the teacher an opportunity to ask any final questions before the next call.
• Fourth, the Dean observed as the teacher made a similar parent phone call.
• Finally, after the teacher's call, the Dean debriefed the experience with the teacher. Since several more calls needed to be made, the Dean stayed with the teacher until all the calls were made. Afterward, the two debriefed all the calls and talked about the positives and the areas for improvement.

For me, the most important part of this process was modeling the phone call so the teacher could see that the Dean was neither nervous nor intimidated but rather calm, cordial and actually looking forward to speaking with the parent. This same process can be used with face to face meetings between teachers and parents. Likewise, young or inexperienced coaches can benefit from mentors walking them through a similar process. While there is no substitute for experience in such situations, inexperienced teachers certainly can benefit from having good administrators model best practices for them.