Since generative AI is still a relatively new technology, when schools start using it, there can be internal debate and, sometimes, questions from parents.

Explaining AI use in schools to parents doesn’t have to be difficult, says Alana Winnick, Educational Technology Director at Pocantico Hills Central School District in New York and author of The Generative Age: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Education.

Winnick, a Tech & Learning Innovative Award Winner, shares some guiding questions and advice for approaching AI in the classroom that have worked in her experience, though she stresses that every educational setting is different and teachers and school leaders tend to already know what’s best in their classrooms and schools.

Decide Whether AI Use Needs To Be Addressed With Parents?

The first step in discussing AI use in schools with parents is deciding whether or not that discussion even needs to happen, Winnick says.

Winnick asks rhetorically if teachers generally tell parents about every time they use a different technology tool. Since the answer is no, her follow-up question is: “Would you tell parents that you were using a calculator? So then would you have to disclose that you're using AI?”

In some settings, educators may want to explain AI tools being used in the classroom to parents, but it’s not always necessary, especially since a school with good vetting procedures for tech tools will already be taking student safety and privacy into account when approving any tech tool.

Educate Students and Their Parents By Teaching AI Literacy

Winnick has not heard of any parents worried about AI use in her district, but if such concerns do come up, she says the key to answering questions that might arise is to thoroughly educate students about their interactions with AI.

“It's about educating the students on AI literacy, so that way, if the parent asks them, 'Why are you doing that?' or 'Why are you using that?' the child can very confidently and eloquently say, ‘Oh, this is a tool, I use to help me with my writing; let me show you. I put my writing and I get feedback,' and the child understands it because we educated them," she says. "Then hopefully, that child will alleviate any of those fears or concerns with their parents. So the answer to most questions all comes back to education and educating the students and the teachers, and the parents.”

Always Answer Questions That Arise

Sometimes educating a student on AI literacy isn’t enough, and parents have questions about the technology and how its being used with their children.

“If a parent does come to a teacher or to the principal or the district and expresses concern, as with anything else, whether it's technology or something else, it's always important to address parents concerns,” Winnick says.

In this case, she notes that one strategy might be to remind parents that they and their children are likely interacting with a form of AI already. “At home, a lot of kids have Siri or Alexa right, and they’ll ask Siri or Alexa questions, so what's the difference if they're in class?” Winnick says.

Remind Parents of The Power of AI As A Tutor

Of course, another way you can explain AI use at schools to parents is by explaining the potential power of the technology as a tutor.

“In a public school, we are unable to provide every child with a one-on-one tutor-- it’s not possible,” Winnick says. “But with AI at least they can get all their questions answered. The AI can provide more challenging questions, or if they don't understand, it can break it down, and start providing more support than any other teacher would ever be able to do on their own. And it's also taking the data from that chatbot and providing it to the teacher, so the teacher knows who was struggling, or not struggling.”

AI can also personalize answers it uses to connect with student interests. For instance, if a student likes baseball, the AI might be able to frame an explanation using an analogy to that sport, Winnick says.

Share AI Success

For Winnick, AI’s efficacy in the classroom isn’t hypothetical; she’s witnessed it help many students.

​​”It's transformational for my English as a new language students,” she says.

Winnick adds that while AI tools that work with middle and high school students are often the focus, she says AI can work wonders with younger students as well.

“As a former early childhood educator, I spent my last year in a kindergarten classroom; those kids have so many questions, and a teacher does not have infinite patience to deal with the thousand questions they are getting all the time, but AI does," she says. "So when that child is super curious, you don’t want to burst that creativity; you really want to enable that. With AI, they can ask as many questions as they want.”

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The events that took place in Oxford, Michigan, in early December 2021 were tragic and horrifying, much like all of the other school shootings that have taken place from Columbine to Oxford. The difference in the Oxford shooting is that the parents were arrested and held responsible for their child’s actions. 

How many times do we as teachers contact parents only to hear that it is our problem to handle? Now, let’s be clear, not every parent avoids school contact, and not every parent plays the blame game. But, some do and oftentimes those are the ones we need support from the most because often they are parents of children with either behavioral or academic challenges. 

How do we engage parents who long to be disengaged? Why should we care? Well, just like the administrators in Oxford, as educators we recognize that the parent plays a vital role in the overall success of the student, and without their support, the student has a very difficult road ahead. 

Sometimes it is hard as an administrator to engage these kinds of parents in any school activity but there are some strategies schools can employ to bring around disconnected parents. 

Call-out systems - Annoying for sure but these are effective in leaving messages on phones for parents to listen to and verifying that the message has been received. This is helpful in two ways: one, it ensures the communication took place; and two, it documents the communication.

Health programs for parents - Some districts are taking a unique approach to offering services in their buildings. This isn’t a new model, however, it is becoming a more popular one. Some districts have medical clinics, dental clinics, and counseling, all available at the school. Community schools -- as these are sometimes referred to -- invite the parents into the building for non-educational events in hopes that a relationship can be formed between school officials and parents. In July 2021, the Department of Education announced that $443 million of President Biden’s Build Back Better plan would invest in community schools and gave guidance on how to strategically use American Rescue Plan funds. This guidance was directly created from the NEA’s best practices and Community Schools Model.

Focus on equity by recognizing that parent engagement is actually an equity issue - Students who have less engaged parents have less support in school and may have less support at home. Parents may not realize the significance of their role in school or they may not feel comfortable participating in their child’s educational process. The Carnegie Foundation recently released a report on how to engage the disconnected parent. This resource is full of suggestions and research pointed to attending to the challenge of the disconnected parent. And during the recent #NYCSchools Tech Summit hosted by Tech & Learning, educators from around the country discussed how they’re building connections with families.

Every child deserves a parent excited about their educational journey, and as education professionals, we are tasked to figure out how to solve the challenge of a disconnected parent for each and every child we teach. No child chooses to have a parent who doesn’t care about their educational process, but we can choose to help these parents know the power of engagement! 

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Mini is good at her job, says Dr. Liesel Carlson, the School Improvement Data Integration Specialist for the Lansing School District in Michigan. 

Over a three-month period last school year, Mini sent more than 9,000 texts to parents, personally answering their questions about attendance-related topics, including preschool enrollment levels, upcoming board of ed meetings, days off, and more. 

More than 96 percent of the time, Mini could answer the questions on her own but when the question was more complex, say if a student was having trouble with a device or a parent had concerns about how their child was adjusting to remote learning, Mini would refer that question to a team of educators within the school district. 

“What she did for us was it gave us the opportunity to focus our valuable, limited human resources on those requests and questions that needed that intensive support,” Carlson says. “It’s so funny how we refer to her in a very personified way.” 

Mini‘s full name is Mini the Minutes Matter Chatbot. “She” was named by the Lansing School District but created by AllHere, a company that uses a chatbot or virtual advisor to fight chronic absenteeism by connecting families with resources and answers to questions 24/7. The chatbot’s text-based interventions are based on Dr. Peter Bergman’s research into how text messaging can increase student retention. 

Over the past few years, chatbots have become common in higher ed, helping students apply to college and for financial aid, among other functions. Now, AI-powered chatbots are being utilized more often in K-12. Proponents say the digital assistants can help districts utilize their human resources more efficiently and promote equity in the process. 

Chatbots and Equity 

AtlasRTX provides chatbots, or digital assistants, to colleges and K-12, and recently partnered with Instructure to provide chatbot support for users of the company’s popular Canvas LMS. 

Chatbots can increase access to school services in the nation’s more than 13,000 school districts, suggests AtlasRTX president Dr. Mike Bills. “Many of these districts, many of these schools, many of these neighborhoods, they simply don't have the human capital to support students,” he says. “And so a digital assistant can be there 24/7 365, and it costs about the same as one staff member each year.” 

