Latest News and Comment from Education

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

How Can We Build Trust Between Parents & Teachers? - Classroom Q&A With Larry Ferlazzo - Education Week Teacher

How Can We Build Trust Between Parents & Teachers? - Classroom Q&A With Larry Ferlazzo - Education Week Teacher:

Classroom Q&A With Larry Ferlazzo


How Can We Build Trust Between Parents & Teachers?

Kanwal Sachdeva asks:
I enjoyed reading your article on 'how to make students learn to listen'. My question is- How do we make parents to listen to the teachers? You know, for the students who need more help, the parents are not available to talk or they will not really listen. How do we make them understand teacher's perspective and not believe everything that the student is saying? How do we build that trust?
Parent engagement is a critical piece in creating a successful learning environment. Thanks for raising this important issue, Kanwal!
Of course, an important way to start building that trust for we teachers to also try to understand the parent's perspective. I would suggest that this "two-way" street could be a critical difference between parent engagement and parent involvement. I'll be sharing more 

An award-winning English and Social Studies teacher at Luther Burbank High School in Sacramento, Calif., Larry Ferlazzo is the author of Helping Students Motivate Themselves: Practical Answers To Classroom ChallengesEnglish Language Learners: Teaching Strategies That Work, and Building Parent Engagement In Schools.He also maintains the popular Websites of the Day blog. In this EdWeek blog, an experiment in knowledge-gathering, he will address readers' questions on classroom management, ELL instruction, lesson planning, and other issues facing teachers. Send your questions to lferlazzo@epe.org. And offer your own thoughts and responses in the comments section.