Way to Go

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Foreward................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ixIntroduction............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................xiAcknowledgements........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................xvChapter One Is there anything out there that can help us to communicate more effectively with parents?.................................................................................................................................................................................................1Chapter Two The Discovery of the Positive Communication Theory.........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................7Chapter Three Who are we? Two very different schools yield very similar results........................................................................................................................................................................................................................13Chapter Four The Proof that Positive Communication Works!..............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................17Chapter Five TELL "Tell the Teacher More Day"..........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................23Chapter Six TELL Engage in the best avenue of communication for each family............................................................................................................................................................................................................................31Chapter Seven TELL Listen without defense to the parent. Confrontation can lead to fear for both teachers and parents..................................................................................................................................................................................39Chapter Eight TELL Lead as the professional! In the educational arena, the teacher is the professional. If schools were hospitals, teachers would be the doctors. They would be diagnosing, treating, adjusting, monitoring progress, etc. Indeed, teachers are the professionals......................47Chapter Nine Conclusions...............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................57References:.............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................61

Chapter One

Nothing concerns me more as a school administrator or causes me more angst as the fear of unhappy parents. Very early in my career as an early childhood administrator, I vividly remember a mommy physically backing me up to the wall with her jabbing words and bullying attitude. It seemed there had to be more going on than her discontent with a teacher who "wasn't loving enough" toward her child. I clearly remember her saying to me while I was literally up against the wall in my office "Don't you want to hit me?" That's when I knew there was something clearly wrong with this picture. I had to figure out how not to get into this situation or one like it ever again. I was defenseless and appeared weak by not responding to her threats and taunting. She calmed down when I wouldn't respond. So, first thing I learned – diffuse anger by listening and staying calm.

My deeper concern was how to prevent a parent from getting this angry in the first place. In my attempt to get to the root of the problem and to please this mommy, I talked with the daddy. He assured me that when it comes to her child she easily gets upset. What a shock to find out he was a lawyer! Was she taunting me to get a lawsuit?

My goodness, this situation was becoming even more difficult to resolve by the moment. There had to be a way to prevent this from happening again. Years went by as together the teachers and I took workshops, read books, collaborated about our concerns with whom we termed "difficult parents." Most of us if not all of us were also parents as well as educators. We knew how important a child's welfare and educational experience is to the parent. Steven A. Kaatz (DeBruyn, 1999) writes "A special danger in Lutheran schools is that some parents expect perfect children in perfect rows behaving perfectly. There may be an honest disconnect between what the parent expects of school personnel and what the school personnel expects of themselves. What the parent really wants is an educator who has a personal touch and who is 'authentic.'" Jane Henderson (DeBruyn, 1986) writes in her research that "for the truly unreasonable parent, there is no easy answer. It is helpful to remember that what might be perceived as unreasonableness, may actually be fear and lack of trust in school people, or in institutions in general. Non-defensiveness and calm on your part can go a long way in calming that parent down."

Being a private school, pleasing parents is compounded because we know parents have a choice as to where they place their child for a formal education. Years came and went. We employed various strategies to help with difficult parents and attempts to be proactive. We held parent conferences and parent orientations to discuss the importance of going to the teacher at the first sign of concern to help keep the lines of communication open.

We drafted policies and followed procedures within our policy handbooks and parent agreements that had to be signed by all parents. We still had occasional issues and were always looking for another strategy to help us become more proactive and confident in dealing with our parents – a strategy we could all use consistently and depend upon for communicating with parents.

As a faculty and staff we determined that should a parent come to us with a concern or questions regarding another teacher and their child, we would listen to the parental concern but always redirect the parent back to the teacher in question. (A biblical truth for those of you in Christian schools - Matthew 18.) Going to the teacher directly involved was also the most efficient way to retrieve "eye witness" information concerning the topic and situation. Sometimes the parent would follow the advice and other times would not, whether out of fear of being thought to be too trivial or confrontational or that retribution would be taken out on their child. As faculty, staff and administrators, we would go to that specific teacher and provide an "fyi" so that he or she would be informed that something was becoming a problem. In this way, he or she would be prepared to deal with the parental concern appropriately without being caught off guard. When a faculty and staff trust one another this scenario works well. If on the other hand, there is distrust or when the faculty and staff members are new to this process, it can be a complication for implementing this strategy.

Parents were learning to follow the policy and procedures and when they didn't, they were reminded to do so. We emphasized the strategy to new school families and how important it was to partner effectively to achieve good communication between the home and the school. So, the strategy seemed to be working well and something was finally in place to deal with difficult parents. We determined this to be the best avenue so far. We decided to let it work for us.