By answering the easy and common questions students and their parents have in more than 100 languages, chatbots free up educators and administrators to focus on deeper questions. “We're not trying to replace humans,” Bills says. “There are just nowhere near enough humans in education. We are trying to be the assistant to those staff members and faculty so that they can focus on just those high-value tasks.”

The Lansing School District’s use of Mini provides an example of how chatbots can help schools promote equity, says Joanna Smith, founder and CEO of AllHere and a former middle school math teacher and director of engagement at a charter school in Boston. “It freed up hundreds of hours of teacher and school- and system-level leader time and resulted in Lansing reaching more families where they prefer to communicate, which is via text.” 

She adds, “We really envision this as serving as a personalized advisor for every single student in every single family that can respond to their questions in real-time and proactively nudge them throughout their journey in school.”

Chatbot Limitations  

It’s important to remember that all chatbots are not created equal and can’t do everything. 

“People use the term ‘chatbot' and they mean, everything from a live chat widget on a web page where you're literally just chatting with a human being to basic things that are just designed to deflect and then connect you to the right human, all the way to things that are science fiction, and that aren't even possible,” Bills says. 

Real-world chatbots are good at answering specific questions. For instance, you can ask AtlasRTX’s higher ed digital assistants questions such as whether you need to submit SAT scores to apply, or what your minimum GPA needs to be. You can also ask about the town and about student life and clubs. However, ask it what the meaning of life is and the answer you receive will likely be less satisfactory. 

Answers to the questions the chatbot can answer can often be found on a school or university website but not with ease. “Those answers are probably on 50 different pages that you'd have to mine through,” Bills says. 

Chatbot Advice for School Leaders  

If you’re looking to bring a chatbot to your school district, you may encounter resistance from staff who say the ideal solution is to have students face-to-face with teachers. “Frankly, I'd say that they're right,” Bills says. “But we can't let perfect be the enemy of good. If you focus on just that ideal scenario, you're going to have so many students who just can't be there in person. But if we use technology, we can improve the present state.” 

You also want to make sure you are working with an evidence-based platform and that the chatbot is AI-powered and not just a system that can respond with simple answers to simple prompts, Smith says. A robust AI-powered chatbot is able to parse human language and learn from previous conversations to improve accuracy. “A chatbot’s ability to handle multiple languages, to understand run-on questions, handle misspellings, and deal with emojis are all key indicators of a chatbot that is powered by AI,” she says. 

Carlson, from the Lansing School District, was not overly familiar with AI technology before her district started working with AllHere, but she says chatbots are more common in our lives than we realize -- think Siri and Alexa. 

“We now ask our phone to get us directions to a friend's house or the closest restaurant or whatever we're looking for, so we’re more and more able to use technology to serve human need, and really preserve human capital for the things that matter most,” she says. “In education we tend to just add more and more things to our staffs’ plates, but chatbots are a take-off strategy so that staff can focus on the things that are most important for humans to do.” 

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As students head back to school, fostering the new connections to families forged during the pandemic continues to be a priority for all school districts. 

“The big question that we’re asking ourselves is how can we bring back, how can we reconnect, how can we continue to build these connections that we have built over the past 18 months?” said Dr. Adam A. Phyall III, Director of Technology & Media Services for Newton County School System in Covington, Georgia, during the recent #NYCSchools Tech Summit. (Available free on demand here) 

Building capacity, forging partnerships, and maintaining transparency are all part of the answer. 

“We make sure that parents are part of everything we do at the DOE, from decision-making to partnering up,” said Dery Rodriguez, project manager strategic initiatives for NYC DOE Family and Community Empowerment office. “So from the district to the borough to the school, we’re charged with making sure that parents are our partners in this work.” 

Philippa Wraithmell, Head of Digital Technology and Innovation at Cranleigh School in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates, and Sandra Paul, Director of IT/Operations for Township of Union Public Schools in New Jersey, also participated in the discussion.

How are you building capacity and systems for your students? 

At Cranleigh, Wraithmell is dealing with students from 74 different nationalities and in many cases, parents are speaking their native languages at home, not English, so being connected is crucial. “Technology has allowed us to use platforms that can be fully translated for them, just at the touch of a button,” Wraithmell said, which is helpful when sending vital communications to make sure there are fewer misunderstandings. The school has also offered opportunities for parents to book one-on-one sessions on a daily basis. 

Technology is a key to communicating with parents, and the NYC DOE has had to completely change family engagement practices, Rodriguez said. Parent coordinators have been partnered with the digital literacy team to level up technology skills by bringing in experts from companies such as Google, Microsoft, Talking Points, and Zoom to learn how to use new technology. “That was a game changer for us, using technology to make sure that language wasn’t a barrier,” she said. Continuing to build trust with their communities is a focus, as is meeting parents where they’re at and ensuring educators are ready to work with parents.

In response to New Jersey’s  The Road Back guidance, the Township of Union Public Schools created four collaborative committees composed of key stakeholders that were led by parents in the effort of getting back to in-person classes. “It was great having that community input for closing out the end of last year, from March through June,” Paul said. 

Rather than focusing on learning loss, the focus has been on learning opportunities. “The stuff that we had to teach our teachers and show our parents was definitely different than the core curriculum and content, so the learning was on a different trend than what we would’ve done if we were in school,” Paul said. They had to explain to parents how certain platforms operated, the differences in technology (for example, a chromebook vs. a laptop), and how to get internet access. 

How can we help to build the infrastructure to ensure access and keep families connected? 

The first thing educators need to do is change the mindset that technology is impossible to implement, said Rodriguez. “Stop making those assumptions and provide opportunities to learn,” she said. New York City saw parental engagement “skyrocket” through online opportunities, and has created a parent university that offers courses on edtech tools, social-emotional learning, and more.

In the U.A.B, many parents didn’t have technology while growing up and are just now understanding that it can be used for learning. “Parents have been at home with their children, watching them use that technology for learning, and they’re finally seeing that connection, and now are much more engaged in wanting to be part of that,” Wraithmell said. Her team offered “Tech Tuesdays,” during which they would provide videos and lessons about various aspects of school for parents. The flexibility of recorded videos allowed parents to upskill themselves at times most convenient for them. 

Parents are also seeing that accessibility is providing equal learning opportunities for all students. “Access needs to be a non-negotiable part of life for everyone now,” she said. 

Sometimes we forget that staff are also parents, and they have the very same issues as all parents, said Phyall. For example, some teachers in his district had to park next to schools in order to get internet access to teach. “We have to take care of the people we employ in our school systems, but sometimes I think we forget about that in our conversations about parents,” he said. 

How are you empowering your parents in regard to technology? 

Empowerment is critical. “Not all parents had good experiences with school, so if they have that barrier up, we have to find ways to tear it down and bridge that relationship,” Phyall said. 

The Township of Union Public Schools is focused on continuing to develop virtual workshops for parents, and has put in place supports such as QR codes that parents can scan to help kids log into their virtual desktops. As the state of New Jersey is providing free lunch for every student this year, the district has made the information available through several digital methods, including on social media, its website, via email, through various apps, the parent portal, etc. “The important thing is making sure everyone knows that it takes all of us to be there for the students of our community,” Paul said.

Trying to find free resources that parent coordinators can learn from and use continues to be a focus in New York City, as is creating real partnerships. “We don’t want just that one-time opportunity,” Rodriguez said. “How do we create that opportunity, that pathway or pipeline, for parents to be our partners in this work, and also send that message this partnership matters, and that parents’ skills are just as valuable as any staff member’s in the building.”

