 Hey there. Hi everybody. There is no everybody yet. It's a zero. Ah Here we are. Hi guys Hey, good to have you in here. I Love seeing these names. I saw Jason and Mario. Hi Hi Hey Jackie Ah Elizabeth, that's great. That's great that you're seeing me live. Hey Mario. Hi Jason This is fantastic. We've got a bunch of people in here This is gonna be my last periscope for a little while. I'm gonna take a summer break, but it's not gonna be the whole summer Obviously if last week was any indication, I can't quite stay off of periscope, but I'm gonna take a little bit of time off just to sort of regroup and you know get Get ready for a new you know kind of fall season. So Yes, tonight we are talking about Talking to parents and I just got an email yesterday. Sometimes I hang on to these emails For a long time. Thank you, Lizette. Sometimes I hang on to emails with questions for a long time and then other times I see a question. I'm like, bam, that's gonna be tonight right away. Hi Ella. Good to meet you. Good to have you here so Thanks for the hearts guys. This is great If you don't know what those hearts are if you're not if you're new to periscope That is just from people tapping their screen and you can kind of do it as long as you want to I have some people who are awesome who give me hundreds of hearts through just one broads broadcast So that's pretty awesome Hey Hey, Geraldine. Good to see you. Gosh, you have a really short handle. I couldn't tell what it was. Hello from Rhode Island This is just really exciting. Yeah, Jason, you're a serial tapper. I like that about you I don't even think hearts actually mean anything, but Well, Lizette, I have a lot of stuff on my site for ESL people so and I continue to kind of work on that. Hello, Brazil. Hi Gil Hey, Laura Hola Rodriguez Rodriguez Fortes Nina, okay, I'm gonna get started. So Tonight's periscope has a download if You are familiar with how this works then I don't need to explain it to you But I'm gonna explain it to people who do not know how it works if you go to cult of pedagogy calm slash periscope That is a page that I keep on my website Where if I have something that I want you to be able to download Then I put it there and that way that you can do this Ivy I am no longer in the classroom. I work full-time now to help teachers I was a middle school language arts teacher for almost eight years and then I worked for four years at the university level teaching teachers and I fell in love with teaching teachers and So instead of going to the PhD route and working through universities. I decided to start my own website and Here I am so the download tonight and I can see somebody's in there now It's just basically the major points that I'm gonna be making And then a couple of links to a few Articles that I found online that are good for this topic. So Before I get started When I'm finished tonight, I am going to I'm gonna talk a little bit about two summer projects that I have Two summer study projects that I have if you wanted to to join me on those And also if you are not familiar with me at all, my name is Jennifer Gonzalez. I have a Website called cult of pedagogy and it is just all for teachers. It's just everything to help teachers do their work better I try to feed the souls of teachers. I try to help you Become better teachers and actually enjoy it more build better relationships with your students So my handle which is cult of pedagogy if you just take that and type calm at the end of that You will find my website and what I would love for you to do is sign up for my mailing list Because especially if you've just been watching me on Periscope if you sign up for my mailing list I send a weekly email every Sunday with links to my newest blog posts and then other Announcements about stuff I've made that you can use and that kind of stuff So if you go to cult of pedagogy and just click about there's a link right there to subscribe And it's super easy and you I have a members only library of free downloads that you can have and Then you know you get an email from me every week. So and I try to keep them really short Okay Talking to parents. This is the email that I received. I'm not gonna read it word for word But the teacher was basically told by her principal that she needed to work on her communication with parents that Parents were basically getting Little defensive and a little angry from the way that she was Conducting her phone calls to them and and so basically her question was, you know What is a resource that I can use to teach me to do a better job of actually contacting parents so that they don't get Defensive or upset or angry when I call them I want I'm calling them about their child's behavior and this is a situation that we have all been in you have to make that parent phone call or that parent contact because the child is Displaying some kind of problematic behavior and what we're basically talking about here is we're not talking about oh I have a concern that you know, he may have some sort of a health issue. We're talking about basically a Problem a disruption to your class. Hey Brian good to see you in here. So There are definitely some do's and don'ts to this so I've just got a couple of tips that are my own tips and also some that I've pulled together from some other articles And then there are some links one of the things I found today that I never knew existed And I wish I had known that it existed when I was starting out as a teacher Are there are a couple of websites that offer scripts for making parent phone calls, which I thought was great They didn't have a whole lot. Yep. We're gonna get to that They didn't have a whole