The Triple C Effect: Parent-Teacher Support
Ms Naamah
English Teacher
In choosing a school for your child, of course, the hope is to ensure your child has the best education possible. Did you know that you, as a parent, can play a huge part in making that desire a reality? Establishing a positive relationship with your child’s teachers can be the key to your child’s success and growth!
The most significant people in a child’s life are their parents, caregivers, and teachers. These figures are the ones who contribute the most to their learning and exploration of the world around them. These are the people with whom they spend the most time, and thus provide an example of how to navigate the environments they are brought up in. Studies show that the positive relationship between parents and teachers can propel not only a child’s academic achievement, but their behavior, attitude about school, social skills, flexibility to changes, as well as developing emotional security.
The 3- C’s of Building Strong Parent-Teacher Relationships:
1. Communication
You may have heard the phrase, “communication is key,” many times for various life applications. You can never have too much communication in order to stay abreast of what is going on in your child’s life and school. It is also important to reflect that communication to your child’s teachers as to what is being worked on at home. Communication helps a child to be able to have the same skills being worked on at home and school, in order to resolve any challenges that may arise and avoid any backtracking.
Here are a few practicals for building great communication between parents and teachers:
- Communicate early on and frequently throughout the school year. Daily updates, follow up, and progress checks help ensure that any gaps in communication are dissolved.
- Utilize any means of communication as possible. Class Dojo, emails, parent- teacher meetings, as well as drop off and pick up times can be great resources to take advantage of.
- Communicate the types of progress checks you would like your child’s teacher to keep you up to date on. Reciprocate the same updates with any requests given by teachers to work on at home.
2. Consistency
“Success isn’t always about greatness. It’s about consistency. Consistent hard work leads to success. Greatness will come.” – Dwayne Johnson.
The most thing a child needs in their life is consistency. Routines create an environment of safety and predictability for students to follow.
Here are some practicals on consistency:
- Share any ideas/tricks that are used at home to help with focusing attention, engagement, behavior, and learning. This helps a child feel confident that what they are getting at home, they can also get at school. Feel free to ask about what tricks can be incorporated at home to help with any areas that need more development
- Students often don’t want to miss out, so it is important for them to have consistent attendance in order to take advantage of all subjects, participating in special events, and coming in and out of school on time to ensure they are receiving the maximum amount of what is being offered.
3. Collaboration
- Communicate and be aware of any issues that have or may arise in relation to academic growth, limitations, or behavior. Solutions are great to discuss, and should be ever-increasing to overcome challenges.
- Celebrate progress together to help your child feel seen in their efforts in complying to different strategies to aid their growth. This also means following up on previous conversations about goals and expectations.