Zoë Kingsley’s Philosophy of Home-School Communication

Every student should be set up for success. This success can start with helpful Home-School

communication and connection. The relationship between the family-teacher is the student’s biggest

asset. When a student has both parties connected and communicative, academic struggles, or further

enrichment can come easier than to those students who have disconnection between their families and

teachers.

This is why I love to send tests/quizzes/writing units full of work home with a letter and checklist

of what they accomplished and a note to send back to school. This way the teacher knows the families

have seen the progress or the struggles and can speak at a later date about them. Another great way to stay

in contact with families through their student’s backpacks, is home-school folders. This way the teacher is

making sure important dates, events, fun projects or writings from lessons can be shared back and forth

between teacher and families.

I feel that it’s vital for the families to have a great working relationship with their child’s teacher.

This can be obtained by not just calling when something negative or behavioral happens, or when they

feel sick or someone gets injured. But by weekly or monthly check ins to speak about the positives, the

growth a student made academically, socially or emotionally. This allots for a positive outlook on the

classroom and feeling as though the parents are a part of the goings on in our little community.

This could also be through having parents come in physically to the classroom and do read-aloud

of favorite family or childhood books, having shares of their diverse backgrounds and celebrations of

different holidays that students partake in. This can also be done digitally through google meets.

Another great way for the parents to feel a part of the classroom is the Homeroom app. This app

gives the parents a way to see what they’re students are doing throughout the day. A few of the things I

love to post are pictures of engaging lessons, science experiments, students sharing their writing with

friends, fun times at recess. This gives the parents a way to have engaging conversations with their kids

about what happened at school that day, they can also like pictures of their kids and share the pictures
with family and friends and make comments that we can share with their children. It makes the classroom

feel ten times bigger and brings a tight knit bond between the teachers and families.