The role of the solitary language teacher in a school can be an isolating experience. You may lack colleagues of your language background or may be part of a larger faculty such as English, with whom you have little in common. It is for this reason that I suggest you draw upon as much help as you can from other sources. Today we are going to focus on parents and how you can enlist their involvement and support for languages education in your school.
Tip 1: Use Fliers to Communicate
Parents can be useful allies but they need some direction as to how they can be of help. We have developed several fliers to share with parents. These cover the following topics:
- How can I help my child learn a language?
- Why is my child learning Japanese?
- How to use the textbook
- Is it too hard to learn a scripted language?
I would suggest that you space out the sending of these over time so as to not overwhelm them. Sending information regularly also keeps your subject fresh in their mind. We have a designated page for parents on our website outlining such topics, as we recognise the positive influence of an educated and supportive parent on student learning outcomes.
You can download PDFs of our fliers from the Parents page on our website.
Tip 2: Email Parents at the Start of the Year
My department has a policy to always email the parents at the start of the year and introduce themselves as the class teacher for the year. These emails are highly valued by parents as it opens up a line of communication for them.
Parents have told me that they find the transition from primary school to high school difficult as they are unsure whom to contact or how. In the primary setting, they describe how they were often at their child’s school every day for pick-up so they could meet with the class teacher informally or ask other parents for advice. In the high school setting this face-to-face experience is often limited to parent teacher nights. The “welcome to the course” email also allows you to outline your experience and generate an interest in the subject.
Tip 3: Email Parents at the Start of Each Term
This email is a general “welcome back” communication that outlines what is coming up this term. You can use it as an opportunity to point out assessment task expectations and due dates as well as events such as excursions.
Learning a language is much more exciting than it may have been in their school days, so advocate regularly in these emails about what you are doing – cooking, online exchanges etc. I also attach the excursion note as a PDF to this email to reduce the time I have to spend chasing notes from students. Some savvy parents have signed, scanned and emailed back the permission slip before the hard copy version even makes it out of their child’s school bag.
Tip 4: Email some Parents after an Assessment Task
I have changed the way I return assessment tasks in recent years, to better acknowledge research results regarding feedback.
When I hand back an assessment task, I get the class started on some work that doesn’t require my support such as Education Perfect lists. Then I call students out one by one to return their task. I read out the feedback to them and explain it further if necessary. One interesting research finding is that students do not always improve their performance post-feedback. This may be due to various factors such as they don’t understand it, or they are ignoring it as they are upset with their grade. Feedback perceived as criticism can even demotivate students to try harder next time unless they have very strong growth mindsets.
As teachers, sometimes we accidentally share feedback as if it is a one way transaction where we are justifying why we gave them a grade, rather than beginning a process of change and learning from the experience.
So as a result, I don’t hand the marks back in ranking order and I don’t praise them in front of the class for their rank. During the individual chats I will praise what they have done, the strategies they used and the effort they have made. I do email their parents and inform them of the student’s ranking and achievement though, and I give the student a merit if they are in the top group, for example the top 7-10 in a class of 30. When across a whole year group, I still merit and praise per class rather than across the grade. These emails are quick as you need only change the student’s name, ranking and mark on a standardised email.
If a student has improved their performance since a previous assessment or has achieved well despite learning obstacles, then a different email may be required to praise this type of achievement.
A side benefit to these emails is that often parents will write back to tell you how much their child is enjoying your class. This display of gratitude can be a welcome sight at the end of a busy week marking.
Tip 5: The “Teach a Family Member” Task
This is an assessment task we do with our Year 8 students in the first term they begin the course. They are required to teach a family member some Japanese language or about an aspect of Japanese culture. They have to video the project, show progress of the family member such as “before” and “after” videos, and include a reflection from themselves and the family member about what it was like to be the teacher and to be the student. We provide examples such as:
- Teach mum 5 greetings
- Teach dad to count to ten
- Research a Japanese recipe and teach your parents to cook it at home, or
- Visit a Japanese restaurant as a family and demonstrate knowledge of the foods and etiquette essential to the situation.
I found this task to be very successful for many reasons. It allows you to develop a rapport with the parents and student, as you can see them interact together and observe their home situation. It invites the parent in to learning Japanese, which may have been perceived as a subject that was foreign or difficult. As a teacher, I found I learned the students’ names quicker, and I felt more of a connection with them sooner. Parent-teacher interviews were also friendlier as you could praise dad on learning the numbers or mum on her greetings.
The parents were often excellent role models for learning, insisting their child repeated things many times or verbalising their need for practice and drills to master the new words. They inadvertently modelled how to learn a language and demonstrated the positive growth mindset that everyone can improve with effort.
Another interesting outcome of the assessment was the strong correlation between what the students taught their family, and their own individual performance in the term exam on that content area. For example, a student who taught dad numbers seemed to perform better on number-based questions on the exam than in any other section.
A key point to make though regarding this task is the issue of privacy. I did not show the class the videos of their classmates. This is important. You can discuss what people did if you like, but respect their privacy and do not share images of their home or family to other students.
Good luck with your new parental support team!
