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Hello, and welcome to issue #6!
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Tuesday Tip: Communicating with Teachers
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Communicating with teachers is an essential part of being involved in our children's education. And yet it is often difficult to know the most useful way to go about it. Some important considerations are time, medium, and frequency.
First, be aware of teachers' time constraints. Teaching demands an extremely high level of organizational skill. Think of how difficult it is to organize your own day. Now imagine the difficulty of organizing the daily efforts of 100-150 students! Teachers have very little planning or administrative time built into their workday, and so they always have mounds of work to do in their "off" time. Keeping your questions brief and specific will put less of a demand on the teacher's time - and net you better information.
In the information age we have many media for sending and receiving messages, each with its own set of pros and cons. Here are some.
U. S. Mail (No high-tech skills required. Slow. Labor intensive to send to more than one person. Very good for personal thank you notes.)
FAX (Immediate. Unreliable. Fax machines are obsolete and becoming rarer by the moment.)
Text messaging (Fast for some in the under-25 set; very slow for the rest of us. Difficult to save and/or print messages. Mobile screens can be small and difficult to read. Requires knowing personal cell phone numbers.)
Phone (Better than any written medium when emotional content is primary, such as when smoothing ruffled feathers. No automatic written record. Often difficult to schedule.)
Email (Fast. Reliable. Convenient. Teacher and administrator email addresses are nearly always available on school website. Scheduling is not necessary. Easy to save for written record. Can be difficult way to communicate emotionally sensitive message.)
The bottom line on media: first choice is email; schedule phone calls when issue is difficult to explain in writing or involves emotions; follow up phone calls with email summary; send hand written thank you notes via U. S. Mail.
If your child rarely experiences difficulties in school, your communications with teachers may simply involve responding to issues as they may arise - and an occasional thank you when something has gone particularly well. If your child has a history of struggling in school or perhaps has been diagnosed with a learning disability or AD/HD, it is advisable to establishing regular communications with teachers, and perhaps with counselors and administrators, before any troubles occur. One very good way to do this is to send a weekly email to all of your child's teachers. The four questions to ask are as follows:
1) Has Suzie turned in all of her classwork and homework this week? If not, what are the assignments and can they be made up?
2) What is Suzie's grade in your class at the moment?
3) Any quizzes, tests, papers, projects coming up in the next couple of weeks?
4) Any concerns about Suzie? If so, how can I help? Any good news to share about Suzie?
By automatically sending brief weekly emails, you relieve teachers of the burden of deciding whether to, and remembering to, send messages to you. And regular communication can help everyone to head off small problems before they become large ones.
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Each Tuesday's newsletter will include a Tuesday Tip, book review, interview, or article on education or science or the arts. If
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Sincerely, 
Kevin D. Dohmen, M.Ed. Learning Consultant21 West Caton Avenue Alexandria, VA 22301-1519 --- 703.683.9617 kevindohmen@verizon.netwww.kevindohmen.netthe art of learning for the information age
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