lot of scripts But I thought you know would be great to actually come up with maybe 10 different scripts for handling different issues with parents whether it's disruptive behavior or You know not getting work in or whatever it is But anyway, these these don't have all of that But I just was brainstorming that that would be a neat thing to have maybe you'll do it someday okay So I've broken down my tips into two sections before the call and then during the call one of the Tips that I saw that I agreed with very strongly was that you will have a lot more success communicating with parents if you Start the lines of communication before there is ever a problem And I actually saw this in two different places teachers talked about Making a lot of effort at the very beginning of a term or the beginning of a school year to reach out to every single parent Which they all said right away This is very time-consuming So it's it's not not they're not saying oh, it's super easy to do this But to try to make one-on-one contact with every single parent Because what you're doing is you're establishing a relationship with them you're starting off on a positive note They they can see you they can get to that's a good idea Nancy if you can plan for five or so a week That's a good idea and what you might want to do and the thing is you can kind of tell right at the beginning of the school year Sometimes you can tell in the first ten minutes of a class which kids are probably going to give you trouble So make those the first phone call so you can start off on a positive note with those kids parents before you have something negative to call about so So But what we're talking about here is probably a situation where maybe the teacher didn't do that and so You know if you haven't already established a Positive relationship then you have to start from somewhere Kathy's asking call and not email Here's the thing. I think this is now. I've got three school-aged children and we see a lot of we get a lot of like newsletters and You know emails and stuff like that just sort of those I think are very good for just keeping parents informed But what we're talking about right now is making that connection with the parent about a More of a personal connection that is basically saying, you know, hey, I've met your kid I like your kid. It's it's you know, here's who I am. Here's a little bit about me Maybe you can just sort of ask them a couple of questions about their kid Is there anything that I should know and the thing is we send forums home in that sort of thing asking You know, is there anything you think I should know about your child? But the question came up a few minutes ago email and not or call and not email I think to really kind of get parents on your side and feel like They know you as a person. There is something different about a call or a face-to-face meeting that really Makes a difference I think because they then they feel like they know you as a person I've talked before on on these periscopes about how much I love voxer because you can hear the person's voice And it really just seems much more intimate that way So I think making that effort to make a call even though I hate talking on the phone I could see how it could benefit and you may just want to look at your class rosters and choose like Okay, these 20 kids I think I need to start up a good Respond or a good relationship with this kid's parents right away because I have a feeling I'm gonna have to be making Some challenging phone calls a little bit further down the line. So let's start off right away With a good relationship with them And really I mean you could just say so tell me a little bit about about Jason about your son about well, you know And then just you know Let them tell you a little bit. How was it school year last year? What should I know about him as a teacher? You know, you don't even have to do a whole lot of the talking just showing that interest Most parents are going to be absolutely bowled over by the fact that you even bothered So I got the question about whether this applies to middle school and I'm assuming it's also high school Because you're dealing with over a hundred and twenty kids most of the time So way more challenging my first piece of advice would be Narrow down your list at least to kids who you think might be more challenging I don't some people who have managed to do it over the course of that first month I have done a home visit. Yeah, I did one And it was it was good We didn't see a huge change in behavior, but I felt like I had I had done my part and I had made an effort There was another question about what about parents that are hard to get in touch with Really my basic message is that you make more of an effort in General than what you would normally do which is to not what you would normally do But instead of waiting for a problem to occur Reach out to the parents in some way if they're not easy to get a hold of by phone One of the first questions I think teachers should ask parents at the beginning of the year is what is your preferred mode of contact? I know for my kids school They won't even let us leave the building unless we've given them a couple of phone numbers and email addresses so that they can definitely Reach us, but I mean if it's with some families It's just you just can't and that's the thing with with families that you can't get a hold of You probably won't be facing that awkward phone call home either. I mean, I know every year there are some kids where it's basically you and them Working out a behavior plan because the parents are just for whatever reason the parents are not Are not getting involved