Working with parents and guardians

Most teachers see parents only when something has gone wrong. A child has misbehaved. A child has failed an exam. A child has stopped coming. The phone call, the meeting, the difficult conversation.

This is a missed opportunity. Parents and guardians are one of the most powerful resources a teacher has — and almost the most overlooked. Research shows that when parents are engaged, students attend more, learn more, and stay in school longer. The benefits are biggest in low-income communities, where teachers most need this support.

But many parents do not engage. Some did not go to school themselves. Some feel education is “not for them.” Some are intimidated by teachers. Some cannot read English — or even L1. Some are working from before sunrise to past sunset.

The job of the teacher is not to demand engagement. It is to make engagement possible — in many small ways, at many levels of effort, so that every parent who can do something can find a way in.

In this lesson, we will look at six different ways to bring parents into your students’ learning — from the smallest gesture to the most ambitious.

Host: We have just looked at six levels of parent engagement. Now listen to three teachers. They share their problems first, then the changes they made.

Teacher 1: For years, I only spoke to parents when their child was in trouble. The first phone call was always bad news. The first meeting was always about a problem. So when I called, parents avoided the phone. When I asked them to come to the school, they did not come. I thought they did not care.

Teacher 2: Many of my students’ parents had never been to school. They told me they could not help. They felt embarrassed in front of me, the teacher. They thought education was “not for them.” So they stayed away. And their children suffered.

Teacher 3: I wanted to invite parents to my classroom but I did not know how. I tried a formal meeting. Two parents came out of forty. I felt I had failed. I assumed parents in our community did not value education.

Teacher 1: I changed the first contact. Now, in the first month of every term, I send one short note home for each child — about something positive they did. “Today Sarah read a paragraph beautifully.” “Today Daniel helped Ahmed with a question.” The notes are short. Now when I do call about a problem, parents pick up. They know I am not only the bad-news teacher.

Teacher 2: I started telling parents directly: “You do not need to know English to help your child. Just ask them what they learned today. Listen when they answer. That is teaching.” Some parents cried when I said this. They had been told their whole lives they could not help. Now they could.

Teacher 3: I gave up the formal meeting. Instead, I invited one parent at a time to come and tell my class about their job. The first parent was a tailor. He came, with his daughter standing next to him to translate. He spoke for ten minutes about how he learned to sew. The class loved it. Other parents started asking when their turn would be. The school is no longer a closed place to them. It is somewhere they belong.

Host: None of these teachers had different parents or different schools. They changed the way they reached out. Small steps — positive notes, simple words, an invitation that respected the parent’s situation. Over time, those small steps built trust. And trust changed everything for the students.