Communicating with your students’ parents gives you a huge advantage.  You can tackle problems together and your positive feedback will give everyone a boost. Don’t rely on parent communication to solve your management issues, though. For some kids, getting parents involved makes all the difference. For other kids, it won’t have an impact at all. Most kids will be somewhere in between.

Making Contact with Parents
Come up with a list of things you want to convey to parents. Keep this handy, because you never know when or how you’ll reach them. Keep it short and easy to understand - they don’t spend all day thinking about school, so you can easily overwhelm them. Here are some ideas:
- best way to contact parents (check phone numbers, address, etc.)
- best way to contact teacher
- homework expectations (how will they know what’s been assigned?)
- behavior system (let them know exactly when/why you’ll contact them)
- academic progress monitoring (let them know exactly when/why you’ll contact them)

How Will I Find Them?
If you only have 5 parents show up to back-to-school night, don’t give up. If you really want to be successful, you’ll have to keep trying and trying…
- Back-to-School Night
- Phone
- Email
- Send a note home
- Home Visit (talk to your administrator before you start these)
- Before school drop-off or after school pick-up
- Ask siblings or other relatives
- Ask your school counselor or nurse to help
- Ask last year’s teacher

The Parent Folder
Give each student a “Parent Folder”. This should stay in the student’s backpack all the time. All information you send home will go in this folder along with all information coming from home. Put a small spiral notebook in the folder where you can write notes and students can record homework assignments (if age appropriate).  Also include the student’s behavior calendar. Make sure you show parents this folder when you meet them (and remind them about it during conferences). Of course some students will lose the folder and others will destroy it, but don’t assume that they can’t be responsible enough to take care of it. They may surprise you.