too much. So so the point of the the first tip is to try To make contact before there is a problem Voxer I think could be a great app to use for parents You just have to convince them to get on I have slowly but surely gotten Family members of mine to get on it But a lot of people just don't love it as much as I do yet because they don't have a regular chat going with anybody But I would love it remind is also good. I think remind is good for Blasts to everybody so that everybody knows hey, we've got this deadline or whatever it is What what I'm really focusing on tonight is more of those problematic phone calls One thing that you all are bringing up to is documentation Which is very very important and it's so simple to document really I mean you just make yourself a basic chart and you just put a date and who you called and and what what you Called or wrote about that simple. It doesn't have to be anything more complicated than that just so there is some kind of a record okay So before the call start communicating before a problem occurs Another thing to do before the call and this is to decide which mode of conversation to have My advice is the more sensitive the issue the better it is to talk in Person or on the phone versus sending an email. I would definitely not send an email In any detail about a problem the only time I would contact the parent in email about a problem would be to say I Would like to meet and discuss something. I think that's fine, but we should be trying to get face-to-face or at least phone calls because There's just so much Possibility for misinterpretation in emails you could people can't read your tone in an email And as somebody brought up here in the comments, too Is emails are then printable and they can be used as legal documents against you if a parent gets litigious or something so You just never know and and really I feel like you can Prevent a lot of problems by having a conversation versus Versus doing something in writing embrace the phone call you get good at making them the more you do Yeah, you know instead of thinking I've got a call 130 people just think I'm gonna make five phone calls It's the most important kids. I think for me I mean they're all important but you know the kids who you think you're gonna have the biggest challenges with and if you know what if you're if You're watching this because I'm gonna be putting all these onto YouTube now if you haven't been over to my YouTube channel I put all my old periscopes there. There's like a library of advice for teachers now I think I think it's up to ten. So if you're watching this like later later and in November and you're thinking I never even made those phone calls. Just make them now Just make them now. Okay So better to do something where your voice is active versus something in writing if it's a problem that you want to talk about Be sure to schedule the call or a meeting at a time that is going to be convenient for the parent as Opposed to just calling and I have not taken my advice. I used to just call So I think now I probably would reach out through email find out when is a good time Or if this is a parent that I'm already texting with or something Find out when is a good time for you? I think people appreciate being asked that because Parents are really busy, you know, they're driving kids from here to there. They're trying to get dinner ready So if you want the call to go well That needs to be a time when the parent is prepared to actually sit and pay attention to what you're saying and not be Distracted because they're maybe more likely to have a negative reaction if they're multi-tasking or trying to get something else They're needing to get off the phone The other piece of advice about things to do before the call would be to make an Outline for yourself or take some notes ahead of time about what specifically you want to talk about Maybe even the order of things that you want to make sure that you remember to say if you are like me You I get very Deer in the headlights when I think skyping would be fine, too When I when I'm on the spot I forget things I forget the things that I was supposed to do So it would really help me To just make sure that I have a list of things that I want to make sure that I want to talk about Okay, so during the call and these would be things that you'd be planning on your your bullet points are on your outline First off when you call double-check and make sure is this a good time to talk to you have a few minutes Even if you agree it ahead of time that it would be just make sure Again, I just think that's being considerate And then start with and a whole bunch of people have already written this in the Comments and I had it also here too is to start with a genuine compliment of the child Do not underestimate the importance of doing this saying something positive about the child and the more specific you can make it The better as opposed to saying oh, you know jason's such a great kid I mean that really that just sounds like you're phoning it in literally so um It just doesn't sound like you you're really paying that much attention. So try to think of something really genuine it could be He is a great friend. He gets along really well with his peers or he's really funny You know, he said something today that really cracked me up Or I mean and you could go super generic by just saying I really enjoy having it in his class jason. You are a good great kid So try to think of something specific. It could even be You know, um We were working on the science project together and he was just really really focused today And that that that just made me happy to see that