On my first open school night, my colleagues told me to talk the whole time so the parents wouldn’t have a chance to ask any questions. Before my first family conferences, my division director said to start each meeting by telling a story about the student or showing a piece of their work so the parents would see I knew and liked their child, and then they’d leave me alone. The messages were clear and consistent: Parents were threats, and I was supposed to treat any encounter with them as risk management.

I guess that’s why, during my first few years of teaching, I kept feeling surprised by how much I enjoyed conversations with the parents of my students. That’s not because I have especially good social skills. (I really don’t.) It’s not because my students’ parents were especially calm and easygoing. (They really weren’t.) It’s because the conversation itself was fundamentally different from the kinds of conversations schools typically initiate with families.

 

Why School-Home Communication Turns Adversarial

My two children have attended a total of 13 different schools, which include public schools, independent schools, secular schools, religious schools, and schools for students with disabilities. Nearly all the communications I received from these 13 different schools fall into one of the following categories:

• Announcements, such as a social media post about the volleyball team winning their division, an email about a lockdown drill, or a newsletter describing the wellness kits in classrooms.
• Requests, such as to fill out a form, chaperone a field trip, or donate to a holiday toy drive.
• Reports, such as an academic progress note or a phone call about a misbehavior (I get lots of those).

As diverse as these communications seem in topic and tone, they all function to convince families—that the school is doing the “right” things and aligned with the “right” values, that it swiftly and competently addresses harm, that any labor it extracts is reasonable and worthwhile. But when a message is designed to convince them to believe or do something, families have only two options: believe or do the thing, or push back. No wonder so many of my colleagues experienced parents as potential adversaries. Most school-to-home communications structure the relationship that way.

But what if teachers’ relationships with families could be different? What if we were to build genuine partnerships with families?

In order to do that, the teacher and the parent or guardian need a shared goal. Something that they both want to see happen and both have the power to shape, but that they have distinct and complementary roles in shaping. That something is learning.

 

How Teachers Can Build Learning-Centered Partnerships with Families

Of the hundreds, if not thousands, of communications I received from my children’s schools, startlingly few of them were about learning. Messages about learning have been so rare that when my son’s fourth grade teacher sent regular updates about his learning, I was shocked. “This week, he practiced adding 3-digit numbers, played scooter soccer in the gym, and read a book about tornadoes.” Instead of asking what he did at school that day, I could ask about tornadoes or soccer. If weeks later we saw a news report about a tornado, we could discuss how it affected people in the region. If we saw a three-digit number on a highway sign, I could say something like, “That number has a 6 in the hundreds place and an 8 in the tens place,” and he could add, “And a 4 in the ones place!” Knowing what he did in school empowered me to start conversations with my son about those topics, which simultaneously built his learning and our relationship.

Informing families about what their kids are studying is an important first step in cultivating a learning-centered partnership, but we don’t have to stop there. We can also involve family members in the learning by asking them to contribute their stories and perspectives, and we can invite them to extend the learning at home by suggesting accessible ways for them to do that. But what it actually looks like to inform families about learning, involve them in the learning process, and invite them to extend that process depends on the kind of learning experience we’ve designed.

 

When Learning Means Exploring a Topic

In an inquiry-driven lesson or unit, students explore a particular topic, such as civil rights, circle geometry or kashrut. When I taught second grade, my students engaged in an inquiry-driven unit on rainforests. Informing families about inquiry-driven learning means telling them which aspects of the topic the students explored and what kinds of exploratory activities they did: “During our unit, we colored in maps to show where rainforests are, sang a song about rainforest layers, read a book about symbiotic relationships between plants and animals, watched a video about deforestation, and tasted foods that originated in tropical rainforests.”

The more details we provide, the better we equip parents and guardians to start meaningful conversations with their kids. If I tell families that our class had a “taste of the rainforest” event, they can ask their kids what foods they tried. But if I give them a list of the foods we sampled, the families can ask their kids questions like “What did you think of guava?” or “Did you know that coconut is the main ingredient of the macaroons we eat on Passover?”

We can involve families in inquiry-based learning by asking them to contribute stories, perspectives, or questions on the topic. During the rainforest unit, I might ask parents who have visited a tropical rainforest if they’d be willing to share memories or photos. I might ask if their work intersects with tropical rainforests in any way, if they have a favorite rainforest animal, or what they wonder about the rainforest. Involving parents and guardians in an inquiry can simply mean asking them to be curious alongside their kids.

