Reaching Struggling Learners
Reaching Struggling Learners
#83: Empowering Strategies for Parent-Educator Communication
Unlock the secrets to seamless communication with parents in the education sphere, as I share empowering strategies that turn potential conflicts into partnerships. In this riveting discussion, we dissect the art of crafting precise, measurable goals, shining a light on how IEPs can serve as a common language to bridge the gap between educators and parents. You'll be equipped with the knowledge to use data effectively, transforming graphs and evidence into a compelling narrative that supports your student's progress and fosters a collaborative spirit with even the most challenging parents.
Step into a world where teachers and parents align for the triumph of every child's educational journey. We explore the pivotal use of data as a beacon of advocacy, empowering both educators and parents to stride confidently on a united front. This episode is a treasure trove of insights for anyone invested in the academic success of our young learners. With these tools at your disposal, every conversation can evolve into a constructive problem-solving venture, ensuring that our children emerge as the ultimate victors.
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Links Mentioned in the Show:
https://teachingstrugglinglearners.com
I know many, many teachers and at the beginning of my teaching career I was exactly the same way. Parent communication can be super stressful, it just is. There's a lot behind it, but it is. But the reality is, communicating with parents can be really easy if you have good goals and of course, I'm talking to my special education teachers mostly here, the general ed teachers. If you're talking about different goals, absolutely it's the same thing, but obviously the last couple weeks I'm talking more about special education right now. But as a special education teacher, if you have good goals that are specific and they're measurable meaning that you can actually get good data out of them, like we talked about last week, all the people on your team can be on the same page and that makes communicating, especially with parents, way easier.
Speaker 1:Yes, I know we have difficult parents. There's certain there's in every group, in every place, in every state, everywhere in the nation and, I would dare I say, worldwide. You're going to have some parents that you just cannot make happy. I get that. That makes sense. But you can still have common ground in working, even with the most difficult parents when you're working toward the same goals. And the reality is even honestly, even when I've, in the past, worked with some pretty difficult parents, which I have. When you have good goals that you can talk about, it really helps you to build a relationship and a common vocabulary with parents. That it really is a lot, of, a lot of the most difficult parents that I've dealt with yes, they were unhappy, they were unhappy with the system. They weren't unhappy with me specifically and they'd been burned multiple times by poor goals which led to poor data gathering, which led to poor communication and frustration from both sides. And by creating these really good, strong goals, we could all work toward the same goal and have a common vocabulary between us. So there wasn't as much miscommunication, there wasn't as much angst, there wasn't as much frustration, at least on my part. So today we're going to talk about how you can build some better communication through those good goals.
Speaker 1:Hi, I'm Jessica Curtis of Teaching Struggling Learners. I'm a boy mom and a veteran teacher. You're listening to the Reaching Struggling Learners podcast, where we talk all about helping students succeed academically, socially and behaviorally. Thank you so much for tuning in. So I said it in the intro there as teachers and this is Gen Ed and Special Ed at this point we do we put off communicating with parents Because, let's be honest, most of the time when we are calling parents to communicate with them, or putting in notes or emailing or whatever it is, we're not bringing happy news.
Speaker 1:Most of the time we are bringing information to parents that we know is not the most positive. Now I've been to a lot of trainings and I'm sure you have too that have said you know you need to say you need to start off, you know the school year and all that with a lot of you know positives. You know Johnny did a great job sitting on the carpet today or whatever it is, but it's January now and that ship has sailed at this point in the year. We can try that for next year, but it's January now and that ship has sailed at this point in the year. We can try that for next year, but it's January right now. We are in whatever communication loop that we are in with the parents. We know that right now All we can do is take what we've got right now with communication, with relationship, with vocabulary, whatever it is with the parents and move forward.
Speaker 1:And so one of the things if you are looking to improve your communication with your parents is creating good, solid goals. Of course, I'm talking IEP goals, but this can you know if you're working with progress, monitoring students through MTSS. It's the same thing. The reality is, good goals make communicating easier. You create common ground. You can then say if a parent is upset or frustrating, you can bring it back to the goal that you set and say, hey, but here's how this is improving. Or here's how we're impacting, how what's going on right now is impacting this goal, how the interventions are impacting. You're creating common ground and a relationship and that makes it so much easier to report progress If you have this goal that you know the parents are behind, because you know what parents are against their children learning to read or to do math or write or whatever it is you know behave in school. Whatever your IEP goal is, it is so much easier to report progress when you have a clear, specific goal that you're working toward, right, and a goal that makes sense Data, numbers, facts.