How do we build trust and re-engage with parents and the community? 

The NYC DOE is focusing on three things with parents to build community and trust: 

• What does a welcoming environment look like and how do they provide that for families? 
• How to honor families 
• How to connect families with resources, the classroom and teachers, and other administrative pieces. 

“One thing I’ve learned is that you have to earn the right to be heard,” Rodriguez said. “We have to earn that right with our parents and understand that they come with a lot of their own traumas and challenges.”

Transparency and open communication continue to be priorities in building trust with families. “If parents ask about something, tell them what it was, how we did it and why we did it so that they know they’re being listened to,” Wraithmell said. “There’s nothing more frustrating than asking about something and not knowing if someone has done anything about it.” She suggests that educators remind parents that sometimes a situation can’t be resolved overnight, but you can lay out your process to reassure them it’s being addressed. 

And of course, honesty is still always a good policy. “No one likes being lied to or feeling that way,” she said. “That can create a toxic relationship between parents and schools, if they feel as if they’re asking for something and we’re not delivering anything back.”

When facing shortages with devices and other tech issues, Paul has invited vendors to do town meeting-style virtual events to talk to parents to provide honest, expert answers. “Sometimes I tell parents, ‘I don’t know the answer to your question but I will try to find out,’” she said. “But having a representative there, actually with the township and community to understand what they’re going through, helps a lot.”

How do we stay connected to our families? 

Making sure access continues to be part of the solution is important, said Phyall. In Newton, his team creates videos, sends messages through multiple platforms including local newspapers, and even posts information through houses of worship or in apartment complexes. 

“It’s really understanding and assessing your community about what is the best way that parents want to receive communication,” Rodriguez said. Asking directly how they want information is simple and effective. Home visits with every family can also be effective in building relationships.

In the U.K. during the pandemic, some districts used bus drivers to help deliver homework and other important information. “A lot of our efforts were concentrated around just really letting parents know that we’re there,” Wraithmell said. “Whatever is their best way to contact us, be it through email or Twitter, they’re able to connect with us and get support and help.”

What is one big takeaway for educators regarding connecting with parents and families? 

“Refine what you do this year and make it consistent so you can get students to thrive and strive without changing it all the time,” Wraithmell said. “Students and parents will know, ‘This is where work goes, this is how I can communicate,’ and you’re taking away a level of stress that doesn’t need to be added.” 

“This year has shown us that we’re still able to be creative in a time when it’s challenging and tough and scary,” Rodriguez said. “We have so many beautiful websites and have seen so many educators embrace technology to express themselves and communicate. Just continue to be you.”

“Don’t let parent communication fall through the cracks,” Paul said. “We have so many ways to connect with our community now, so the big thing is to make sure we don’t lose what we have built.”

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With little to no time to prepare for the transition from the physical classroom to the virtual one, educators did the best they could this spring to adapt and provide instruction for students finishing out the school year. And while terms such as “remote learning” and “distance learning” became more prominent in our already expansive educational lexicon, the truth is, many schools across the world were doing what I call “educational triage” to reach their learners. 

On the other side of that triage comes home life. Parents also have been thrust into this with no warning, and many still struggle to balance helping their kids learn and navigating their own obligations and responsibilities. Districts have been connecting with parents for years via websites, but those platforms were largely used to promote events and post board meeting notes. Now, there is much more scrutiny as parents look for support to help with the transition to learning at home.

Districts have deployed these five strategies to ways to support parents during remote learning. 

1. Consistent Communication 

While the occasional general email blast is still valuable, districts need to step up their game when it comes to communicating schedules, platforms, and expectations for students and families. 

In the quick transition to remote learning, many district leaders were caught between a rock and hard place when it came to communication platforms; although many had official ones, some teachers were comfortable with other tools (such as Remind, Bloomz, SeeSaw, etc). Trying to decide between platforms could bring unwanted stress on either the teacher (who would be forced to learn and use the district platform) or on the parents (who could have to navigate multiple platforms for multiple kids), so many districts just got by with whatever method worked.

One of the better approaches I’ve seen is when a district leader promotes a single platform of communication and provides training and support for teachers on that preferred system. They encourage teachers to make the shift without requiring it, which is a softer way to make the transition. 

Social media -- be it Twitter blasts, YouTube channels, or Facebook Live -- have become important secondary methods of providing the same information that is on a district website or email, but in a more digestible form. Interconnecting all of these platforms ensures that the same message is being sent through multiple online platforms, where parents are sure to see.

2. Providing Tutorials and Cheat Sheets 

With the proliferation of digital tools that flooded into homes overnight, many parents felt as if they were being forced to drink from a virtual fire hose. Curriculum-based websites or Learning Management Systems they might have heard their child reference beforehand suddenly became the mainstream interface for learning within the home. 

While some students are adept with these resources, many parents lack the basic awareness of how these are to be used. Teachers are great at giving verbal instructions and just-in-time feedback while in a physical classroom, but providing written or video instructions for students is a new approach for many. Mom and/or dad having to sift through emails for clues as their child tries to decipher what the teacher is asking for can be a stress multiplier. 

Seeing a need for better and more consistent instruction, many districts have quickly spun up websites for distance learning that include simple step-by-step explanations and short tutorial videos on how to access the necessary learning platforms, and even provide expectations around usage. Additional one-page “cheat sheets” can offer easily referenced extra support and respite for parents from the deluge of information infiltrating their home. 

3. Host a Parent Academy 

Parent academies or boot camps are not a new invention in education. Schools have long hosted various events aimed at building a common support structure for students between home and the classroom. When my former district went 1:1 with iPads, we developed an online “Digital Parenting 101” course for parents to take on their own time to educate them on the tools and create awareness of the benefits.

Now that meetings in physical spaces for a “parent night” are currently out of the question, developing such online academies are increasingly more valuable. For example, an academy around strategies for using mandatory edtech tools can help educate parents and ease any confusion caused by the increase of new platforms, websites, apps, and systems at home. 

4. Virtual Announcements 

School administrators have quickly embraced the power of video to get out messages. 

Free and easy-to-use platforms such as YouTube or Facebook Live can provide a quick method for recording and producing videos to put out to the community without a lot of technical logistics to navigate. Self-recorded videos can be embedded in an email or posted on a website, and can include a “joke of the week” or another fun challenge to help support both the mental and emotional health of families. 

Combining these announcements with the communication platforms mentioned in the first strategy can help support parents through multiple modalities.

5. Helping with At-Home Learning 

Most parents are not certified educators. Even those who are educators, know that there are struggles when teaching their own kids. When we shifted to remote learning, some schools went a synchronous approach (live sessions) while others went with an asynchronous approach (prerecorded plans, activities, and instructions). Both of these approaches put pressure on the parents, especially in the case of an asynchronous learning environment. 

In these environments, the students are given their work expectations for the week, and these are also sent to families via an email or LMS (Learning Management System). Parents need a guide or a cheat sheet to follow for the moments when their students are working independently. We don’t intrinsically know how much a student should be struggling and how much we should be helping. 

The following resources can help parents with learning at home:

• The Work-From-Home Parent’s Guide to At-Home Learning During COVID-19 
• Parents Guide to Distance Learning 
• Parents Guide to Online Learning
• How Parents Can Help Kids Learn From Home  
• A Parent’s Guide for Teaching at Home 

The future of what school will look like in the fall is still uncertain. This summer, schools will be planning, preparing, and training staff on strategies to support parents and students regardless of what learning looks like in the future. By thoughtfully deploying some of the strategies above and refining communication platforms, everyone involved will be more equipped to navigate this “new normal” in education going forward. 

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Tech & Learning talks with Diane Doersch and Kali Alford of Digital Promise about remote learning and digital equity.  

