Parent survey says communicate!

I did a SurveyMonkey survey of my middle school parents to find out how best to communicate with them in the future. In 5 days I heard from more than half the parents. Interesting results:

Nobody wanted Skype or WebEx/Elluminate-style parent conferences, mostly face-to-face (71%) email (52%), and telephone (24%).  But parent conferences weren’t even that high on the list of “ways to find out what’s happening in my child’s classroom.”

The ways parents found most helpful to learn what was happening at school were (with parents choosing more than one):

• Edline progress reports 96% (This also showed up in comments, with parents complaining about teachers who rarely update progress reports). Edline allows us to post progress reports at the assignment/test level that come right from the gradebook at any time. This shows parents how their kids are doing at the assignment/test level as of today. They like it. What does this mean to teachers? Take the extra 5 minutes to post your grades to the online gradebook and upload progress reports about the grades to Edline. There are many gradebook/progress report packages available for schools. For those who use Edline and need a refresher click on http://justintimepd.pbworks.com/w/page/28229813/Posting-to-Edline
• Emails about my child 92%    Easy to do via Edline, and you automatically get a copy of the email sent to your school email address. Not sure how to do it with Edline? Click on http://justintimepd.pbworks.com/w/page/28230040/Communicating-by-email-in-Edline
• Emails about class activities 83%   You can send an email to the entire class via Edline – great way to introduce a new unit, a field trip, a problem that arose in class, a major assignment. These are their children. Parents want to know what they’re doing. Based on the number of emails I got from high school parents this year in response to whole class emails, I’d say high school parents still want to hear from us. Not sure how to do it with Edline? Click on http://justintimepd.pbworks.com/w/page/28230040/Communicating-by-email-in-Edline
• Conversations with my child 79%
• Class web pages (Edline) 75% Not sure how to make your Edline class web pages more useful and appealing? Click on http://justintimepd.pbworks.com/w/page/28229923/Making-Edline-pages-appealing-and-useful
• School email newsletter 67% If two-thirds of parents use the enewsletter to find out what’s happening, it seems like it’s worth the effort to give the editor the information so that she can let parents and other interested parties know what’s going on.
• Study guides (which I email home and post on Edline) 67%
• Report cards 58%
• Parent-teacher conferences 29%
• Looking at Moodle over parent’s shoulder 13%
• Back to School Night 13%
• Comments in Agenda (assignment book) 4%

What does this tell me? Parents want to know what’s happening in classes (class emails) and how their child is doing (progress reports). We have effective tools that don’t take a lot of time to use that help parents keep tabs on their children. Teachers often complain about uninvolved parents – but we have tools to help them be involved. We sure better use ‘em.

Shoveling around snow days

    As we begin snow day number four, or is it five, I wanted to share with you a way to keep your classes moving forward.  Regardless of whether you have Edline, Moodle, a class webpage, or another online resource like these, you probably already have a way to manage snow days online.
photo © 2010 Mike Procario | more info (via: Wylio)


1.    Communicate your expectations.  Let students know in class, and parents know via email, that you will be posting work which you expect students to do whenever there is a snow day.  If you live in an area with spotty electrical/internet service, let parents know this is contingent on your having service. 

2.    Decide what you want students to accomplish and gather the necessary resources for them to use.  Some examples:

• Background reading.  Since students may not have texts at home with them (or may say they don’t), provide other readings.  Textbook publishers frequently have rich resources available.  So much material is available online that you are likely to be able to find a number of interesting articles for your students to read which relate to what you’re doing right now in class.  If you keep these links bookmarked or in a Word document, these will be readily available.  Even if you forgot your list at school, a few minutes of Googling is likely to help bring up at least some of what you want.
• Activities.  Ask thought-provoking questions.  Don’t do spit-back questions-at-the-end-of-the-chapter.  You have a great opportunity for students to pause and think.  Ask questions like: Why do you think X is taking place? What would happen if Y changed?   Those great questions you never have enough time for in class.
• Online resources.  You always wanted to take the class to the computer lab to look at that great math website, or science videos website, or primary sources website.  Consider also:  what do you want students to do with this resource? Explore, experiment, evaluate?  Caveat:  If this was a website you wanted students using under supervision, don’t use it for a snow day.  Unless you want parent complains, don’t link to YouTube, where students are only one click away from inappropriate content. Of course, students go there themselves, but why set yourself up?
• PowerPoints.  Some teachers/texts have PowerPoint presentations of key material.  You may wish to post these, especially in AP classes. 
• Activities. Discussion.  See this post about how to set up a discussion in Edline.  I much prefer Moodle discussions which are easier to set up and provide more variety.

3.    Tell students what you want them to do today, on the snow day. 

• In Edline, the easiest way to do this is in News.  Click on the pen & paper icon to the right of News.  Click on Add, then add content as you usually do.  I make the title explicit:  Snow Day – January 21.  I usually just select Enter Text by Hand.  Be specific.  If you have study guides, assignment sheets you refer to, be sure these have already been uploaded to the Content section of your Edline page.  You can include any links to readings or resources as part of what you’re writing.  If you are using the same directions for more than one class, select the other classes you want and click Save. 
• In Moodle, I place the directions (in a label) so they are the first thing students see after they login.

4.    Communicate your expectations to parents and students.  Send an email (my school uses Edline for this) to all parents and students in each class, reminding them that you’ve got work for the day posted, and where it is.  Not all students check their email, but adults are more likely to, and parents want their kids learning. 

5.    When school starts again, discuss the work.  The first time, a fair number of students will not have done the work, but participation improves with experience.

Questions

1.    What about power outages and dropped internet service?  Be understanding, but treat the work like class work that was missed due to a sick day and needs to be made up.

2.    What about the kid who says s/he forgot the password and couldn’t login?  Really?  This is where due dates and assignments are posted, but the kid suddenly forgot the password? And didn’t ask parents – who also have an account – for assistance?  Treat this as class work that has to be made up.

3.    What about kids/parents who forgot about the work entirely?  Treat this as class work that was missed due to a sick day.  If it has to be made up, the student is less likely to forget next time.

4.    What if I don’t have power/internet service?  Don’t beat yourself up.  You probably have bigger difficulties to cope with than a missed day of classes.

Comments, suggestions, additions welcome.  This is cross-posted to http://franblo.edublogs.org/2011/01/21/shoveling-around-snow-days/