Standard 9: Leadership and Collaboration

Artifact 2 – Parent Letter

My artifact represents weekly correspondences during my student teaching I sent to

parents to keep them abreast of student learning, classroom activities, and other pertinent

information. My weekly parent letters support Standard 9 which states, “The teacher respects

families’ expectations and seeks to work collaboratively with learners and families in setting and

meeting challenging goals;” My open communication with parents shows my desire to

collaborate with parents in furthering student growth.

Each Monday afternoon, I continued my mentor teacher’s routine of sending parents a

note to communicate the week’s learning goals, happenings, and important dates. I knew parents

expected this correspondence and it promoted opportunity for parents to reach out about their

children. Communicating with families weekly helped me feel more connected with them and I

found it to be an effective way to communicate homework expectations.

Weekly emails to parents is not always a feasible task, especially if some families do not

own technology. Communication with families is, however, essential to creating opportunity for

collaboration and meeting parent expectations, and it is important to establish how a teacher will

communicate with families at the beginning of the year. In my practice, I will be an effective

communicator with families and will work together with parents to help promote their children’s

learning.