Creating a Change

I have always felt that I have a lot of room for improvement as a teacher.  Not that I wasn't effective, but rather, I am always learning.  From my colleagues, from my students, and from the parents of my students.  Although, to be quite honest,  I think this last one has taken me longer to understand.  I mean, I always asked parents to fill out a "You're the Expert" form about their child at the beginning of the year so they could provide me with information they felt was important to know about their child and their family.   But once they were "mine" in the classroom, we just kind of moved forward.  

This past year opened my eyes even wider to the importance of building and maintaining a strong home-school relationship.  On our last day of school, I was at a science training.  I managed to get back to school before they left so I could at least smile and wave goodbye to them, in hopes of making things seem less scary for them.  But soon we were starting distance learning.  I had no idea what that would look like for Kindergartners.  In my heart, it went against everything I thought I believed about early childhood development.  But we managed.  And we managed to have some fun, continue to learn, and see each other every day, even if it was through a computer screen.  In order for that to happen, I relied on my student's parents.  It was their responsibility to figure out how to get on our zoom meetings.  They had to learn how to use Seesaw, our learning platform.  I realized that I needed to work with the parents just as much as I needed to work with my students.  They were filled with anxiety and questions.  While we had a relationship of trust and they asked the questions, I hadn't given them enough information about the specific work we do in class each day.  They would see occasional math papers come home.  And I would send home a book each night for the child to read.  But they weren't privy to the science notebooks and writing that the children work so hard on each day.  I keep these in class so I can refer to them as I need to for report cards, RTI info, etc.  I would share them at Parent Teacher Conferences, but I wouldn't always send them home in a timely way.  Often it was at the end of the year.  And I know, as a parent myself, that I do not sufficiently read through all of my children's work when it comes home this way at the end of the year. 

Which bring me to my change.  I want to create a way for me to inform parents of the work in our classroom in a more timely manner.  I want them to see examples of their child's work in their science journals.  I want weekly writing samples to be seen.  I feel that this will be helpful if/when we go back to distance learning next year.  Parents will be able to say, "I know the kind of work you do in school."  (Because, as much work as children did at home during distance learning, it wasn't nearly the same amount, or necessarily the same quality, that I see in the classroom.  I can honestly say this is true as a parent of a second grader as well.) 

So... I'd like to investigate using Seesaw in my classroom from the beginning and connecting parents to see their child's work right away.  This would be in addition to the other forms of communication that I use to communicate important class information to families (Class Dojo).