Diane W. Doersch is technical project director at Verizon Innovative Learning Schools and Digital Promise. 

Kali Alford is associate director of professional learning, Verizon Innovative Learning Schools and Digital Promise.

Equity now is an active consideration for educators immersed in remote learning. Thanks to COVID-19, educators should not assume that all students face comparable challenges in terms of being prepared for the school day. The unique challenges and responsibilities that students face at home need to be considered when designing learning activities, assessing mastery, and in the way learning support is made available. 

Below is the full conversation

Key Takeaways

An opportunity to re-engage. Alford talked about how schools have had to be creative to get parents to the building--PTA meetings, STEM nights, pancakes with pop, muffins with mom, etc.--and now you have parents reaching out to schools because they want to learn how to support their students in this new remote learning environment. One suggestion how to support that is having Title I and family engagement specialists pull together resources and programming for parents. “They’re eventually going to run out of things to watch on Netflix, so it’d be great to have a talk from one of those specialists about the district educational resources that are available to them that maybe they didn’t even know about,” said Alford. 

Watch with kids: Doersch suggested that the parents of younger children accompany their children in face-to-face opportunities, such as video conferences. Families also should be aware that educators and classmates may see what’s going to be in the background of a student’s broadcast area, and even if it’s well-intended, teachers should not be sharing pictures or videos of kids within a video conference without permission. 

Classroom experience. Alford also suggested that this is also a good opportunity for teachers to impart some of the strategies that they’ve learned over the years in the classroom. “For example, how helpful would it be for a parent to learn how proximity could help you with multiple students at the dinner table?” Alford said. “Or the different linguistic approaches you can take: ‘I wonder if ….’ or ‘Why might ….’ Those kind of sentence stems that can be really helpful to get those student minds going.” Parents are finding that they’re not well-equipped to take on a lot of subjects as an instructor at home. So there are little pieces and nuggets of wisdom that teachers can impart easily. 

Defusing frustration. Alford noted that both parents and teachers need to remember that there’s often a high level of frustration as there are challenging concepts students are still trying to learn, which is hard without on-site teacher support. Providing emotional support is often as critical as imparting knowledge. 

*More from T&L: Remote Learning and Digital Equity: Challenges and OpportunitiesRemote Learning and Digital Equity: Best Practices

I have spent more than 21 years in education. I have two different degrees in the field. I’m a former 1st and 5th grade teacher. 

All of this went out the window a few weeks ago when I was thrown into the world of home-schooling my three girls. Despite my experience, the transition from parent to at-home teacher has not been as easy as it might seem. 

I’ve seen multiple memes and posts about the struggles of parents during the uncertain time of COVID-19. We are all dealing with stress, our own work, where to find toilet paper, and many other unexpected challenges in our households. This can make for a chaotic environment that isn’t exactly conducive to high-quality learning. Most people do not have degrees in education or the time to debate pedagogical philosophies. They are just trying to get through the day with some sanity and hope that their kid learns something. 

I also know that every household is different. You might be a single parent with multiple kids. You might have a single child who has no one to collaborate or play with. You might be sharing your home or apartment with extended family and the opportunities or space for “quiet time” don’t really exist. 

This guide is not going to solve all your problems, but my hope is that you will pick up one or two tips to make your new daily role as teacher go a little more smoothly. 

Assigning roles

Understanding that every household is different and may not have two parents, those that do should assign roles. When my wife and I started out a few weeks ago, we tried to be “co-teachers.” We sat together for a couple of hours looking through the kids’ work, and after a week of struggle, reached a conclusion: We couldn’t both be lead teachers. 

My wife decided to take the lead in terms of managing the kids and keeping them on task, while I became the role of IT support, instructional coach, 5th-grade math tutor, and, in cases of behavioral problems, the counselor. It’s helped both us and our kids to have a consistent “point person” to go to for specific issues, particularly since I’m working remotely throughout the day and can’t give them my full attention.

With these shifts in roles, the kids needed to play a part, too. With mom and dad either teaching or working, some of the household chores and cooking started to fall to them. Our kids are elementary aged (grades 1, 2, and 5), so cooking for the house doesn’t come intuitively. Those of you with older kids might already have them helping with certain chores throughout the day.

Having these roles and a shared workload is one of the first steps to reducing the stress and pressure you might have on yourself. Also, if your child is falling behind, don’t be afraid to hold an occasional parent-teacher conference with yourself from time to time.

What type of learning is happening in your school?

School leaders across the country have been scrambling to provide resources and content to their students remotely. Their strategies for deploying resources might be having students connect with their teachers via video in a synchronous method or assigning a series of tasks to have students complete in a more asynchronous approach. In many situations, it is a mix of both synchronous and asynchronous teaching and learning. 

Synchronous Approach

Some schools are opting to maintain some semblance of a schedule by providing remote teaching via video conference. Synchronous learning is meant to mimic the actual classroom experience and can provide some relief for the parent-turned-teacher. 

In this scenario, the teacher leads the class in both instruction and expectations. They assign work, set deadlines, and provide assistance or clarify questions. Parents take on a more familiar role of assisting with homework and projects. 

This approach offers certain advantages:

• Good for virtual support/office hours for the student 
• Keeps students on a consistent schedule 
• Helps continue the “classroom community” atmosphere, albeit virtually 
• Provides just-in-time support and feedback 
• Takes pressure off of the parents to be the “lead teacher” at home 

The disadvantages of this approach include: 

• Reliant on good internet access 
• Video conference tools can be intimidating 
• Assumes all students have access to a device with a camera
• Can result in increased screen time  

Schools that use the synchronous approach often have provided devices for students and helped with internet access for those families in need. As a parent, your role is to make sure your child logs on and is able to capture learning as it happens in real-time. 

Some schools that use synchronous methods do provide recordings of presentations for families who might have access issues, which then shifts this to more of an asynchronous method of remote learning.

Asynchronous Approach

This approach seems to be the one used by a majority of schools across the country. The method of asynchronous learning ranges widely, however, from teacher-led instructions via video to a packet of worksheets handed out every week. More pressure is placed on the parent to be the task-master and make sure that their kids are completing their work every week. 

This method offers certain advantages:

• Flexible time to process and complete assignments 
• Allows time for reflection 
• Doesn’t require high bandwidth or access
• Students set their own pace  

The disadvantages of this approach include: 

• Losing the sense of schedule and community that comes from being in a physical classroom 
• Feedback and troubleshooting are not happening in real-time over video, which could lead to delays in students completing their work 
• Parents are forced to put on their “teacher hats” and understand what their children are learning to help them through the teaching process 

Regardless of which approach your child’s school uses, the following tips can help. 

Create a cheat sheet of websites and logins 

As our kids started receiving their first week’s assignments, we noticed much of it involved interacting with various websites and apps. Tools such as Seesaw that we had experienced from a teacher/parent side now looked different as we’ve never seen the student interface. Some websites had generic school logins while others involved our kids’ own usernames and passwords. Needless to say, it was a lot to manage. 

Luckily for us, one of our daughters’ teachers sent home a single page cheat sheet that contained all the usernames and websites our child would need to access. We immediately printed and placed it in her school work folder. 

Some schools utilize software that creates a log-in portal for students to access all their approved tools with a single-sign-on (SSO). 

Having a cheat sheet or bookmarking a student portal can remove the stress and effort of trying to search through hundreds of emails for the one from a teacher that might have the login. 

Schedule

Kids do well with schedules. The challenge is coming up with a learning schedule that also provides some flexibility for teachable moments and any other work-related issues that might pop-up for mom and dad. As I’m writing this, I’ve been taking pauses helping my 2nd grader with her science project and my 5th grader with her Civil War studies. We all need to have some flexibility during these times.

