Communicating with Parents – Purposeful Strategies

Welcome back to the 2017-18 school year!

Things are flying already and I am so glad to be getting back into it. One of my big goals continues to be developing positive and useful communication strategies with our parent community as well as our community at large. Our school has developed a new website and we are looking at some new and enhanced communication strategies for our school.

• We have a new wireless network with the ability for personal devices and school iPads to be connected continuously over the year without having to login each time (I am sooooooo happy!). This completely changes our communication game, as now we can utilize online social media tools in an easy and ubiquitous manner.
• We are looking at utilizing Twitter as our main communication tool between teachers and the school and our parents. I can’t wait to see it in action! It will allow sending out information, photos and videos in quick ways without having to maintain a full website. I hope it will be a much more dynamic and timely matter of communication. Twitter has a great App for phones to make it super easy. More information will go out to parents to help them get set up.
• Our system is now using School Messenger which allows us to text, email, or send voice Mail messages to parents. It has opened up the way we can communicate with all parents in the school.
• I hope to make a website a much more dynamic tool that demonstrates the daily life of our school and shares needed information with parents.
• We are hoping to minimize the amount of paper usage by making as much of our communication as possible in a digital matter. There will be, at times, paper communication if needed, but we will try to keep it minimal.
• Face to face communication is always a priority. We are trying our first open house today at school from 11:00 AM to 1:00 PM. Students, families, and parents may pop in to meet their teacher and see their classroom. Our intent is to try to help students coming from school on Tuesday with as low a level of anxiety as possible. (THE OPEN HOUSE WAS AN AWESOME EVENT! IT GOT RID OF A TON OF ANXIETIES!)

Have a wonderful school year everyone! As always, work hard and learn tons!

Derek