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In what practical ways do you and/or your school currently support parents? What benefits have you seen from this?
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Parent teacher conferences are one way we make the opportunity to connect and talk with parents. Some of them are hosted right after school ends and then others are hosted after 6. This allows the opportunity for different scheduled parents to attend and meet with teachers to see how their student is doing. Benefits of it are that it opens up a window of opportunity for in person communication rather than email. Also if something else that’s more time friendly needs to be scheduled they could then ask the teacher for a meeting with them on a separate occasion as well.
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Each classroom teacher communicates course news, curriculum, accomplishments, photos, and reminders every week. There is also a weekly school wide newsletter that goes out. Parents are encouraged to attend weekly elementary, MS, and HS chapels. Of course, there are a myriad of opportunities for parents to volunteer depending on the needs of the classroom.
At the elementary level, we have a Curriculum Night, but other than that, we do not have any other times where parents learn about their child’s classroom subject matter or basic procedures.
We also have our Winter and Spring Concerts, along with an Art Show in the Spring, which include all elementary students that parents love to attend.
The benefits of including parents is maintaining an ongoing connection that keeps the line of communication open. -
My school does a parent workshop and parent prayer meetings every week. This year, they have also covered the social media dangers talk with parents. Some parents have become believers out of one of the workshops. Many of our parents are Buddhist. I talked to the one mom and she felt so encouraged because several of the parents were Buddhist and all feeling the same thing about God. It was good for them to be together and have this meeting.
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We have expanded our daycare to include younger children allowing parents to have a safe and Christ centered place to send their children.
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Teachers have begun using the Remind app, in addition to emails, to communicate with parents quicker; this has improved response times for both parents and teachers. Annual concerts are held twice – in the early afternoon for grand friends and in the evening for working parents. This provides more suitable visiting opportunities for both parties.