That said, creating a schedule as a framework for the day can help keep things moving forward and provide some sense of normalcy in your household when it comes to learning. No matter their ages, give your kids some ownership over the schedule you create as a family. 

Some items to consider: 

Try to avoid long stretches of academic time. Make sure that academic work time does not exceed three continuous hours. If possible, divide the day into “morning” and “afternoon” periods. This will help your kids by breaking up the learning into chunks and smaller steps that they can accomplish in a single sitting. 

Be flexible. If you are in an asynchronous learning environment, take advantage of the flexibility. Your child’s school may have had 90 minutes of math every morning, but you can tweak that and have your child do a majority of their math work in one or two days if they are motivated. Certain subjects (such as reading and writing) should be done every day, but other subjects can be addressed on a single weekday if you feel as if they have momentum in that particular area.

Monday-Friday weeks are “old school.” The work world may still rely on the Monday through Friday work week, but school doesn’t have to follow suit unless you have synchronous classes that your child has to attend at certain times. After the first week of remote learning in our household, my wife and I made the executive decision to take off Wednesdays. While it condensed the work into two-day chunks, it allowed for all of us in the family to take a breath and explore more creative pursuits. As long as the teacher allows it, the kids have some work spill into Saturday. 

Build in time for creativity, fun, and “alone time.” As you build the framework of your family schedule, be sure to include time for more than just the academic day. Having time to play and be creative is good for every human, young and old. Just as importantly, everyone needs time to reflect. After being confined to the house for a few weeks, the importance of alone time cannot be understated, both for the kids and the adults.

Physical movement and brain breaks. Even within the longer daily academic periods, be sure that your kids take small breaks. The average minutes of attention that a child can muster for a certain task is approximately the same as their age. In other words, if you have a 5-year old at home, expect them to be able to focus on one assignment or task for about 5 minutes. (For what it’s worth, the average adult can only focus on a task for 18 to 20 minutes.) Knowing this, have tools that encourage physical movement, such as GoNoodle.com, or strategies, such as impromptu dance parties, in your back pocket. If you notice your child’s motivation to do the work waning, get them up and moving to reinvigorate their brain. 

Focus and motivation

Creating a schedule, building in breaks, and having a cheat sheet are all great structures to put in place, but what happens when the actual teaching and learning begins? Kids of all ages struggle with focus and motivation on a daily basis. Now we’ve just taken away their education routine and started their summer vacation early, so getting excited about remote learning might not come naturally to most kids. 

If you find yourself in a constant struggle getting your child to complete their assignments, here are a few tips that I’ve curated from parents of kids of every age:

Create a task sheet for the week. Some schools are sending a weekly “choice sheet” or “task sheet.” If yours is not, you may want to spend some time with your child on Monday going through the items that they will have to accomplish each day. (While I’m a big fan of keeping everything digital, for our younger two children, we print these task sheets out on Monday morning and then put it in the front of their assignment folders.) For younger kids, meeting with them daily and outlining the things they will need to accomplish each day and providing them a checklist helps them not feel overwhelmed.  For older students, they may want to look at the week as a whole and then identify the harder projects and assignments to knock out sooner rather than later.

Break learning into small chunks. Even with identifying their daily and weekly goals, kids can struggle to stay on track. If they have some larger projects to work on that may take several hours, divide it into smaller chunks. Set timers for 20 or 30 minutes and have them focus on their activity for that time, and then give them 10 to 15 minutes to play, relax, go outside, etc. For younger kids, you might have to break it down into even smaller chunks of time. Your child’s teacher may have already done this for you, but you are the best judge of your child and their attention span. 

Have some other activities ready. If you have multiple children (as I do), it’s likely that their amount of work will vary greatly based on their age. When one completes their work for the day or week, have some other choices for them to fill in the time. For example, this is a good time to supplement with art or music, reteach with a math app, or have a supplemental worksheet. One other strategy to have in your back pocket is to have each of your kids choose a topic for an ongoing research report. Each of our kids has an animal studies project they are doing in Book Creator as research--when one finishes their work early, they are excited to look up more information on their animal, post pictures and facts, and create a fictional story with their animal as the main character. Their interests deeply drive their engagement and motivation.

Extrinsic rewards. Ideally each kid is motivated intrinsically to complete their work in a timely fashion without much harassment. However, we don’t live in an ideal world. The reality is kids will need more reasons to complete their learning assignments than mom or dad saying, “Because I said so!” Collaborate with your child on a list of things they would like for a reward. Try to avoid monetary rewards if possible. Some reward ideas for younger kids could be stickers, stamps, playing a game, a quick bike ride, solving a puzzle, or coloring/drawing in their favorite art book. For older kids, it could involve some extra time on a video game, time to chat with friends, eliminating one of their chores for the week, choosing a meal for the week, or earning points toward something they want to buy (new skateboard, a book, movie, game, etc). 

The “Bed Time Bonus” reward is another strategy that we use and might work well, especially with younger kids. Here’s how it works: Our kids’ normal bedtime is 8 pm (although this rarely happens, it’s what we strive for), however, if they can accomplish their daily goals without fighting with one another (or their parents), they get a bonus hour before they have to go to bed. As a family, we try and reward that bonus time by doing something together as a family like play a board game or binge-watching past seasons of Survivor. 

Identifying motivations and helping your child or children focus is a daily endeavor. Some days will go extremely well and others will not. While we try to avoid consequences, there are days where you might have to levy a punishment for not getting their work completed or for arguing with their home teacher (you). They might struggle and complain, but know that real learning can be difficult and some conflict can be a good thing. 

Remember, if you can, that a frustrated teacher/parent can make a hard situation even worse. No matter the reasons, be sure to give yourself some grace and have patience. You are not alone!

Asking for professional help

This is a confusing time for parents, students, and teachers. If you are having a hard time with your child’s learning, don’t be afraid to ask for help. You may not be aware of it, but your child’s teacher likely has some “just-in-time” strategies they deploy in the classroom when kids are struggling. Ask for tips or ideas when you see your child hitting a roadblock. 

As teachers scramble to put assignments on Google docs or an LMS and share those with their students, there might be some confusion with what has to be accomplished. The use of recorded video instructions or synchronous video chats can help clarify the learning objectives for students, but not all teachers or schools have access to this method to communicate what work needs to be done. Encourage your child to follow up with their teacher (remember the goal for autonomy) to clarify any instructions that might be confusing. 

Also remember that nearly everyone involved in this is new to this method of learning. A teacher may give your child a list of tasks that might involve logging into multiple websites to complete items. Even when your child says they submit some completed work, it might not be getting through to the teacher for any number of technical reasons. If you and/or your child are tracking their weekly work on a checklist, have them put the date/time when it was submitted. This way you have a record of when it was completed and submitted, and can share it with the teacher at the end of the week so they can see if any work is being lost along the way.

In addition to content clarifications and instructional tips, some students have accommodations for their learning via a 504 plan or Individualized Education Plan (IEP). When learning shifted suddenly from the classroom to the home, some of these accommodations might have been lost in the shuffle. Be sure to reach out to your school contact person (often a counselor) to see how you might get additional help and accommodations at home with your child’s learning. Our middle child has dyslexia and has struggled some since we started this remote learning adventure. However, we reached out to the school and almost immediately were given resources to help her with any learning challenges she might be having.

Setting goals

Having goals can help keep students on track and helps them feel a sense of accomplishment when they reflect on their work for the day or week. It also provides some measure of accountability with themselves to see if they can accomplish everything they set out to do. 

