4 Tips for Communicating with Your Child’s Teacher
We know that the start of a new school year can be nerve-wracking for both you and your child. Parts one and two of our back-to-school toolkit offer plenty of resources to help you prepare for the year ahead, from navigating a new campus to preparing an IEP summary for new teachers and making sure your child has the right adaptive supplies or assistive technology for their needs. Despite all the prep work you’ve done at the onset of the school year, there are bound to be some bumps in the road — so we asked Education Advocate Lisa Carey for her best tips on how to start the school year right.
A huge part of setting up your child for success throughout the upcoming months is communicating with their teacher(s). Check out Lisa’s tips below for smoother sailing when it comes to following up with the teacher.
Start with an attitude of collaboration and cooperation
To make it easier for your child teacher(s) to keep up with their IEP accommodations, it may be helpful to give them a single-page document that they can keep on hand for reference. Check out our printable IEP accommodations template here to make one for your child.
Begin a communication log
For a paper log, you can use our printable communication log template or our daily report template.
According to Lisa, you may want to “memorialize” in the IEP what kind of communication you are looking for and clarify what you want to learn from the communication with the teacher. For example, you could decide on a weekly report on struggles, what subjects were taught, what's going to be taught, social, etc., or request to meet once a month in person, over the phone, or on Zoom. Lisa suggests to follow up anything verbal with an email summarizing what you and the teacher discussed so that this communication is logged.
Ask for progress reports and work samples
Stay informed about assignments and how they’ll be modified
Thank you to the parents who submitted questions for Lisa during our live event! If you missed the event or want to review what we learned, you can catch the full recording and transcript here.
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