I want to give you some suggestions on how to talk to that special education parent and then hopefully connect better with all your other parents as well that you work with. That Parent can sometimes very overbearing. Never satisfied. They’re going over your head. Talking to the administration. We all know that parent.
And again, I’m not here to say special education parent are bad. We definitely need parents. And you know, sometimes our jobs are tough. Their jobs are tough. We totally know that. And I think this last year truly gave us a good idea of what the home life might look like and how we can help in school. Do you want to know how to talk to that special education parent?
When you talk to that special education parent, they want to help advocate for their child, right? They don’t know exactly how to do it, but they’re really asking for more and more and more. Give me, give me, give me, and that’s kind of the parent in a nutshell, from what you guys had explained to the characteristics where, so some things to think about, like I said, you have a parent that may have had terrible experiences with a previous teacher, right?
They may have had a teacher that wasn’t tracking their progress or didn’t communicate that something major happened at school. So that parent has really lost the trust of teachers in general. So that’s just something to think about is maybe their past experiences have made them a little bit more overbearing and that parent might be asking to be more involved, but isn’t sure how right.
I have worked with parents previously that really just want to know what we are doing in school? What are we learning about? If we’re learning about plants and animals, they want to know that so that they can help talk about it at home. Talk to that special education parent and let them know that their child is safe with you.
And they’re not really sure how to help us out “that parent” wants their child to do well and have a good future. Don’t we all, right? We want all of our students to do well. They want all of our students to have a good future, except for when we have 20 to 30 students that we want to do.
Well, not just one or maybe two, if you have a twin in your class. So that parent really just wants their child, right? That’s the one thing they’re thinking about: they’re precious. Like I totally agree. I would want my child to do the same thing.
Right? So in the scheme of things, you’re thinking 30 kids, they’re thinking one kid. So just something to think about too, that we all want these things. It’s not that big of a deal, right? We all want our children to do well, all want our students to do well.
They’re asking for these things, they’re wanting more because they want what’s best for their child. They know their child can succeed and they want to get those best opportunities available for them so that they can reach higher levels and they can do more with their life. And ultimately they just want what’s best for them.
Okay. So I’m thinking that constant communication just wants to be included, right? They want to know what’s going on. That’s why they ask the questions; why they send the emails. This is why they’re calling you.
They’re calling administration, whatever they’re doing, they want to be included. They want to know what’s going on. I don’t think that’s so hard to ask. Maybe I’m wrong. They also have very high expectations, which I think ultimately turns into they want to retire achievements and they want them ultimately to do well. It’s truly just what they want and advocate.
The last one is always the big word, especially in special ed. When you hear the word advocate we shut down. So I just think they want to be included in their child’s education possibly because of the loss of trust that they’ve gotten from another educator or another professional that they’ve worked with.
So I think that’s where advocate comes in, where they’re really advocating for things. They really want more, they’re expecting more. I think it becomes a trust factor. I really do. But ultimately we all want the same thing, right? We’re all working towards our students to be successful.
We want them to do well. We want parents to be more engaged and interactive with their students, right? Isn’t that ultimately what we would love is to have that bridge between home and school, where I can tell you things and you can tell me things like that’s exactly what I feel like would be best for our students, right? So I think ultimately it comes down to communication. Having a good talk to that special education parent to develop a partnership is truly what you’re going to want.
I have a couple tips that I wanted to share with you and hopefully some of these things you can take into your next school year. So start your communication. As soon as you get your class list, truly like the end of the school year, middle of summer, a couple of weeks before school, whenever you get your class lists was really when you should start that communication with that parent, with every other parent, right?
Start that communication, build that bond and that relationship and that trust that these parents are going to send you their children. And they’re going to be like, okay, I know my child will be safe and loved in this classroom.
Sometimes I hand write letters and send letters. You can send an email. Google translate will be your best friend, if you need another language, but you need to introduce yourself. Who are you? They want to know these things too.
Get to know your students, but also make sure that the parents are in on those conversations too. I feel like that’s the part that we always miss, is that we include the child when they come into the classroom and say, what do you like, what do you do this weekend?
I think that extra effort of a phone call or an email really does help it truly think so. So now that you’ve set up the communication at the beginning of the school year, what do you do now?
Right. What do you do now that the school year started? We’re back into our routines. Things are getting crazy. We need to do 10 million things in a day. How am I going to continue this conversation and continue this communication during the school year? So I think ultimately you need to ask how often they’d like to be contacted, right?
