Evidence/Artifact #1: Weekly Newsletter
Keeping in contact with families regularly is an important part of being a teacher. Since families are an integral part of the support system for students in their educational journey I feel it is important to keep families up to date on what is happening in the classroom and what the students are learning. I know from experience with my own children that when I ask them what they learned in school today, especially at the intermediate grades, the usual response is “nothing”. To this end I wanted created a weekly newsletter for my classroom. My mentor teacher thought this was a great idea and gave me the green light to move forward.
My initial idea was to distribute the newsletter via email, but the classroom teacher informed me that despite the best efforts of the school half of the emails for the class did not work. I decided to go the paper copy route and distribute an class newsletter on Friday that would summarize what the learning for the week was and what could be expected coming up. I included my contact information for any questions or feedback and I did receive responses from a few families thanking me for the information.
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What I learned and Why is it important
Building relationships with parents/guardians is important in education as they are part of the recipe of education. From my experience the only time there is communication between the school and home is when there is an emergency or there is a problem. This does not foster a positive growth mindset in education. If there is regular communication between families and the teachers in a informative and positive manner my hope is there will be a change in the mindset of this communication. It may take time to setup and execute initially, but the benefits on this transparency and communication can only be positive in the long term.
References
BC Teachers’ Council. (2019, June 19). Professional Standards for BC Educators. Retrieved from https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/education/kindergarten-to-grade-12/teach/teacher-regulation/standards-for-educators/edu_standards.pdf
Lawrence, Devon. (2019). Class News.
mrdevonlawrence.com 