Teachers who have a good understanding of the common “needs”
of school parents are better equipped to manage parent-teacher communication.
We all have basic needs like food, water, and oxygen. We also have basic
psychological needs like autonomy, belonging, and competence, as well as love
and safety.
When parents bring their child to school, they also bring
their own set of “needs” with them. I use the word “needs” loosely in this
context. Yes, we all have the same basic human needs, but school parents come
with “needs” unaware to teachers.
Parents have 3 sets of needs. They have “needs” for their
child. They have “needs” for their child’s teacher. They have “needs” for
themselves as parents.
You can think of these “needs” as unspoken expectations. Let
me show you what I mean. Parents “need” their child to like their teacher or to
be successful at whatever they do. Parents won’t tell the teacher this, but it
is an unspoken expectation. Parents “need” their child’s teacher to know their
child well or to accommodate their home situation. Unspoken expectations. Parents “need” to feel like they are doing a
good job as a parent or “need” to never be wrong. Unspoken expectations. These
are just a few examples of the “needs” of school parents—the unspoken
expectations they bring with them when their child is in your classroom.
These “needs” are often what drive challenging parent
emails. What it looks like to the teacher is that a student hasn’t been turning
in homework and so they had to keep a child in from recess to finish it. What
it looks like to the parent is that the teacher doesn’t like their child and
they are not doing a good job as a parent.
When their “need” is not being met, that’s when the teacher
is most likely to get a challenging email from a parent.
When you understand this dynamic, you have another tool in your toolbox that can help you respond in a way that addresses the legitimate academic or behavioral concern, and at the same time reassure the parent and deescalate the communication.
Often the initial response to an emotionally charged email
is to fight back or pull back, and then emotionally disengage from the parent.
When we consider our role as partnering with parents in the education of their
child, disengagement is not the way to go. When we disengage we withdraw,
detach, leave, retreat, remove, separate, quit, or disconnect.
When we emotionally disengage from the parent, we are
creating distance between us and them. It becomes us versus them on opposite
sides, rather than both you and I on the same side. When both teacher and
parent are on the same side—both you and I—not only can we move forward, but it
is for the benefit of the student.
Think about the last time you received an emotionally charged, challenging parent email. Stop for a moment and think about the emotions you felt—anger, frustration, disappointment, fear, etc. Now think about the intensity of the emotion you felt. On a scale of 0-10, with 0 meaning feeling no emotion at all, and 10 meaning the most intense emotion you’ve ever felt, how strongly did you feel? Most teachers I work with rate their level of intensity about an 8-9.
Consider the possibility that the parent who sent the emotionally charged email is feeling the same level of emotion you are experiencing as you read the same email. That means if you are experiencing an intensity of an 8-9, then most likely the parent is feeling an intensity of an 8-9 with whatever emotion they are experiencing. This is important to understand for us to be able to respond to the challenging parent email in a positive and healthy way.
What we need to do to move forward is the exact opposite of
our natural inclination. Our instinct is to fight back or pull back, but what
we actually need to do is lean in, and bend or tilt toward the parent. This is
hard! It is the last thing we want to do.
Here is the good news. You have the power to acknowledge and
manage your feelings, and then communicate in a way that will de-escalate the
situation, not only for the parent, but for yourself.
You are the professional. Don’t take it personally. 99% of
the time it’s not about you.
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.
When I was growing up, if the teacher sent a note or called home to my parents, I knew I was in trouble. Historically in America, teachers were afforded more respect simply because they were teachers. Unfortunately, some teachers violated that trust and cast a shadow on the teaching profession as a whole.
My parents were raised to always respect teachers and support teachers no matter what. It’s different for me being both an educator and a parent. I have a healthy respect for teachers, but I also know the kinds of questions to ask and the things to look out for when it comes to my children’s’ education.
In this generation, unfortunately the tables have flipped
and teachers are often put in a position of having to defend their classroom
rules and procedures, lesson plans, assessments, and classroom discipline to a
parent. How did this flip happen?
Instead of finding middle ground—respecting teachers as professionals while
being a reasonable and involved parent—the pendulum has swung in the opposite
direction. Now teachers are often eyed with suspicion.
To make matters worse, because most communication between
parents and teachers today is done through email, we lose the face-to-face
interaction in which we could read facial expressions, tone of voice, and body
language. Digital communication,
although convenient and a time-saver in certain situations, has created its own
set of problems. Emails can come at any
time of day or night interrupting and imposing on teachers while they are at
home in the evening or out with friends or family, which disrupts their sense
of space and personal space.
On top of that, people hide beyond a false sense of anonymity in digital communication and will often say in text or email what they would never say to your face. You would be hard pressed to find a teacher who has not been on the receiving end of a nasty, accusatory, or abusive email from a parent. We live in an over-protective society when it comes to our kids. If our children come home upset, or the teacher has to share information about disruptive behavior in the classroom or academic progress, the knee-jerk reaction is to go after the teacher. Parents often do not stop long enough to realize they are only getting half of the story.
A teacher at a beginning of the year open house said to parents, “I won’t believe everything your child says about you, and you shouldn’t believe everything your child says about me.” I think it is great advice. In any situation between a teacher and a child, the truth of any situation–which includes facts and perceptions–is somewhere in the middle.
As a society progresses and advances, people can easily fall into the trap of equating “old” with out of date, useless, and irrelevant. This includes technology, business, education, medicine, appliances, and even ideas. Some ideas, however, stand the test of time, and are as relevant today, maybe even more so, as they were circa 450 BC.
I know I’m in the “older” crowd because I am still shocked to hear what comes out of the mouth of even some of the youngest children today. Access to the internet has allowed everyone the opportunity to be exposed to words, images, and ideas at a different level than even 5 years ago. In addition, the widespread ownership and use of smartphones coupled with the anonymity of Apps has made it easy for young people to pass on information about others that is harmful. We used to call it gossip. They have their own words for it.