he was really into what we were working on I mean it can be just something like that, but you know to to get a phone call from a teacher Knowing already that there is something that they need to talk about The parent is going to be apprehensive. So hearing something positive about their child. It's going to put them more at ease It's going to make them realize that you do want the best for their child And and it does it just sets it sets a positive tone Then and a lot of what I'm getting here in this order too. These are on some of the scripts that I've linked you to in this document This is really important and this I'm speaking really to the person who wrote me here too It's really important that when you introduce the problem that's been happening lately that you be very neutral and descriptive about the behavior that you're seeing As opposed to saying He's been very disruptive in class That's a more of a judgment call What you want is to have a neutral fact-based description of what he's actually doing if he's being disruptive That's probably true, but what is he actually doing? So for example When I am giving verbal instructions to the class He he talks out Uh, and this happens several times in every class and just be sort of very clinical about it like that and And then describe what you have already done to deal with the problem when I've given him a verbal warning I can tell that he you know, he hears me and he wants to try and then just a few minutes later he It'll happen again, and it just keeps happening and it can be very um You can also use I statements I'm assuming that a lot of people know what these are But when you talk about how something impacts you as a teacher or as a person as opposed to saying he makes this happen It also can kind of go over better So you'd say it makes it very difficult to get through the instructions And sometimes it also derails, you know, the other kids say they'll start to pay attention to him instead of to me And we end up not getting through everything that we um We need to A suggestion that just came up, which is great is Ask for the parents input once you have described the problem And the impact that it is having not only on maybe you and on the other students, but the impact that it's having on this student's education Um, you know, this is actually making it hard for him to hear my instructions because he's always, you know, got something to say And so he doesn't hear and then this creates problems later But can you hear how sort of neutral i'm not saying he always wants to do this and he always wants to say this and he's You know, he keeps trying to derail class that would make any parent defensive Just describe what he's actually doing. I put in my notes um Avoid making assumptions about the child's motivation I think sometimes people in general can get very defensive when you assume what their motivation is for doing something You can clearly describe what the behavior is that you're seeing But don't say something like he just loves getting attention from his peers You don't know the reason why he's doing things he's doing You may have a pretty good idea of why you think he is But saying why he's doing it, especially if the assumption is something negative That is definitely going to make the parent more defensive Probably I mean if this is behavior that the parent is also seeing at home. I'm thinking if my Second daughter's teacher called me about this problem. I would say yes. She does the same thing to me at home so You know, it's we're talking about parents who are going to be more likely to be defensive Sometimes you're going to have parents who say i'm so sorry, you know, we're dealing with the same thing at home We don't know what to do But be super neutral in your descriptions. Okay Avoid making generalizations like always and never And the best thing is if you have documented this behavior, you could say well, here's an example In the last week, I started to just keep a tally of how often this was happening and you know 15 times I was giving verbal instructions and during those 15 times It happened 30 times so twice at least each time He he had something to say and interrupted and so it's happening quite frequently um So instead of saying he always does this because anybody can argue against that and again it makes people defensive So ask their opinion about the issue. What do you think is going on? You know, you've You've been through others other school years with him What do you think may be going on because what you're doing then is you are inviting their expertise as parents they know this child way better than you do and This is really showing a lot of respect to the parent by asking for their opinion To me, this is an important one to put in your notes because you may forget to do it You may intend to do it, but you may forget So yeah, you may also want to ask for their suggestions. You might say Here's what I think I'd like to try What do you think about this? Do you think this is going to work? And it could be a plan where maybe every day he gets a little, you know Check mark if he was quiet or something like that or maybe only one time and then the parent sees it and they talk about it Um, but you know, the parent might say, you know, he had this same problem last year And here's what his teacher did. They might give you an idea that you never even had Or they might say he really responds to this when I do this at home Then then it really really works. So why don't you try that? So That's a great suggestion too. Nancy involved the student in the plan too And and you know what you might want to do is tell the parent Can you talk to