Communicating with parents or students’ family is key to understanding a student’s funds of knowledge and establishing a healthy relationship between their school and home life. Making your classroom known as a partnership between the teacher and the parent is a comforting idea for a parent of a child. They want to know what their child is doing in class and they want to know that their input about their child is valued. Even though a teacher may be over whelmed with a parents involvement, I think at the end of the day, it will make a big difference in the students learning.

The past couple of days of internship, my CT has me stand with the door open in the morning. This gives the visual that the classroom is open and welcoming students and parents rather than a closed of room that is prison like. I have really actually valued the time of doing this because I am the fist face the students see in the morning, and I always make sure to give them a big smile and tell them good morning. As we learned in class, “you create the weather in your classroom”. When I hear this quote, I think that as a teacher, you are the one who sets the tone, and that tone is established first thing in the morning. Making that effort to greet students increases their enthusiasm and enjoyment that their going to have in school that day. I’m not sure if the principal just recently instructed my CT and other kindergarten teachers (or all the teachers) that they need to keep their door open in the morning, because in the first couple of weeks of internship, my CT never held the door open. It wasn’t until the very first day I saw her holding the door open that she asked me if I could do it. She normally changes the centers that the students have in the morning, or she is doing some sort of assessment organization in the morning , so that’s why she asks me to hold the door open.

On Wednesday, when I was holding the door open, I had a run in with one of the parents. To understand my run in, it’s important to know about a previous occurrence. The school that I intern at decided to do a whole group conference night where all the parents are in one room and there is a data chart shown with numbers shown on certain points. Those points represent the students in the classroom, and the numbers were given anonymously so that parents were able to see their child next to the other students in the class. As you can imagine there was some negativity that derived out of this, because one of the parents thought that this was pointing out how far below her child was. Every morning I see this parent drop off her child. There has never been a negative vibe I’ve gotten during the morning, but these past few times I’ve held the door open, I have been a little worried that something would happen. On this occurrence on Wednesday morning, I saw her walking up with her child. We made small talk and was telling her child to tell me about a new educational show he watches. I decided to take it upon myself to inform the parent about the day that her child had the day before. He was on task the entire day and he gave so much effort. I told her about this and about how proud I was of him. She seemed to really appreciate me telling her about this because even though her child did have a blue smiley face in his agenda (blue is one clip up), she may not have known why he was. I think that telling her about this may have helped in creating a more positive relationship between her and the classroom. I wanted her fell that her child is valued in the room and that she is a partner.

I actually feel as though this has been one of the first times I have genuinely felt like a teacher. Communicating with the parents is such a huge aspect of teaching and I feel like this entire internship experience has focused mostly on only half of the job. I have always enjoyed interacting with people, and having the opportunity to see the kids every morning and have that time to just say good morning to the parents is really encouraging to me. It gives me ideas of when I have my own classroom. I definitely think I want to hold the door open because it creates such a welcoming feeling that I’m sure parents will appreciate. They also have that brief moment to talk to me about their child which creates that partnership feeling, which I believe is essential. Most parents want to be included in their child’s education and feel valued when their input is appreciated. I hope to continue holding the door open in the morning and creating a better relationship with the parents of my students.