parents

This year I begin my 18^th year of teaching preschool. And while much has changed in the past 18 years, as the adage goes, the more things change, the more they remain the same!

I took a year off last year to be with my own children as their school did not return to in-person learning until April. I was confident that when I returned to teaching this fall, things would be back to “normal.” Sadly, with the new Delta variant and breakthrough vaccination cases, many of the protocols and safeguards we created last year are still in place this school year. One of those safeguards was not having parents drop off their children in the classroom. Schools implemented this safeguard differently, in our school children are dropped off in front of the school office. Because of this, as teachers, we are only able to briefly communicate with parents and the parents cannot see the classroom daily. This presents a problem.  How do you communicate with and stay connected to parents that you don’t get a chance to see regularly?

I have always been a teacher that enjoys communicating with parents. I like talking to parents at drop-off and pick-up. This practice allowed me to have a meaningful conversation with each parent at least once a week.

This year I will have to be more creative. Emails home will have to be more frequent, more detailed, and filled with more pictures. Instead of checking in with each parent face-to-face, individual emails will be written once a week. Even though the method of communication has to change, the reason for it has not.

 As early childhood educators, we know that we are partners with parents to help their children learn and grow. We also know that the stronger the relationship between the school and the parents, the better the outcome is for the child. So, although many things may look different this year, the relationships and connections we create remain just as important.

Lynn Thedell, Teacher
Congregation Beth Israel, San Diego, CA

Helping parents feel included provides the perfect school/home partnership we all know is key to student success.  

However, COVID-19 has brought new challenges for sharing classroom happenings with parents. The moment we decided that no adults other than staff would be in our building, it became apparent that we needed a new classroom communication strategy. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but pictures alone cannot give parents the information they desperately seek about what their children are doing at school. What packs the biggest punch? Try this three-pronged approach to helping parents feel knowledgeable and included.

Exhibit: Use visual documentation to capture the most important moments during the day. Children in action. (Building, listening, playing, and exploring). Choose to share moments that capture emotion. You can say they are having fun outside, but seeing it is especially important. Parents want to see their children engaged with other children; they need to see that their child has friends.

Elevate: Use keywords to emphasize what the picture is showing. “When children explore, they build higher-level thinking skills. This provides the pathways for more complex reasoning.”   “Playground time provides the perfect space for social and emotional growth. Taking turns, pretend play, and risk-taking are just a few examples of how important this time is for their overall growth.”

Educate:  Provide context for the picture by explaining how it fits into the overall curriculum. “We are learning about ____. Today we went outside and measured... and inside we....”  Describing how each piece of the day scaffolds in either topic or skill allows parents to feel like they are part of the learning. It also gives them ideas of how what they are doing at home contributes to their child’s learning.

This works best when teachers establish a consistent vocabulary of skills and development with parents. Here are common terms used to define developmentally appropriate learning:

• Social-emotional skills– building/regulating emotional responses, feels empathy, engages in play
• Cognitive skills -learning (academic foundations), thinking (infers information), problem-solving (poses questions and solutions)
• Language Development - express themselves, develop more complex vocabulary and sentence structure
• Physical Development - gross motor (building strength that allows greater movement and challenges), fine motor (pre-writing muscle development, smaller piece use and cutting)
• Multi sensory – using varied materials and engaging more than one sense

Jennie Rubin
Director of Early Childhood Education
Temple B’nai Or, Morristown, NJ

February 2021