This article appeared as "The Opening Act" in the Fall 2024 issue of Independent School.
It’s not an uncommon scenario in schools: A sixth grader forgets his homework one day. His teacher records a zero for the assignment in the online gradebook. The student’s parent sees the posted grade and emails the teacher to find out more. The teacher, who has had a very busy day, replies with a curt message, “James earned a zero because he didn’t bring his homework to class.” The parent is dissatisfied with the teacher’s reply and reaches out to a school administrator to complain about the teacher’s communication style. The administrator encourages the teacher to send a more thoughtful explanation to the parent, but instead, the teacher, who is now quite annoyed, sends an email to the parent with a perceived reprimanding tone.
This time-wasting predicament can easily be avoided, but episodes like this continue throughout the year. Ideally the parent could have asked their child about the zero rather than the teacher, but given the situation, how could the teacher have prevented the domino effect of unprofessional miscommunication? What role did the administrator have in rectifying the lines of communication? What is the likelihood any future communication between the teacher and the parent will be effective?
Communicating with parents is a critical part of teachers’ work, but it’s not really covered in most teacher preparation programs. Many teachers learn on the job, picking up tips and tricks from mentors about how to connect with their students’ parents thoughtfully and effectively. It takes years of experience and practice. And it’s incumbent upon schools to actively help teachers develop such skills and strategies. School leaders must always have teachers’ backs when it comes to working with parents, and with explicit guidelines and ongoing professional development, schools can demonstrate that support and teachers can gain the confidence to handle tricky situations.
A Support System
Recently, a teacher asked to meet with me (I’m an administrator and a teacher) about a parent concern she had. After she shared all the details, I asked how I could best support her. She just wanted me to know about the situation, she told me, in case it happened again. If teachers feel they are supported by administration, they are more likely to be loyal to the school, cooperate with others, be more resilient, and take direction from leadership.
I’ve seen administrators do everything they can to be a listening ear, find solutions to problems, and protect teachers from irrational parent behavior. At the same time, I know administrators are balancing countless meetings, new initiatives, policy and procedures work, extreme student concerns, admission interviews, fundraising events—and the list goes on. As an unfortunate result of our overcrowded schedules, supporting a teacher who has experienced an upsetting parent encounter can occasionally fall through the cracks.
It is critical that schools make supporting teachers a priority. To start, schools should get a temperature check on how faculty perceive administrator support. To better understand possible gaps in administrative support regarding parent-teacher communication, school leaders might conduct an anonymous survey that asks teachers whether they agree or disagree with the following statements: I can request an administrator to attend a parent conference as needed; our school’s administrators will relieve me of the task of communicating with a parent who becomes insulting, belligerent, or aggressive; our school’s administration will confer with the teacher involved before making decisions based on a parent request or complaint; I have the tools I need to effectively communicate with parents.
Tool Time
Beyond serving as a sounding board for teachers or intervening in extreme situations, school leaders can improve parent-teacher partnerships with ongoing professional development opportunities, ideally programs that span the school year and incorporate different styles and formats for learning. To structure these opportunities, schools need to consider who should facilitate this work—an outside consultant or an administrator or maybe even a faculty member who has a proven track record of partnering with parents—and what it should look like for maximum impact.
Facilitators can gather teacher input on what parent partnerships look like at their school by gathering teachers in small groups to share strategies and stories. They can weave in employee handbook references around parent communication (my school expects teachers to respond to parent emails within 24 business hours), discuss basic and proactive communication strategies (such as introducing yourself to parents and sharing something positive about their child early in the year), and remind teachers that it’s acceptable to not always have an immediate response.
Similarly, schools can offer guidance around potentially challenging parent-teacher interactions—what they look like and when and how they might arise—and provide recommendations on how to manage them. At our school, we remind teachers to reach out to parents sooner than later if there are concerns about behavior or academic progress. We remind them that hard conversations are best to have by phone—but avoid cold-calling—and to send an email to schedule a call and briefly tell the parents what they’d like to talk about.
Make It a Practice
Creating the time and space to explore scenarios and get feedback is an ongoing process that can take place during a designated professional development session. Administrators can also encourage this work throughout the year in different modes.
Lunch and Learns. The instructional coaches at our school hold optional “Lunch and Learn” sessions throughout the year. To increase engagement, we encourage attendance and offer a special dessert. The format is an open discussion on predetermined topics for different divisions, such as “Tips for Developing Stronger Parent Partnerships,” “Successful Parent Conferences” (ideally preceding conference days), and “Interpreting and Communicating Standardized Testing Results to Families” (ideally before test results are published). The coaches ask, “What challenges have you successfully overcome when communicating with parents?” Then participants share and discuss.