One particular situation still reminds me of how passionate a parent can become over the education of their child. Rather than being discontent with a situation within the classroom, this parent was very unhappy with the way the administration handled a situation with teachers. Two teachers were discovered to be having an inappropriate relationship. Both teachers were relieved of their teaching duties. Families were informed and students were counseled. Not to our surprise, not everyone agreed with our decision.

One parent in particular blew into my office and offered "How much will it take to keep (the teacher)?" It seemed only what mattered was this teacher teaching this child. After I restated the offer in my own words and then gently declined the offer, he became irate. He threatened a lawsuit and to take the situation to the highest authority. That he did. The offer was declined again. A letter from his attorney soon followed requesting any and all monetary and nonmonetary items that had been donated by the family to be returned. For obvious reasons, that could not happen.

When the parent had no legal recourse, parking lot conversations began to spring up and a campaign to pit the administration against the parents to get the teachers back developed. Here we go again- that urging desire for a proactive strategy to handle the difficult parents!

I will share two more scenarios concerning situations with parents to help you realize that you are not alone with these types of concerns and in a search for a proactive strategy that works to prevent them from occurring, or at least to help to keep a handle on things if the situation tends to get out of control. Each year for three consecutive years, the parent ends up "telling off" the teacher in person, on the phone, or via email, because the parent feels that the child is being held responsible for something he did not do or that he is being misunderstood, or that classroom issues are not being handled correctly. It seems that the child's perspective is the correct one and the one that needs attention. Through this particular ongoing scenario, we learned that if a parent's issue isn't resolved the first time, it only accumulates and will get worse as time goes by.

I can still remember the many one on one conversations I had with the three teachers involved with this parent. We did our professional best to stand our ground and help this parent understand the truth of the whole situation rather than to depend on just the child's point of view.

New teacher, seasoned teacher, it didn't matter. Staying calm and listening was the only option. Eventually, it paid off when, at the teacher's invitation, the parent saw with their own eyes the child's behavior. Again, how could this have been prevented in the first place? (Actual emails will be shared with you later under strategies so that you can glean best practices and hopefully be on your game should this type of situation arise for you.)

One last example involves the gossiping parent. When your school is a school of choice, word of mouth either sells or ruins a school's reputation and that always affects enrollment. It happened that a student made an inappropriate comment. Another child made the good choice of reporting it to the teacher. The teacher properly reported the incident to the parents and disciplined the student involved. While the disciplinary situation was well under control by the teacher, another parent took it upon herself to contact other parents and inform them of her personal take on the matter, even to the point of sharing her opinion with a new parent to the system who felt it all to be unsolicited and very disconcerting. The gossip? It went on for weeks. What can we do to be proactive in communication with difficult parents?

From the teacher and administrator's perspective, the fear of having to confront a parent due to the lack of progress, less than acceptable behavior or otherwise gets in the way of good communication.

One of our kindergarten teachers shared with me that she was so concerned about a parent's attitude toward her that she couldn't focus clearly and the concern was "sucking the joy" out of her teaching the children! This comment came from a confident teacher that has been teaching for over fifteen years! So, both teachers and parents have much to learn about communicating for a win-win situation. It just shouldn't have to be this hard.

Chapter Two

As faculty, staff and administrators, we are advocating and practicing that when we get "backed to the wall, we will remain calm and not become defensive." (You already know where that came from.) It never fails that when one of us becomes defensive, the parent interprets it as not listening or not caring. While I think we are better off than in years past, miscommunication still happens and we keep searching for strategies to help us become better at our communication skills.

Two summers ago, while reading my educational journals, I came across an interesting article written by Richard W. Schumacher, Jr., a professor at Concordia University, Ann Arbor, Michigan. It was entitled "Bridging the Communication Gap: The Value of Intentional Positive Teacher-Initiated Communication." Having been an educator and an administrator, he was seeking a process by which to ease the tensions of both parents and teachers to find a common ground on which to communicate comfortably. His theory suggests that a gap exists between parents and teachers and that they will communicate in one of two ways: individually or collaboratively.

Attempts at one sided communication result in a number of negative outcomes, not limited to:

Accusations against one another

Assumptions replacing facts in decision making

Avoidance of one another to reduce conflict

Defensiveness against what others might be saying

Gossip designed to gain a body of support against the other party

Lack of information, which leads to assumptions and inaccuracy

Lack of support –both real and perceived

Misinformation that becomes an almost uncorrectable truth

On the other hand, he postulates that collaborative communication between parents and teachers will produce positive outcomes:

Accurate information shared by both parents and teachers

Both parties gain confidence in the abilities of each other

Both parties make collaboration a priority

Rapport grows between parents and teachers, making communication easier and more effective

Mutual support between home and school is fostered.

