When things are going well with a child in the classroom, the teacher will hardly hear a peep from the parent, but it something is off, watch out! When things are going well, meaning the child isn’t getting in trouble for behavior problems and their grades are what the parent expects them to be, most of the time parents won’t say a thing. However, if a teacher has to address a student’s misbehavior or lack of academic progress, you can be sure that most of the time you’ll hear from the parent.
Teachers are often shocked when they receive “challenging” parent emails. The shocking part of most parent communication is often the loaded and accusatory language that is used in the email. There is often a clear but unwritten expectation to the teacher to “explain herself” to the parent. Parents have already made up their mind about what happened based on what their child said.
Teachers will tell me that they didn’t see it coming, or that they felt blind-sided. Often this is because parents will bring up something in April that happened at the start of school in August. Or they have assigned behaviors and motives to the teacher as fact without being open to the possibility of a reasonable explanation.
In reality, almost all challenging parent communication is totally predictable. What feels totally unpredictable is actually 100% predictable. You just have to know what things parents will almost always contact you about.
There are 6 parent concerns that almost always generate communication to a teacher. Understand these, and you can communicate with the parent (preferably before the end of the day before the student gets home) and shape the narrative by explaining the situation first.
Here are 6 Parent Concerns that Always Generate Communication:
1. Academics (grades, homework, tests, etc.)
2. Social Dynamics in the Classroom (targeting behavior, kids not getting along, etc.)
3. Emotional Issues their Child is Experiencing (child comes home upset, etc.)
4. Learning Difficulties (impacting grades, accommodations not done correctly, etc.)
5. Behavioral Issues (discipline in the classroom, consequences given, etc.)
6. Teacher Professionalism (grades not updated, lack of communication, inconsistencies, etc.)
Think about the last time you received a challenging parent email, and you should find that the topic fell under one of these six categories.