Do they want a daily, a monthly, a weekly, you know, you need to know these things, to kind of help that conversation flow a little bit more.
So if you only email once a month, they’re gonna think you don’t care. Ask how they want to be contacted. Some parents really like email or a phone call. Some parents don’t want either. We know those parents. They sometimes they just want a newsletter to go home as to what they did that week or that month or whatever the units are, things like that.
Some parents want to know that, right? I know have heard some ridiculous requests for teachers having to track how much food they’ve eaten, how much water they drank throughout the day, and even tracking bowel movements.
I’ve heard ridiculous requests in my many years. So ask what is important to them? What do they want to know? Of course be within reason if you’re going to accept that or question that further as to why they’re asking for those things. Some other great resources, you know, I know many people send out newsletters, daily reports, weekly emails or twice a week, phone calls, whatever needs to happen or every other week phone calls. That way you can update them through the week. Hopefully they answer. If not, you can leave a short voicemail, or follow up with an email.
I think phone calls are just more personal and you can have more of a conversation back and forth versus emails could be days. So it takes up a little bit less time, even though it might be a little bit harder to do so. Again, if you need a translator, I work with my school and they coordinate a translator for me. And so I’ve scheduled a time each week with a translator so that I can call those families that might need some translation, so that we can make sure we’re keeping those communications as well.
So I hope those tips kind of help throughout the school year. Some things that you might want to do. So, like I said before, ultimately the parents just want to be able to know you. They want to be able to feel like they can like you a little bit and trust you as a professional, because like you said, they’re sending their child to you and truly, they want to be able to say, okay, my child is in good hands.
They’re going to be safe. Their child is going to be understood. They’re going to be protected in this classroom because of you as their teacher.
So drawing the line, this is always the fun one. I love setting boundaries. Especially for that parent, we all know it. So I have parents that’ll email on the weekends, late at night and early in the morning, make me give phone calls, whatever, all times a day and expect me to respond.
I won’t, I always set the boundary of my time to eight to three. That will be the only time I answer emails, make phone calls after three. I know lots of emails now have away messages that you can send. So if it’s after hour before hour, it’ll send out an email for you and it’ll say, I’m not in my office.
I’ll get back to you when I can. So you can do something like that. And another one that I know people feel very passionately about, do not ever give out your personal phone number ever, ever, ever set up a Google voice number. If you really concerned about it or give them the school. One, I know lots of schools have their phone numbers connected to their email.
All right. Another drawing the line one, right? So let’s go through the rest of these. We need to include administration when needed. This is a tough one because you don’t want to include them unless you have to. But if emails are going back and forth or phone calls are getting hostile, you know, when you get to that point, right, when you can tell you’re very passionate about something, they’re very passionate about something and the conversation just isn’t meshing, or if things like such as legal terms get brought up or due process, we’re going to sue things like that.
You probably should be including your administration. Or if a parent is berate and they are going to storm the school, you have to get your administration on there. Unfortunately. So some other things that I like to do when talking with that parent, is a lot of my communication is in writing because you never know when there’s going to come an opportunity that might not go your way.
A lot of times these are a few of the phrases that I use in emails when I talk to that special education parent and they seem to be pushy or judgmental on what I’ve been doing in the classroom.
So I may say:
And then thank you for all that you’ve done for your child. It’s just a nice way to close a conversation, close an email. You make the parents feel a little bit more appreciated.
When’s the last time their child really said thank you to them. So just something to think about, all right, how to end the conversation.
When you talk to that special education parent face-to-face and you’re not sure what to say or how to end the conversation, you can say,
“Thank you for taking the time. It seems that both of us are very passionate. You and I know we both want what is best for (the child’s name). I’d love to take some time to think about all the information you shared and that way we can make sure your child is on the right path for success.”
End the conversation walk away. And you can also say, I’ll call you in the next day, or I’ll send you an email next week and we can talk again, something like that to follow up to when you are going to end that conversation. But also continue it right. You can tell both of us are just very passionate, very heated, and you might not be in the right mind for that. Hope you feel more confident when you talk to that special education parent.
Looking for more parent communication tips? Look no further!
Instagram | TeachersPayTeachers | Facebook | Boom Learning Library | Pinterest | Youtube
What are you looking for?
COPYRIGHT © 2024 Full SPED Ahead
