Teachers are not ignorant to the fact that almost 9 out of 10 of the notes that we send home with our students are left unread, or even worse, disregarded. This means that we need to reiterate our messages over and over again until they do finally hit “home”. With modern technology however, organising and planning things like parent teacher meetings or even outings and excursions can be made a whole lot simpler leaving parents with no excuse saying they were “not in the loop” or that they did not receive any of your correspondence.
5 Tips For Modern Day Teachers
- Instead of wasting paper (and trees), send an email to parents when you need to communicate important messages. Ask them to send a read receipt or accept a meeting schedule request so that you know for a fact that they have read your message. This way you will know who you still need to hound for an answer!
- Use applications like Google Drive to create your sign-up forms. Allow parents the convenience of signing up for contributions from their computer or smartphones; and rely on automated reminders to help everyone remember! So the next time you need some parents to man the cake table, they can all place their names next to their preferred time-slots, along with the other parents.
- When it comes to parent meetings it is important that you get some face time with all of the parents at some point. Offer ways for parents to attend remotely, for example: via Skype, Facetime, Google Hangout, WhatsApp video call and so on. This is in case their busy schedule or possible emergency prevents them from getting to the school.
- Use social media to get your message out, parents will more likely read the important news while scrolling through their pages come bedtime! Tweet, Facebook and you can even send out a class newsletter via email!
- If you really really have to stick to paper notes, then at least ensure they include a tear-off slip that needs to be signed and sent back to you, so that you do know who has read your correspondence and who still needs following up on (this you can keep tally of on a spreadsheet, for all future records and information).
Are you a modern-day teacher? As with most professions today, there are rapid developments in teaching that are being driven by social and technological improvements. Staying on top of these developments and implementing them can have a positive effect on your classroom admin and management. The skills needed to be a great teacher have now changed; modern teachers need to be competent in many new skill sets that were unknown to their predecessors.