him tonight and ask him what's going on? you know Ask him what he thinks we can do, you know explain to him Elicit their help with this and That's weird. I just saw my own name come up in my document. Okay Gosh, you all are writing such good things You're writing such good things in the comments Mario you mentioned making a plan for follow-up later So yes make a plan with them to follow up later Let's let's talk again in a couple of weeks and and we'll see how it's gone But I think it's a pretty good idea You know to say things like Instead of saying I want to talk to you about a problem with your son say I I need your help with something Because this is what's going on and and and really be Always conveying an attitude of partnership This is a partnership between us. We both want your son to do well And you know, what can we do together? and I I think some parents have had a lot of negative experiences with teachers and so With a few parents It may not matter what you do And I'd say if you get a parent who is defensive I mean what what you can do is Certainly try not to play into that and get into a power struggle or you know an argument with them um But you can say you know listen, I I am not trying to upset you I want us to work together on this, you know And if they really just seem very hostile then you may want to end the call and see if you can Set up a meeting with a third person. Yeah with an administrator um And and mario, that's a good idea try to work with more with the student You know if you realize that you've got a parent who isn't going to be helpful Then maybe what you need to do is work with the student, but I would never communicate to that student We have to work together because your parent is being too difficult You are not going to win any battles that way um at all Oh, we're seeing some other comments here too. Okay. Yeah, you never want to let the student know that you've decided that their parent is not helpful Even if you think that the kid might agree with you still unprofessional not not a good idea. Okay Okay, so we talked about taking them for a time make a plan for follow-up All right, what other suggestions do you all have that's that's the basics that I kind of came up with tonight And I've got three different articles that I thought were were good um And those are in the the document if you if you came in after I talked about this I've got a downloadable just a super easy google doc that's got links to a couple of good articles Hang on a second Yes, get back to them in a couple of weeks with an update Say I want to optimize your child's learning. That's wonderful. No, what do you want to do for the kid? But oh, I didn't see that one I don't like it when I miss comments three people at one time wrote really really long good things Uh agreed to email parents with the positive things of the day. Okay, that could be part of the plan actually That helps build the teacher-parent relationship She knows her son is difficult and that's okay Sometimes we deal with parents who have had their own negative school experiences and they From what I have heard anyway I mean, obviously I've never heard a parent actually tell their kid this but I've had students tell me My mom says I don't have to do homework. My mom says I don't have to follow the rules of this school And if those kids are telling the truth That's really depressing and it's It's I don't know. I don't know what the answer is to that one. I'd say that family is definitely worth working with But you are going to have to work twice as hard to keep your mindset fresh And and non-judgmental of that that means that parent has had a rough time of it basically and does not trust teachers at all Um We had a really good comment about knowing the cultural background of the child. You're absolutely right. That's that's huge And actually that kind of leads into my book study for this summer. They often see school through their own eyes. Yes Cultural background is important. Yes. Okay any other suggestions? I said I was going to mention the the download So just go to cult of pedagogy.com slash periscope and there will be a link for the may 24th periscope And that's just got this document with a couple of other just really good Lengthier articles than the detail that I went into and one of them is an actual script. It's the last one how to make a parent phone call No, they're only young ones. Uh parenting styles are okay Okay, good. This is really good. Remember that it's a process and not an immediate fix if I'd say listen if I've got a parent who has told their child, you know, they don't have to follow the rules They're only kids once I think maybe then you can You put it back to the parent and say well They're not going to be able to get the education That I think you want them to be able to get unless certain rules are followed because it's just not practical because I have 30 other kids in the class So what would you suggest when he does this if I don't have the expectation that he followed the same rules as everybody else? And again, I think this is a rare occasion um, they may not have a suggestion at the time you know and um Helps to avoid assumptions of the motivations of their behaviors. Yeah. Lizette. I mean, I guess I guess thinking of it is maybe they had a rough time earlier Is the assumption that I make I don't know. It kind of feels like it's safe to assume that they do not like teachers in some way but I mean, maybe you could just go as far as to say can you tell me a little bit more about that? Can you tell me a little bit more about? See the word why it's supposed to make people very defensive why you feel that way