Susan Graham-Clay's Communicating With Parents: Strategies For Teachers

The greatest barrier for student success lies between teacher-parent communication. Ultimately, many teachers instantly claim the lack of parental involvement as a deficiency which hinders positive reinforcement. Susan Graham-Clay attempts to provide adequate information for teachers to begin their positive relationship with parents in her article, Communicating with Parents: Strategies for Teachers. Graham-Clay states the issue originates with teacher’s lack of training to efficiently and positively engage with parents. In recent years, education professionals recognized the import role parents play in the school environment and now urge teachers to interact with parents very early in the year. Unfortunately, for many teachers, the process of engaging with parents appears daunting. This usually stems from the teacher’s question of how to effectively communicate with parents on a limited schedule. Fortunately, Graham-Clay provides various examples of communication to fit both teacher’s and parent’s schedules while also providing remediation for those parents of a low socioeconomic status where transportation or child care may prevent a parent from attending parent-teacher conferences or on-campus activities. Additionally, …show more content…
During my time in various classrooms, I experienced teaching, lesson planning, and classroom management skills, but never interacted with parents. Similar to many first year teachers, I lack skills to efficiently communicate with parents. Often, education courses are so focused on the art of teaching they forget about other important job essentials. In fact, after realizing that parental interaction is an essential job duty, I worried about how to proactively interact with parents. I strive to be an effective teacher but evidently cannot do so without parental