Schumacher's theory places the responsibility for the collaboration upon the school. He writes that the school needs to initiate the communication and it must be positive. To interject some humor and understanding here, Schumacher writes "... parents already have an expectation that the school will contact them when their child is misbehaving or has fallen behind. In fact, that expectation is so strong that, for many parents, the appearance of the teacher's name on their caller ID is grounds for an immediate elevation of their heart rate."

Research Review of the Positive Communication Theory

Schumacher's literature review of the impact of parent involvement only added more credibility to what we as a school were experiencing. "Parent's overall evaluations of the teacher, their sense of comfort with the school, and their reported level of involvement was higher when they received frequent and effective communications" (Ames de Stefano, Watkins, and Sheldon, 1995). The same research also shows that the way teachers use communication tools is dependent upon their pre-conceived attitudes and beliefs. Freytag's research (2001) revealed that parents want to hear positive as well as negative news concerning their children. My mentor at Sam Houston State University in the late 1980's and author, Dr. Laverne Warner, found that "teachers should be encouraged to personalize their communications to parents in order to give it a friendlier and less rigid tone."

Research by Upham, Cheney, and Manning in 1998 revealed that both parents and teachers agree meeting in person to discuss issues one-on-one in an in-depth manner is preferable to a phone call or sending a note. Both groups also agreed that although it was difficult to fit in meetings at the start of school year, it was best to do so. Teachers preferred a large group meeting, while parents favored one-on-one meetings where their child's unique needs could be discussed privately. Witmer (2005) stated that starting the school year out with strong lines of communication will pay dividends for the student and the school community. Barrera and Warner (2006) determined that schools must also work to be intentional in the development of a method to address the unique needs of each of their families.

The Birth of Parents Day

Schumacher developed this vehicle out of a conversation with another educator. Fifteen minute increments were assigned for teachers to meet with parents. Teachers listened and parents talked. Besides learning about the students, best communication methods to follow between parents and teachers were determined. Schumacher discussed the sales job necessary to get both teachers and parents on board for this day. His surveys of parents afterward as to the success of the day bore out the positive impact.

Praise God! We found it!

It is here that I decided to give this a try. I called Mr. Schumacher and asked permission to replicate the idea as well as the follow up survey. I humorously said that if this works we need to write a book about it to help everyone out there that needs a method to develop positive communication between school and home! I shared Schumacher's article with the faculty and developed a one page form for parents to complete and bring with them to the fifteen minute appointments for which they signed up. The form we used is included in Chapter Five, Tell the Teacher More Day.

Chapter Three

As I write this, it is the end of the first semester and our school has completed "Tell the Teacher More Day" for the second year in a row. I am convinced more than ever this method works. In this chapter, I hope to share with you the various demographics of our two schools, along with the specific research we developed. With online surveys it makes participation by school families simple and fast. The results can be tallied and analyzed quickly. You will want to know if your families agree that the time was well spent and led to satisfaction in terms of positive communication.

I also want to share with you some actual emails exchanged between parents and educators as the year progressed to demonstrate the open communication that developed from "Tell the Teacher More Day." I would not want you to think that everything is perfect- we certainly experienced our share of negative communication. Both parents and teachers work to be clear and to work toward understanding. We believe that as the educators we are indeed the professionals. It is up to us to follow up to be certain the issues are dealt with in a positive, caring manner. Contrary to what some of us might want to believe, things don't go away if we ignore them!

Finally, I will share with you the comments from our teachers. These comments will include those concerning "Tell the Teacher More Day" as well as the impact that the day had on communication throughout the year. Perhaps the most difficult and hardest people to convince about trying something new, is a group of experienced educators. Nothing proves a point like real data!

Who are We?

So what are the schools like and how do you know if the positive communication concept will work in your school?

Schumacher's school was a K to 8 elementary school with 150 students and 100 family units. The school had a population of nine teachers in single grade, self contained classrooms, a full time aide in the kindergarten classroom with the kindergarten teacher, and one administrator. No changes to the levels of staffing occurred during the study. The study took place in the fall of 2006. St. Mathew Lutheran School is located in Westland, Michigan. Owned and operated by a Lutheran congregation, the school lies in a suburb west of Detroit.

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Excerpted from Way to Goby MARY BETH GAERTNER Copyright © 2011 by Mary Beth Gaertner. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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