I don't know this this one deserves a little bit more thinking I think I may turn this one into a blog post eventually so that we can have more written comments because I find that some of my Blog posts become so much better with the comments that come after them Okay, I think I'm gonna Close up shop for tonight, but a quick announcement in case you missed last week or you haven't seen this announcement anywhere That's a good. Lizette. We need to stay in touch. You have some good good information I am I am doing two summer study projects this summer and they're both going to be in july But since I'm not going to be on periscope if this is one of your main ways of being in contact with me I want to make sure that you know about it Two things number one. I'm doing a book study and the due date basically the day that I'm going to actually talk about it on my blog is July 3rd and the book is called push out the criminalization of black girls in schools And I talked about it a lot in last week's periscope. So briefly it is just about how We are not doing a good job of of meeting the needs of of black girls in our schools in us schools anyway The author Monique Morgan I hope it's Morgan Monique Morgan. I think it is I interviewed her already for the periscope. I've already read the book I'm going to be writing up my own reflections and I interviewed her and I'm going to be sharing all of that on july 3rd so It's I think it's just such an important book because she really talks about what we should be doing differently So that we can see more of these girls be really successful instead of being marginalized into Some pretty bad situations basically. So that's the first thing is the book study The second thing is is I'm kind of teaching a little technology class this summer Um, I created a self-paced course To go along with my tech guide I wrote a book called the teacher's guide to tech and I updated every year and I have a little course that goes with it Because I realized all of those tools would probably be very overwhelming for teachers And so I thought maybe somebody needs like a guide to work through this and projects that they could do So I thought about what the best order would be And I thought about how I learned technology and so I created this little mini eight module course to go along with it It's called jump start and it's meant for people to just work through completely on their own However, I thought it would be kind of neat this summer if I sort of do it with you So anybody who would like to take this course, we're going to do it in the month of july and what I'm doing is I'm setting up a private facebook group and people have already joined. I think there are 22 or 23 people in it now And uh, we're just they're just in it right now. They're just kind of waiting But then as july gets closer, I'm going to actually put out a little schedule of deadlines for the eight modules And some of those modules are not hard at all. I mean the first module is to just write a reflection Um, but some of them are hands-on tech challenges And we're going to just kind of work through it together So so here's here's how you can get to because I don't think you would find it if I just gave you the name If you just go to if you go to cult of pedagogy right now and just look at the second blog post right there It says join us for the cult of pedagogy summer study Click on that It's got information about both things and it has a link directly to the facebook group And it's got a link to the course so that you can buy the course and and get all your materials that you need And everything so uh because i'm saying goodbye to you guys for probably at least four weeks I wanted you to know that because um That's what i'm that's one of the projects i'm working on this summer And one of the reasons why i'm giving myself a little bit of a periscope break so that I can kind of focus on that and Um, also, I've got three kids coming home from school for the summer And it's always hard to get work done when they are around But uh, I will be back and also here's the other thing from from what i'm hearing In the world of people who do broadcasts people are saying um that everybody's now moving to facebook live I don't know if that's the case I don't know if periscope is going away eventually But there is a chance that maybe the next time I broadcast live it'll be on facebook live and not on periscope So that would be another really good reason to be on my mailing list because I will be announcing it there Um, I like periscope too. I've gotten pretty used to it now. So we'll see. Um, I probably will get on periscope If I decide i'm going to move to facebook I will probably make another periscope announcement at least to say hey, i'm not going to be on here I'm not used to facebook live at all yet. I can't figure out how it works yet. But anyway, um, thank you all so much This is so fun. It feels like we're talking back and forth even though I can't hear you um, and if you have enjoyed this and you know, you like Watching me talk um Go over to my youtube channel because I have like a whole collection of these now Plus I have like 20 to 30 other videos of other stuff that I've done. So Um, anyway, you all have a really good summer too. I will see you soon. I'll see you around and um, You know, if you're on my mailing list, you can also email me from there So maybe we can get in touch. Yes. I'm in my new place now I'm in my new very messy office and after vacation I will fix it up and I will show it to you Okay, I'm gonna attempt to stop the broadcast now. Bye guys Never fails Please, please stop. I think I'm just gonna drink my coffee