calling every time

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Home : 2004 : January : 6

calling every time
By Chicago Teacher

How I contact parents depends on the individual parent and student. If I have a student who normally does very well but did poorly on a test, it isn't uncommon for me to contact the parents for 2 reasons: 1-because usually
the parents will call me or show up at some inopportune time to talk about it and will be more concerned than necessary if I don't, and 2-sometimes to low grade really affects the student.
When I contact parents [this advice is for if you HAVE to call, even if you don't want to] I say a few things: what the test covered, what the score was, how the student did on the work prior to

the test, possible reasons for the low score, and then any recommendations or advice I might have. This year my students are primarily overachieving oldest or only children, so the parents take low scores very hard. I try to help them put the score in perspective (unless of course it's a consistent thing and they should be worried about the report card grade!). I also let them know if there are any concepts that they can review or reinforce at home.
I haven't found that it is too time consuming to do this type of parent contact, and it saves me a lot of drama by heading off problems before the parents have a chance to get really worried.
Like I said, it depends on the kid and the situation, because I usually only do these calls if the score was way out-of-the-ordinary or not what I expected from that individual student.