Standard 7: Engage professionally with colleagues, parents/carers and the community
7.3.1 Engage with parents/carers
Engaging with parents and carers is crucial for the academic success of a student. Research shows that when students have a good home and school life link, this positively impacts the child’s performance through greater school enjoyment, attendance, behaviour responses and better social/emotional well-being (Ken, N. 2012). A school newsletter is just one of the ways my previous placement school engaged with parents and the schooling community on a frequent basis. Each month the school would send out a newsletter to parents with an overall summary of PSSA activities, school initiatives, upcoming events, awards and grade-specific information. Once a month all the teachers would gather in their year groups and create a small summary of the work the classes have completed within the timeframe. This was a great initiative to ensure contact with parents and carers as they were constantly updated on school information and specific lesson topics their child is currently learning at the time.
As parents are students’ first teachers, it is important for there to be a parent-teacher relationship to assist in the student reaching their highest academic capabilities. Interaction between parent and teacher tends to be more prevalent with students who experience learning disabilities, as this ensures the teacher is aware of the strategies that need to be implemented to appropriately differentiate each lesson. It was interesting to witness the difference between the interaction with parents in my placement school that provided the monthly newsletter compared to the one that did not. At the completion of each day, the school that did not provide the newsletter had drastically more parents coming up to us teachers asking about current advances of their child and classroom topics numerous times a week. Overall, engagement with parents is fundamental as it keeps them informed with all the necessary school and classroom information.
​
Word count: 316