Discussion Forums. Some days, it’s hard for teachers to get away to the restroom, much less attend a lunch and learn session. Asynchronous discussion forums provide teachers and administrators with the opportunity to read others’ ideas and contribute their own without having to be physically present. My department head occasionally sends a shared online document with a discussion question/prompt and encourages people to add to it. In the rows below the prompt, each teacher writes their thoughts on their own time. Recently, the prompt was “Share your go-to tips for deescalating a tense conversation with parents.” Here is some of the conversation that followed:
This is something I need to work on. I find it hard to take the time to meet or make a phone call when an email exchange becomes tense.
I hear you on this, but phone calls often do not take as much time as you think.
I try to meet with the parent and bring plenty of data in the form of student work or assessment results.
At my last school, we had a requirement that teachers email two “happy notes” per week. I think the effort for positive communication preempted potential tense situations.
Oooh, I like this idea. This is something we can all do.
I have participated in discussion forums on learning management platforms (Blackbaud, Schoology, Canvas) and web-based tools (Google docs, Padlet, or Flipgrid if you want video replies). When the participants meet again as a group, the facilitator can launch right into summarizing the discussion replies. Regardless of the platform, asynchronous online discussions are a time-respectful method of engaging faculty in reflecting on previously presented topics.
Weekly Newsletters. Internal newsletters often contain important announcements and need-to-know dates, but they can also provide information and reminders about professional development topics and opportunities. For example, librarians might share information about new resources that have been added to the professional library, instructional coaches might include links to upcoming conferences or articles, and administrators might include testimonials from faculty (with their permission). At first glance this may seem a bit salesy, but depending on your school culture, a blurb like this might resonate with many teachers: “After our recent session on parent partnerships, I decided to call a parent to share some praise about their daughter’s improvement in my class. The parent was so happy and grateful to get my call. I am going to start calling more parents based on this experience.”
A short testimonial or a link to a related article may be just the nudge a teacher needs in their busy schedule to refresh their memory of a professional development session from months ago.
Pre-Event Sessions. Longtime teachers have gathered enough institutional knowledge about what is expected at Meet the Teacher Night, parent-teacher conferences, or report card comments. They’ve heard chatter at lunch or maybe they slightly remember something someone said at a meeting back in 2015. But newly hired teachers are left guessing about what’s expected. Offering information and guidance sessions to all faculty and directly communicating the expectations for upcoming parent-facing events can go a long way in helping new teachers—and serve as a good refresher for veteran teachers.
Meet the Teacher Night. Host a session a few days before the event and offer an overview of the schedule, what topics teachers should address with parents, and samples of handouts and presentations. Consider showing a video recording of a teacher’s presentation as a way to offer inspiration and instruction to other teachers—of any tenure—about how to approach the night, and provide a list of experienced teachers whom new teachers can seek out for follow-up questions.
Parent-Teacher Conferences. These conferences can be anxiety-
producing for many teachers, regardless of their teaching tenure. Ease teachers’ anxiety and help them have more successful conferences by reminding them:
- Parents want to get to know you as their child’s teacher.
- Parents can be—and often are—nervous too.
- Let the parent(s) talk first. Really listen to what they value and what they fear.
- Start by asking how their child talks about the class at home.
- Kind honesty means sharing objective observations about their child while also recognizing their child’s strengths.
Report Card Comments. While quite laborious, report card comments are extremely important. Even if a teacher has taught at independent schools before, the expectations of the quality of report card narratives can be vastly different across schools. As a guideline, share sample comments with the faculty weeks before report cards are due. And remind teachers that the report card is not a place for surprises; communicate concerns with parents before the official report card is written. Also, remind teachers that the comments might be read by admission staff at other schools and colleges. The language needs to be professional while honest and hopeful.
The tricky thing about school-parent partnerships is that they’re almost invisible when they’re going well—and right in your face when they’re not. That’s why it’s so critical to develop ongoing support and guidance for the teachers who are on the front lines. Partnering effectively with parents is not something teachers can learn overnight. It’s a skill that takes years of experience and practice—and intentional support, guidance, and commitment from school leaders.
Legal Tip
Meeting with parents to review student grades and progress can be highly sensitive and sometimes fraught for parents and teachers, and even the most competent educators need help navigating these challenging situations. For tips, scenarios, and more, check out Legal Tip: Support Your Teachers During Parent Conferences.
Go Deeper
The back-to-school nights and parent-teacher conference rituals are often sources of stress for teachers and administrators. How can they use these events to strengthen their alliance—and their standing—with parents? In the NAIS webinar recording, Less Stress, More Success: Managing Back-to-School Nights and Parent Conferences for Maximum Impact, psychologists Robert Evans and Michael Thompson draw on their NAIS book Hopes and Fears: Working with Today’s Independent School Parents, Second Edition to offer concrete ways educators can cope, from addressing the inevitable “developmental flashpoints” of various ages to delivering hard news about a child’s struggles to managing unrealistic parental expectations.