With older students who are a little more autonomous, you may want to think of your role as more of an academic counselor than a teacher. You’ll want to check in with them each morning to go over their goals for the day and follow-up at the end of the day to see if they completed everything they had targeted.

A big overall goal for any student is to increase their autonomy when it comes to completing their work. Many families don’t have the ability for both parents to help and assist with learning every step of the way. Encouraging your child to be more independent and getting their work done, even with small tasks, helps to build their confidence and takes pressure off of you as a teacher.

Finally, have some form of reflection built into the remote school day that helps kids internalize what they learned. Know that learning happens in many different forms, and it’s not just about covering whatever content has been assigned. Take advantage of teachable moments such as looking up the type of bug discovered on a walk or the best way to make good pizza crust. If your child is interested in a topic even after they have finished an assignment, give them some time to research, write, draw, read, or record their thinking as an extension. 

Learning is as much about the process as it is about the product. And right now we all have quite a bit to process to help our kids from falling behind and preparing them for what every challenge is thrown their way next.

Good luck. You got this!

*More from T&L: Practical Advice for Remote Teachers and Families

In NYC, all parent-teacher conferences are now virtual. Here is the guidance they are giving to staff to help them make this work.

• Microsoft Teams using Bookings
• Google Guidance
• Using Microsoft Translator

cross posted at The Innovative Educator 

Lisa Nielsen (@InnovativeEdu) has worked as a public-school educator and administrator since 1997. She is a prolific writer best known for her award-winning blog, The Innovative Educator. Nielsen is the author of several booksand her writing has been featured in media outlets such as The New York Times,The Wall Street Journal, Tech&Learning, and T.H.E. Journal.   

Who: Jacqueline Duong, 1st–2nd Grade Teacher

Where: Hoover Elementary School, Oakland (CA) Unified School District

What: Engaging Parents in Student Learning

Research shows overwhelmingly that students make greater gains when what they’re learning in the classroom is reinforced at home. The challenge is finding an efficient and effective way to communicate with families, says Jackie Duong, who has taught students in grades K–2 for eight years. She’s been part of a pilot program for the nonprofit Family Engagement Lab’s FASTalk and is in her second year using the app with her students’ families. “It allows me to communicate easily with parents,” she says. “I can share announcements about report cards and other information, but I can also send home accessible tips that help raise parents’ level of awareness of literacy at home.” 

FASTalk is easy to use and Duong loves that it comes loaded with parent information, linked through the district’s Aeries SIS portal. “With other apps, I’d have to chase after parents to sign up,” she says. And FASTalk delivers messages via text, so a parent doesn’t even need a smartphone to access them.

FASTalk offers pre-set literacy tips teachers can send to parents twice a week. “They align directly with the lessons and subjects their children are learning and can easily be edited and personalized,” Duong says. “Parents aren’t always sure what kinds of things they can do to help their students at home and they really appreciate getting these messages.” 

She emphasizes that the tips are accessible and designed for busy parents to integrate for a few minutes into their daily routines. “An example might be drawing a picture, or talking about gratitude,” she says. “They give parents prompts and talking points to encourage intentional interaction and help make connections.” The students enjoy it, too. “Sometimes a student will say, ‘Oh, you texted my parents and they asked me about …’” Early indications are that the lowest performing Kindergarten students using FASTalk are achieving improved literacy outcomes.

No Language Barrier

Duong also appreciates that nothing is lost in translation with non-English speaking families. Half of her students are from homes where Spanish is the first language, and she has a few Arabic-speaking families as well. FASTalk automatically translates messages in more than 100 languages. Duong, the child of immigrant parents herself, understands firsthand how important it is to break down communication barriers between parents and their child’s school. 

“Before, I’d rely on Google translate and never knew if the message was received or if the translation was correct,” Duong says. “With FASTalk, there’s two-way communication, instead of just one-way from me.” The app supports the extension of learning and enables all parents to learn about what their child is doing and learning at school.

Pro Tip: Greater Engagement with Parents

“It’s always been a challenge to engage parents and get them involved in their students’ education,” Duong says. “We haven’t had a high parent-teacher conference participation rate and parental involvement at school has been low. But FASTalk is a great tool for opening lines of communication with parents and helping them to check in with their kids.”

Tech Used in the Classroom

iPads

Fastalk

ELMO document camera and projector

Lexia Literacy

ST Math

Epic!

“If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.” – Nelson Mandela

Each week I communicate with the parents of my 200+ students in multiple languages and this has made such a profound impact on student outcomes and relationships! In this post I explain how to use the free Google Sheets add-on,  Form Mule,  to send a personalized email to 100s of parents in multiple languages. Check out my guest post for ESL-Library, Digital Ways to Effectively Communicate with Parents in Multiple Languages, to discover more tips and several recommended free tools for ongoing effective parent communication in multiple languages.

• A Guide for Parents Teaching at Home
• 5 Ways to Support Parents During Remote Learning
• How Parents Can Participate in Remote Learning

Form Mule For Emails in Multiple Languages

Form Mule is such an incredible Google Sheets email merge add-on that allows you to send personalized emails using a spreadsheet and email template. See my visual below for a general idea of how this works.

It may look complicated, but once you set up Form Mule sending 100s and 1000s of parents (if you have a GSuite Edu account) a personalized email in multiple languages takes minutes! To get started you will need the following:

• a Google account
• a Google Sheet with the following information in columns with headings- students’ first and last names, parents’ first and last names, the parents’ email addresses, and anything else you want to share in your email that would be different for each student, such as comments, class codes, urls, dates, the home language, grade level, and so forth
• the Form Mule add-on installed for free on your Google Sheet
• an email template you want to send to the parents
• optional– the email template in HTML, because Form Mule is HTML friendly so you can add italics, clickable links, and other customizations
• optional– the Google Translate language code to send the email in English and another language. For example, I add “es” to the “Lang:” field to translate my email in Spanish. Click here for other language codes.

The following tutorials are super helpful if you experience any difficulties along the way!

• Click here for the G Suite Marketplace’s gif tutorial and to download.
• Click here for Edtech Creative’s step by step visual tutorial on how to use Forms, Sheets, and Form Mule to send student grade checks.

Tip for sending in multiple languages! Form Mule allows you to send different email templates for each worksheet created in your spreadsheet. To send the email in more than one other language (ex. Spanish, French, and Korean) you can create a worksheet for each language. Then add “ko” or “fr”to the “Lang:” field for that specific worksheet’s email template.

Challenge: Try Form Mule to send parents or students personalized emails or newsletters in multiple languages!

cross posted at teacherrebootcamp.com

Shelly Terrell is a Technology and Computer teacher, education consultant, and author of books including Hacking Digital Learning Strategies: 10 Ways to Launch EdTech Missions in Your Classroom. Read more at teacherrebootcamp.com.

ClassDojo

Handy management and portfolio tool can promote student growth

Pros: This free site offers many features to document, manage, and improve student behavior and learning.

Cons: Some kids could interpret the behavior tracking as a system of extrinsic rewards and punishments, especially when the information is displayed publicly.

Bottom Line: With thoughtful implementation, it can help teachers and parents support students' growth through goal-setting, feedback, and celebration.

Read more here.

App of the Day picks are selected from the top edtech tools reviewed by Common Sense Education, which helps educators find the best ed-tech tools, learn best practices for teaching with tech, and equip students with the skills they need to use technology safely and responsibly. 

By Common Sense Education

 Youth need privacy for healthy growth, development, and to work through ideas. Yet in these monitoring-obsessed days of child-rearing, privacy is often thrown to the side in exchange for surveillance. 

That's why innovative educators help parents see past simplified safety advice like: only use technology in a communal area. While imposing such restrictions is easy and may give a false sense of security, it is ineffective.

