If you are a special educator, you need parents. Parents are the core of who your student becomes. They are a student’s first teacher. Recognizing the value of parents is an important start to effective communication.

What is parent involvement?

Parent involvement is the interaction between a parent and their child’s education. As a special educator, you become the catalyst or facilitator between home and school. What you do (or don’t do) will effect how much (or little) a parent engages with the school and their child’s education.

How is parent involvement important?

Parental involvement has been positively correlated with student academic achievement and success. It is crucial to the livelihood and motivation of a student. Standardized test scores, grades, and teaching ratings are all higher in students with involved parents. Students are also more likely to attend school and pass their classes.

Increasing parent involvement is one of the best ways to gain trust and rapport with parents.

So what’s it all mean?

It means that you need parents. You need to engage with them in a way that is productive and effective.

But that doesn’t mean that it is easy. Gaining trust and building rapport isn’t always fun and games.

Here are some quick ideas to get you started:

1. Communicate regularly. Open lines of communication and do your best to keep them that way. Share the good more often than the bad, and discuss growth in terms of the student, not in terms of where “they should be.”

2. Be welcoming. Offer opportunities for parents to volunteer and help out. Be welcoming and inviting. This will open parents up and make them much more willing to work with you.

3. Be interactive! When you are trying to build parent engagement, try being more interactive. Ask parents to read to their child at night, write a story together for homework, or sign off on a communication sheet. Being interactive will automatically work in parental involvement in a child’s education.

Want more tips? Check out my latest course, Parent Communication Boot Camp for Special Educators.

I’ll see you on the inside!

Trisha