Educators value the involvement and support of parents, guardians, families, and communities in schools.
Throughout my most recent 10 week practicum placement I was really able to see this professional standard in action and how much importance it really has. The teacher I was working with in this practicum placement had a lot of open communication with the parents of her students. She utilized the resource called “Class Dojo”, this is an app parents can have on their phones or computers, it allows direct messages and communications between guardians and teachers. I loved the use of this app with the class, I was able to easily post “stories” that the whole class could see. The stories could show what we had done throughout the week, we were able to send photos to guardians of their student on field trips and other activities we had done. The guardians of our students really seemed to appreciate it and were also quite responsive on the app, as opposed to emails. My teacher I was working with whom has been in the career for a good amount of time said that the responsiveness of the gradians on this app far exceeded that of the communication on email. The best part of all is that this Dojo app is a vetted and reliable app that many teachers utilize for guardian communications.
I was also able in this practicum to do meet the teacher night, along with some one on one interviews with students and their guardians. I feel very lucky I got the opportunity to do this within my final practicum placement. I was able to see some variety in how different adult interactions could go with the teacher. I got to see a very experienced and professional teacher handle some tougher meetings and I took and immense amount away from this. Finally I was able to see how much benefit there is to having a good line of communication and relationship with the students adults in their lives. It really is a partnership to try and get the best out of these students and I appreciate it so much more now after seeing it in action and the benefit of it.
Ultimately I see so much value in having a guardian involvement in the educational process of these students.