Here's why:

Does not foster trust

What's better than monitoring is working to foster trust and staying connected with your child. When you have developed connections and communication, your child is more likely to share what she’s up to.

Drives behavior underground

Monitoring doesn't stop bad behavior, it drives it underground. Find out for yourself. Ask a teen who's monitored if it makes them stop doing something or just become better at lying about what they're doing.

Your child needs privacy 

Wanting privacy goes along with the development of independence. A young person doesn't want all their thoughts, feelings, and creations on display. Privacy allows young people to work out their thinking and feelings in a safe place.

Does not promote safe independent use

Your child is not always going to be using technology at home and you are not always going to be there to monitor them. More effective than surveillance is supporting your child in using technology effectively. This means fostering a trusting relationship where you can speak to one another.

What do you think? Is this in alignment with advice you give parents? How are you helping to instill responsible use in the youth with whom you work? 

Lisa Nielsen (@InnovativeEdu) has worked as a public-school educator and administrator since 1997. She is a prolific writer best known for her award-winning blog, The Innovative Educator. Nielsen is the author of several booksand her writing has been featured in media outlets such as The New York Times,The Wall Street Journal, Tech&Learning, and T.H.E. Journal.  

Technology and digital communication are changing at a rapid pace. As school and district leaders strive to implement more effective communication with families, they must take these changes into consideration. Communication is critical to student achievement. Leaders send communication to parents via emails, newsletter, and tweets, just to name a few. As new platforms for communication evolve, parents often struggle for the following reasons:

• They feel like they’re being talked at instead of engaged in conversation;
• They have difficulty interpreting the tone of the message;
• They don’t understand “edu-speak,” a language full of academic terms that people outside of the field of education don’t speak.

There is inconsistency in the degree of information provided; either too little or too much. In my 25 years as a teacher, school principal, and district leader, communication with families has been paramount in developing a culture of ongoing home/school communication, i.e., supporting student  success. Current research supports this; stressing the importance of communication in education. But the research extends beyond the communication between school and home, it speaks of the importance of the communication between students and parents/guardians. Student/parent communication sounds like a “no brainer” once we highlight its importance, but schools have not done an adequate job in supporting their students in this journey. Schools stress student independence, but control the conversation between school and home.

John Gabrieli,  a neuroscientist at MIT, and an associate member of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research, has proven that it’s not just the sheer accumulation of words that builds children’s brains and their verbal and non-verbal skills but rather, “conversational turns,” or back-and-forth banter.   His research shows that conversational style proves to be much more predictive of a child’s language development, rather than the number of words spoken to them. Additionally, in a joint Harvard-MIT study lead by researcher Dr. Rachel Romeo, a neuroscientist and speech-language pathologist, it was found that “the sheer amount of language children heard spoken by adults wasn’t linked to children’s brain responses,” it was “the number of conversational turns was more impactful.” So where can these “conversational turns” happen for students and families and how can schools help?

Just as the pace of technological innovation increases, so too does the pace of the lives we live. Families are pressed for time as they fit in practices, classes, playdates, birthday parties, games and vacations. The sheer number of commitments students have minimizes the chance for meaningful student and parent/guardian conversations. Schools have to create and encourage these conversations if, as the research shows, students are going to develop healthy brain capacity. Finding time at the dinner table, on car rides, or while watching television to talk about a good and bad thing that happened at school will provide students the opportunity to verbally express their emotions. Encourage “conversational turns” by using statements such as ”You must have been disappointed when …..”  and “I bet you were excited when your teacher let you go to the board.”

The National Commission on Social, Emotional, and Academic Development states that PreK-12 education fails to fully prepare students for the future. They wrote that social and emotional skills and competencies are essential for students success in school, career, and life. This thinking supports the American Journal of Education study done at the University of Minnesota that linked parent and community involvement with student achievement. Anecdotal experience coupled with clinical and professional research points toward the need for schools to increase and support targeted, student/family communication. Yet another study from the American Journal of Education shows that a parent’s interest in their students boosts the child’s mental health, happiness and well-being. Conversations will have a very positive effect on your child’s behavior and achievement. They show your child that you value school and education, in turn encouraging him/her to value it too.

However, encouraging parents to simply ask their students, “How was school?” is not enough. It is not easy for a child (or adult for that matter) to reflect on the entirety of their day and sum it up so simply. As a result, it’s easier and more comfortable for a student to respond with, “Good,” or “Okay.” When families talk with their  kids about the school day, it shows they’re interested in what’s going on in the students’ lives, but there has to be a more effective and productive way of doing so.

Communicating about school also helps parents get to know more about what’s expected of their child at school, how they learn, and how they handle challenges. Other positive effects of increased communication between students and families include:

• Taking the mystery out of what’s going on at school  when everyone’s in the loop, at- home conversations about schoolwork are more productive.
• Giving students agency and having them taking more accountability for their own learning.
• With clear expectations and a supportive team of in-the-know parents and teachers, kids are more likely to perform and do their best work.

So, where can families start? This may be new to everyone involved. Start by making time to talk. Without the time for “conversational turns” questions turn into interrogations, rather than two-way conversations. But students aren’t often compelled to talk, even when time is provided. This is where the fast-paced evolution of technology can be beneficial.  

Recently, I had the chance to pilot a tech tool that bridges the gap between school and home. A mobile platform that gives students agency cultivates a student’s social and emotional learning, harnesses parent engagement,  strengthens executive functions, and causes a powerful two-way conversation. The tool is GAB-on! (click here to learn more). The company’s presentation cited similar research from John Gabrieli and Matthew A. Kraft of Brown University, affirming the benefits of a family conversation in building student self-esteem and improving academic performance. Additionally, these conversations develop student self- awareness, self-regulation, reflective learning, and resilience. Seeing this digital tool in action is impressive.

GAB-on! is the first platform that links a child’s school day to a conversation starter at home. It’s not a report from the teacher or school; it’s a conversation between student and family. Students enter GABs  about their day, in live time while they have meaning and relevance or during an end-of-school-day reflection period. GABs are hints or clues (3-5 words) about a lesson, event, or activity from the school day that act as a prompt for the student to retrace, recall, and remember when they are at home, in the car, or on a walk later in the day – anywhere with a few minutes to share and connect with their family.  GABs also prompt families to ask more specific questions about their student’s day to increase conversational productivity and student voice.

Consider a Twitter notification or news highlight you receive on your phone. Parents receive GABs from their child (and a few from their child’s teacher) that are only a few words per lesson or event, and these GABs don’t make sense to a parent. These GABs are not a report or full sentences, they are just enough words to act as a prompt to encourage a child to remember that part of their day and start a conversation about it. . There is so much that happens during a child’s day that sometimes they genuinely cannot remember or decide which part to talk about or even how to start the conversation.  A GAB serves as a student’s reminder of what happened during the day, leading to more enlightening and surprising conversations. Furthermore, GABs empower students. GAB-on! is a student-led and student-managed platform at school that has students entering the content so parents get to hear their excitement about their day from them.

Learning about your child’s school day should not be a burden—it should be enjoyable and enlightening. With practice and consistency, you can make it so. GAB-on! is a tool that can enhance these communications by leveraging  current technology and design thinking to bring child and parent eye-to-eye in conversation, consistently. To learn more about this tool (platform) visit their website here, follow them on Twitter @GAB__on, or contact Jarrid and Sylvia Hall, Co-Founders and CEOs of GAB-on! at sylviahall.gab.on@gmail.com. 

cross posted at techinnovation.live 

Dr. Matthew X. Joseph is currently the Director of Digital Learning and Innovation for the Milford Public School District in Milford, MA. Before coming to Milford, he was a building principal for 11 years in Natick, MA and Attleboro, MA. Other professional roles include: classroom teacher, district professional development specialist supporting leadership and technology instruction. Matt holds licenses in general education, school administration, and Massachusetts superintendent. His master’s degree is in special education and earned his Ed.D. in Educational Leadership from Boston College.

