Contributed by Noel S., Principal, White Bear Lake, MN
One good way to keep teachers and parents motivated and engaged in the education of students is to send out a short weekly email blast to all of the teachers and parents. I have done this for the past two years and found it to be very much appreciated by both the teachers and parents.
The key for me has been to write the emails myself and to talk about classroom events that have occured in the building for the past week and also to give a brief bit of advice on topics ranging from using Facebook appropriately, to bullying, to helping your child study, to working effectively with teachers, and to other seemingly mundane topics such as why kids need to wear jeans that have holes in them?
An unexpected side affect of this weekly email is that teachers are closely reading the email because I always write about events that are occurring in the classroom. For example, I may talk about the science classes and their study of single-celled animals and how the kids are grossed out about all the microbes found in pond water. I may then comment specifically about something that the teacher said in class. Teachers are reading my emails as diligently as some parents because they want to know if I wrote about them for the week. (Note: I rarely use teachers’ names in my weekly email to parents.)