We can invite families to extend inquiry-based learning at home by suggesting books they can read together, shows they can watch, places they can visit, things they can observe, or questions that could prompt a family discussion about the topic. During the rainforest unit, I might suggest taking a weekend outing to the local zoo or botanical gardens and having the student point out animals and plants they recognize. I might share the titles of a few rainforest books, documentaries and games that families could enjoy together, and I might offer playful discussion questions like “What rainforest animal does each member of our family remind us of?” or serious ones like “What could it mean for our family to support rainforest communities?” Questions like these can help families continue the inquiry after the unit ends.

 

When Learning Means Developing a Skill Set

In a rehearsal-driven lesson or unit, students develop a skill set: giving a speech, hitting a baseball, leading tefillot, solving polynomial expressions. Informing families about rehearsal-driven learning means telling them what students are doing to practice those skills and how they’ll demonstrate proficiency. For example, when I taught 7th grade geography, my students learned to identify countries and landforms in each region we studied. Knowing this, families could help their kids practice labeling physical and political maps. A few parents told me that was how they learned where certain places were.

To invite families to contribute to rehearsal-based learning, we can ask them to share stories of how they learned the skills their kids are learning or ways they use those skills in their personal or professional lives. For example, a chorus teacher might ask parents and guardians to share how they learned to read sheet music and whether they still use those skills. Hearing about these experiences can help kids normalize struggle and find motivation to develop skills the adults in their community have.

We can involve families in rehearsal-based learning by suggesting ways they can practice with their kids, give supportive feedback as their kids practice, or create an environment where their kids can practice.

 

When Learning Means Creating a Piece of Work

In a project-driven lesson or unit, students learn by creating and refining a piece of work: a video, a mural, an infographic, a poem, a seder plate.

When our students begin a project, we can inform their families not only about the assignment and due date, but what the work process entails. When I taught English, my students read an essay by Anna Winger in which she describes her experience trying to keep Passover while living in Germany. My students brainstormed their own food memories, selected one that felt especially important, wrote essays that connected the experience to their values, chose a key moment to illustrate and accompanied their essays with a related recipe. Aware of all that, parents could ask more meaningful questions about the essay-writing process.

As students create a piece of work, they need diverse exemplars of that type of work so they understand what’s required and what’s possible. We can involve families in project-based learning by asking them to share examples of the type of work their students are creating. If parents, siblings or extended family members share essays they’ve read or wrote, or seder plates they’ve used or made, the class not only sees a wider variety of exemplars but understands that the type of work they’re creating exists in their own community. If students’ family members have created these pieces of work, we can ask them to share advice on how to create that type of work and persist through struggle.

Families don’t often get to see the work their kids create until after it’s finished, and at that point, the response might be cursory (“very nice”) or critical (“you need to work on your spelling”). Sometimes, families don’t focus on the work at all and instead focus on the grade. After students finish a project, we can provide prompts that help family members respond to the work itself and start conversations about the process of making it. In particular, we can prompt families to:

• Point out details or patterns they notice in their child’s work.
• Say what their child’s work makes them remember, think about or feel.
• Ask questions about the content of their child’s work—anything in the work that stirs their curiosity.
• Ask questions about their child’s process of creating this piece of work. How did the student get from nothing at all to this final product?
• Say what their child’s work makes them want to do or think about further.

When families respond to their child’s work in these ways, the student discovers that their family takes their work seriously for what it is, as opposed to what it demonstrates about their skills and abilities. Through these discussions with their families, students have a chance to learn more about the topic their work is about, their own process of creating it, themselves as creators, and their family members as people.

 

Communication about Learning as Shaping Relationships

When students learn—whether by exploring a concept, practicing a skill set or creating a piece of work—they build a relationship with the content itself. They build a relationship with math, with art, with Jewish history and with everything else they study. The way we design learning shapes those relationships. Informing families about that learning, involving them in the learning process, and inviting them to extend the learning at home—those are just more ways we can shape the relationships students ultimately form with the content. When our communications with families focus on learning, we’re not only building a different kind of relationship with families; we’re shaping our students’ relationships with the content, with their family members—and with learning itself.

This chart summarizes how teachers can inform families about learning, involve them in learning, and invite them to extend learning.