Communicate with Your Child’s Teacher

Once you’ve identified some specific challenges and worked with your child to identify some potential solutions, you’re ready to help your child to communicate their needs to their teacher and other key adults at the school. Your goal is to find ways to amplify your child’s voice, either by advocating directly on behalf of your child or by supporting and encouraging your child’s efforts to advocate for themselves, to the extent that this is possible right now.

Here are the key points to keep in mind when you’re advocating with, or on behalf of, your child.

Recognize the benefits of starting a conversation with your child’s teacher—and continuing to build on that conversation over time. You have so much to gain by collaborating. Think about the breadth and depth of knowledge the two of you bring to the table: your child’s teacher is an expert when it comes to education and you’re an expert when it comes to your child.

Know when to make the call. Making contact with your child’s teacher is key, but that contact doesn’t necessarily have to happen on or before the first day of school. Teachers and school administrators are going to be dealing with a lot of last-minute changes to school policies and protocols as well as a flood of phone calls and emails from parents. It may take a little longer than usual to make contact this year. Of course, that shouldn’t stop you from attempting to make contact with your child’s teacher as soon as possible, particularly if your child is really struggling. That’s important information for any teacher to have. And if you’re not able to make contact in a timely manner with your child’s teacher (or you’re not satisfied with the responses you receive from that teacher), you might also consider reaching out to the school’s social worker, child-youth worker, guidance counsellor, or to the board’s mental health leader. They can also provide practical support to you and your child.

When you do make contact, aim to have a frank and honest conversation with the teacher about the challenges that everyone will be facing this year. You might want to acknowledge that you’re not expecting this to be your child’s best school year ever and to emphasize what matters most to you in this moment—your child’s health and wellbeing versus academics.

Do what you can to lighten the teacher’s load. Be prepared to bring some fresh ideas to the table. And don’t be afraid to ask for something new or different because everything is new and different right now.  A guiding question might be, “How can we make this situation work because we both know that the norm isn’t going to work for my child right now.”

Expect this to be an ongoing conversation. The situation that we are dealing with is complex and rapidly evolving. It’s not realistic to expect to be able to anticipate and troubleshoot every possible school-related issue ahead of time or during a single back-to-school phone call. What you want to do is to open the lines of communication so that you can continue to collaborate with the teacher over time.

Be prepared to work on this relationship. Assume the best of intentions on the part of the teacher, who is shouldering an extra-heavy workload right now. A little extra kindness will go a long way right now. It will be noticed and appreciated.

Have a plan for getting the relationship back on track if do you happen to hit a rough patch. Misunderstandings can and do happen, but you and the teacher can recover from that. The way to do this is to focus on your shared goal: making school a positive experience for your child.