Throughout his career, Matt focused on what is in the best interest of students and pushing the limits to achieve excellence in schools. He is an instructional leader constantly looking for student and school improvement while building community and continued teacher improvement. He is passionate about building a collaborative school culture, creating a school of learners utilizing 21st century instructional tools, and developing leaders’ communication techniques to enhance instruction and parent communication.

Follow Dr. Joseph on twitter at @MatthewXJoseph or read his blog techinnovation.live

Heard 

Parent communication and resource-sharing tool keeps families engaged 

Pros: The familiar interface will help parents get on board quickly, and the site's well-designed for productivity.

Cons: As with any social media tool, keeping up with parent comments can overwhelm, and some users may not respect the guidelines.

Bottom Line: With a mindful onboarding process, Heard has great potential to be a go-to tool for parent involvement and community building. 

Read more here.

App of the Day picks are selected from the top edtech tools reviewed by Common Sense Education, which helps educators find the best ed-tech tools, learn best practices for teaching with tech, and equip students with the skills they need to use technology safely and responsibly. 

Parent-teacher conferences provide a way for staff and families to better to connect to support students. They can also be stressful for all parties involved. Parents and teachers may be nervous about what the other will say to them about the child. To make conferences more pleasant and strengthen relationships remember the importance of promoting good will. Your job as a teacher will be easier if parents are your partners and look forward to your conversations with them about their child.

While academic performance and test scores have their place, this information is easily accessed by parents. When you meet face-to-face parents want to know that you genuinely know and care about their child.

Here is how to do that.

Ask students what parents want to know

Middle school English teacher and Y.A. author SJ Donovan explained that to prepare for parent-teacher night, she asked her students what they thought their parents wanted to hear from her about their class. Students shared that parents would want to know about her methodologies, teaching style, and how she integrates technology into learning. She shares their ideas in this post. Adding to Donovan’s idea, I would also ask each class member to share their response so that you have a personalized message for each parent. This also gives those less inclined to speak in public a chance to have their voice heard. You might want to consider using FlipGrid for this. (Not sure what FlipGrid is? Read this overview from Sean Arnold’s, “Brave in the Attempt” blog.

When parent-teacher night begins, the teacher can kick it off to a parent group a discussion sharing with them what their children want them to know about how they spend their day. In some schools there can be limited time for one-to-one conversations. This strategy gives all parents a general sense of what they can expect for their child.

[#BacktoSchool List No No #1 - Graphing Calculators]

Ask parents what they want you to know about their child

If there is time for one-on-one conversations, the teacher can start by sharing that one idea their child wanted their parent to know. Next, the teacher can ask the parent what they want their teacher to know about their child and the teacher can record that in the child’s file or it can be left as a reply on FlipGrid.

Discuss how the child thrives

The teacher can review key pieces of the student’s learning profile with parent. Thrively is a tool that allows you to collect a free report of how every child thrives and ideas to support that at school and home. If possible, give the parent a printed report to take home. If you not able to print it, let them know how to access the report. This article shares more on Thrively and how students can begin their free strength assessment.

Classroom learning stations

In some schools teachers have a line of parents waiting out the door. Make use of that time. Have stations set up around the room for parents to learn more about what happens in the class. If possible each station would have a student at the helm sharing with parents. Stations can also be independently accessed. The stations could contain student work that is physical. It could contain a slideshow on a laptop with useful ideas for learning at home. There might be a station with recorded student presentations. Maybe there is a bulletin board where parents can scan QR codes to learn and see more about students and their work.

Parent Agenda & Notes

Have an agenda that fits on one page so parents know what to expect and have a place to record notes. This helps you to frame and focus the conversation and provides follow up notes for the parent. Here’s a sample you can customize and use for your own class.

Your Turn

What do you think? Are there ideas here that could work in your school or classroom? Have you tried any of these ideas? What has worked well? What challenges have you encountered?

Lisa Nielsen (@InnovativeEdu) has worked as a public-school educator and administrator since 1997. She is a prolific writer best known for her award-winning blog, The Innovative Educator. Nielsen is the author of several books and her writing has been featured in media outlets such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Tech&Learning, and T.H.E. Journal.

Are you reading this on your phone? Do you have a problem? Last week’s Pew report release may suggest as much. While the survey focuses primarily on teenager use—72 percent of teens say they often or sometimes check for messages or notifications as soon as they wake up, while roughly four-in-ten say they feel anxious when they are phone free—results show adults have some issues too. 36 percent say they themselves spend too much time on their devices. And 51 percent of teens say they often or sometimes find their parent or caregiver distracted by Internet cats. Here’s a simple question for teachers: Do you check your phone in class, or between classes? —Kevin Hogan, Content Director

[Are Our Phones Smarter Than an 8th Grader?]

A recent survey of 1,000 U.S. teachers found that the state of parent-teacher engagement still has room for improvement. The survey, conducted by ClassTag, found that 65% of teachers reported adequate parent engagement, but 35% of parents had no interaction with their classrooms last school year.

In the survey, which was conducted between June 23 and July 22, 2018, teachers cited parent-teacher engagement, alongside home life and classroom climate, as the critical factors in student success, far ahead of even student aptitude.

[21 Things Every 21st Century Educator Should Try This Year (2018 Version)]

To reach out-of-touch parents, teachers turn to a array of tactics, the survey found. One teacher holds open conference nights at an apartment complex where many of their students’ families live. Other teachers meet with parents at their places of work. Still others enlist the help of siblings and grandparents to open channels of communication.

To help further spur parent-teacher engagement, ClassTag recently announced it was making more than $3 million in free supplies and exclusive discounts available to classrooms that earn ClassTag coins as a reward for parent engagement behaviors such as volunteering, attending conferences or simply reading teachers’ messages.

Family engagement tools can help parents stay informed and up-to-date with important information. A structured parent communication plan lets teachers share useful resources with the parents of their students. Bloomz is a fantastic tool teachers are using in schools across the country. It’s a mobile and web-based app designed to increase parental engagement.

Teachers and school leaders can use this platform to communicate and coordinate with families for lots of different reasons. One of the reasons I’m so excited about Bloomz is how it can help teachers share useful tips and resources with parents. It’s super easy to use and can have a big impact on the learning happening inside your classroom.

1. Bloomz helps teachers share what’s happening in their classroom through videos and photos. This keeps parents aware of daily activities so they can facilitate conversations and extend learning at home.
2. Connecting with parents through student portfolios sets teachers up for more productive parent/teacher conferences, since families are already in the know about their child’s progress.
3. When students know that their family will be able to celebrate and see their work you’ve added a layer of accountability to daily lessons.
4. Sharing behavior management information through Bloomz helps teachers and parents work together to praise good behavior and avoid disruptive behavior.
5. Personal messages make it easy for teachers to communicate with parents what skills students need to practice at home.
6. Teachers can use Bloomz to post video tutorials explaining the homework so parents can support their children in every subject area.

This YouTube video shows how Bloomz can be used to help parents connect with their child’s experience inside the classroom:

If you’d like to learn more about Bloomz, visit their website for more information!

I received compensation in exchange for sharing this product. Although this post is sponsored, all opinions are my own :) Learn more

cross posted at classtechtips.com

Monica Burns is a fifth grade teacher in a 1:1 iPad classroom. Visit her website at classtechtips.com for creative education technology tips and technology lesson plans aligned to the Common Core Standards.