Meet the Parent: Special Education Style

As a new teacher (Okay, and as a veteran teacher) meeting your students' parents can be scary.  It is almost akin to meeting the parents of your new love.   However, this does not have to be so stressful as long as you prepare yourself and start off with a positive relationship. Parents are the best advocates for their children and they love to be your advocate also (I say this as a teacher and as a parent of a child with an IEP).

Get to know your students

I know, how can you get to know them when they have not been in your room yet.  Guess what, as a SPED teacher we have a slight advantage to general ed teachers in this department.  Paperwork.  Who ever thought paper work could be a good thing?! In this case, it is great.  So grab a cup of coffee, sit down and take some time to read over IEPs, parent surveys, evaluation reports, reports cards, etc that are in the student's cummulative folder.   This information will help you have an early peek into the windows of your student.  

Get to know your parents

Again, how?  Look at the paperwork!  If parents have filled out school paperwork look to see if the parents have the same last name, is the student living with one parent, both parents, grandparents or someone else?  

Make the first communication POSITIVE

Try not to wait until open house to contact your parent's for the first time.  Call home and introduce yourself, send a postcard to your student saying "Can't wait to meet you at open house!", send a quick email.  Anything to let your student and their family know that you are happy to be working with them. 

Ignore the Negative Nancy

My first year at my new school I was warned about one parent and how she was so hard to work with.  I was a nervous wreck!!! However, I was positive and gave a friendly approach.  Guess what?! She became one of my biggest supporters. We were able to have open lines of communication and talk about the best way to approach her child's education without so much as a frown.  

Communication

Let the parents know how to contact you.  I have a business card that I give to parents when I first meet them and every year I have their child, that simply has my name, phone, and email. I had them printed on VistaPrint, but you could just print it one peice of paper or even a sticky note.  This way parents know exactly what they need to do if they need to contact me.  I have also started using Remind so that parents can text me, which for some is easier.  Remind keeps a log of conversations so I can just print it out if I need to.  I have also had parents who would only communicate via Facebook messenger.  I try to do what works best.  However, remember that you have to have the type of communication that works for you.   If you are not comfortable communicating via Facebook or Instagram then give the parent your accepted forms of communication and move on. 

I hope this helps you feel a bit more comfortable when it is time to meet the parents!  Do you have any other tips or ideas to help new (or seasoned) special education teachers?

Vista Print Goodies!!

I just got in my latest goodies from Vista Print. Some of the pictures are a bit fuzzy since I was using my phone to take the pictures.   I think my favorite is the Positive Postcards. I plan on mailing these home to share positive news with parents. I also love the sticky notes.  I hope that they make it easier for when I need to leave a note for things to be copied. (I will let you know after I give it a try and get feed back from the paras) Have you made anything fun lately on Vista Print?
I have PDF's of the behavior chart, positive postcard and hand washing sign so if you would like a copy just leave a comment with your email or send me an email at learningahoy@gmail.com.  ** Click here to get the behavior chart!!!**

Fabulous 4th Grade Froggies: Getting to know your students (& the parents too) ...

Lorraine over at Fabulous 4th Grade Froggies has a GREAT and adorable information sheet for parents to share information about their child. Go check it out!

Fabulous 4th Grade Froggies: Getting to know your students (& the parents too) ...: "As teachers, we get to know our students pretty quickly but we don't always get to know the parents right away. I use this questionnaire I c..."

Weekly Progress Report

I have been working a lot my forms and documents for school and wanted to share a weekly progress report(or two) that I have used in the past. Please feel free to use away! If you would like the word format, just let me know and I can email it to you.

Enjoy!

Weekly Progress Report


Here is a link to the other one! Click here.

Parent Involvement Linky Party!

Mrs. Bee is having a Linky Party about Parental Involvement. There are already so many great ideas!



Being a special education teacher, I do not have a homeroom, so my parent contact is a bit different.

Good Notes or Happy Grams: I send home good notes that I found on scholastic printables. I also just purchased some postcards from Vista Print yesterday to use as good notes. You can check out my post about them here.

Parent Contact Log: I have a binder where I keep information on all parent contact. I made a new contact log a few days ago that you can find here.

Weekly Progress Report: When I had a homeroom a few years ago, I sent home folders every Friday with papers from the week and a weekly progress report. This report included behavior and work habits for the week and had a place for comments. It also required a parents signature. Parents seem to like this so they could keep up to date on what was happening. I do not have a copy of this at home, but I have it on my school computer. If you would like a copy, send me an email and I will forward it to you. I will try to add it to this post tomorrow.

i-school: We have something called i-school in our district. Basically each teacher has a site linked to the main school website. The students must use a password and user id to access it. On this page I would include my homework, class room information, poems that we might be working on, important links for parents and lots of links for my students to use.

Remember to go check out Mrs. Bee's page and link up!!