Speaker 1:The fact is, parents, they can't argue with numbers, right, they can't argue with graphs, they can't. The information is there, whether you like it or not. If your parents, for whatever reason, are arguing, oh no, my student can read all those sight words and you have a graph that shows. Well, yeah, they can read some of them. They can read about 20 of the 100 that they're supposed to. You can't really argue with that. You really can't. No, I have tested your child. You can say in you know that this graph shows that over the last nine weeks that we have tested your student and we've been working on the sight words every single day and their weekly tests, you can see that they have learned about 20 of them. There's really no argument there. Now you can talk about how you know what are we going to change things up? Because clearly 20 out of 100 is not adequate. It changes what the conversation is going to be and it allows you to take control of those conversations and say I don't like those numbers either. Here's what I propose we do about it. Again, that goes right into using that data and graph to make suggestions. Right, you can talk about, because you know the student I'll go back to my. I know the child knows 20 out of 100 sight words that maybe we need to talk about changing interventions. Maybe we need to talk about changing accommodations or the time that we have them or maybe the amount of time. There's lots of different things that we could talk about then to help us achieve that goal in a more timely manner. And it also allows us to help our parents understand that info and ask relevant questions so that they don't have to feel so defensive because they don't know.
Speaker 1:Because, honestly, as teachers, we talk a lot of jargon. We talk a lot of jargon. We do, and it's not our fault, it's just it's what we do. Doctors do the same thing, lawyers do the same thing. Goodness knows my husband's in the army. I half of what he says is letters and numbers and I couldn't understand a word of what he says. But I smile and nod and okay, we as teachers and special education teachers, we do the same thing. We talk a lot of jargon and a lot of parents kind of smile and nod but they don't understand. They don't really understand. They're not in the classroom. Teachers may have been saying the phrase sight words to them for three or four years, but does that really click for them that there are the first 100 Dolsh sight words and these 100 words don't change year to year, and that these words are really, really vital for their children to be able to read this text? They don't live and breathe this stuff like we do as teachers, and so a lot of times parents get defensive when we start pulling out you know all this jargon and they're talking about well, my kid can't read. I just want my kid to read. Well, yeah, I understand that. These are the steps that we have to take to get your child to read. If no one has defined that for the parent, they don't know. You can't expect them to know. It's not their fault. But by using good goals and then being able to increase that communication, the goals lead to good communication, which helps our parents understand what we're trying to do for their kids and, down the road, how they can help their kids too. And that's really key to all this Having visuals out when you're communicating and talking about data with your parents.
Speaker 1:Having visuals out on the table, like, for example, whenever we did initial IEP meetings, I got a copy of the bell curve and I would have that out on the table so that I could show okay, an IQ of 100 is average. See this right here on the bell curve parent, that's right in the middle, and your child's IQ, well, it was 65. So see, it's kind of out here. It's out here. It's not real close to the average. It's not where we want it to be with that average range. So that's why your child needs extra help.
Speaker 1:And having that visual many, many times helped me to be more clear with the parents and explain to them in vocabulary that they could understand and really process. With a lot of information being thrown at them Every IEP meeting and every parent-teacher conference, we're throwing a lot of information and a lot of jargon at them. By having a visual there, it can really help them to understand. And then if we consistently bring this data to show, hey, we have your child. You know last week, or you know last time we met, only knew 20 out of 100 sight words. This time they know 80 out of 100 sight words. That's real progress, right. Being able to do that again ups the communication, it ups the understanding and it makes it so much more pleasant.
Speaker 1:I also want to say, if you have the time, the wherewithal, getting a vocab sheet like a cheat sheet for parents is one of the next to having visuals there for them is one of the best things that you can do to help parents really understand the jargon, the lingo that we're using, and it helps us. It helps me at least to be much more aware of what we need to explain because, again, we we live and breathe this stuff. We live and breathe phonemic awareness and phonics and sight words and fluency and all this stuff. We live and breathe this stuff. Percentile ranks and yada, yada, yada. We talk about this all the time. Parents don't. They don't live and breathe this stuff the way we do. And so having a cheat sheet available to give them, it helps them because then obviously it's right there, oh, I see what a percentile rank is. It makes sense now. But it also helps us so that we know what needs to be explained in more detail.
Speaker 1:If you are looking to communicate better with parents and communicating data especially, I really do suggest put some time and effort into thinking about how you can do it. Sheets available or visuals available and all that. It is worth its weight in gold, because you're going to end up having more pleasant communication with parents. But you're going to have more effective communication and, at the end of the day, we want parents to know that we're all fighting for their kid. We want parents to know that we're all fighting for their kid. We want parents to know that we're not on anybody's side other than the side of that student making progress, and sometimes, for a lot of reasons, that gets lost in translation.
Speaker 1:So I really want to encourage you today to take some time and figure out how to bridge that gap, so that the parents aren't over on the other side of the table feeling like they don't know what's going on and they gotta fight, because maybe we, maybe they do need to fight, maybe there's a fight to be had, but it's not with the teachers, it's not with the teachers, it's not with the teachers, it's not with the teachers, it's not with us that are there trying to help them and trying to help their kids.
Speaker 1:So let's communicate effectively and give each other the tools that we all need to help those kids be as successful as possible. So next week, we're going to talk about using that data that I've been talking about for years and years and years and years and years to advocate for our kids, whether they be our parent, our students or, you know, maybe you're a parent and you're just looking to figure out how to, how to advocate for your kids. Let's talk about that next week. Until next time, may your coffee be strong, your students calm and, as always, your students progressing Bye.