This afternoon I had the opportunity to be part of a fishbowl process at one of our buildings. The leadership team and I were on the outside engaged as an observer as a small group of parents and the principal on the inside discussed school/parent communication through Skyward and Swift. The discussion was a follow-up to data from a parent and teacher survey.
Much of what I heard reinforced what I have learned over time including the lack of consistency from school-to-school and from teacher-to-teacher within a school. We don’t have system expectations for teachers to create and maintain a swift site. This is difficult for parents to understand because they view the tool as informative and essential for supporting their children and wonder why all their kid’s teachers can’t do it the same way. It also became clear that there is confusion between the purpose for Skyward and Swift and that we are doing little to support parents and students in understanding how to access and use the sites. We have also learned that we are not keeping up with Skyward updates and that parents and teachers are not receiving notice of these updates and support to learn how to use them.
Many other issues and needs surfaced during the discussion with an important new learning for me. In the “old” days when we reported through quarterly grades, we always heard from parents why wasn’t I told that there was a problem in a time frame that I could do something about it? They could point to a grade and say how come I didn’t know. In the “new” electronic reporting world it is reversed. When the issue is raised by a parent we can point to an online report that, if monitored, the problem was apparent. Unfortunately, parents can leave this situation feeling like we are labeling them as bad parents, something we do not want to do.
We also need to be sure that the electronic data is available to warn parents and students and that they know how to access it. This is not always the case which leads me to another set of questions.
*How often should online grades be updated?
*Should all teachers be required to establish and maintain websites?
*What does updated mean?
*Should the format and required information for a website be consistent from building-to-building and teacher-to-teacher?
*Who makes these decisions in our system and how are they made?
Momentum is building to answer these questions as they play a role in the perceptions that parents have about our customer service. As one of our principals says – do we want our parents to see interactions with us with Nordstrom quality or do we want them leaving these interactions feeling like they just visited the DMV? Any thoughts?
4 comments:
These are great questions. I think the key is that teachers and parents are communicating whether it is through newsletters, websites, or grade updates online/paper and if they are not then that is the concern. In order for students to be successful in our system we need to be sure that we have a great connection to home and that we have support from our families in our system. If teachers are going to be required to have updated websites and grades then there needs to be an assurance that parents and students are going to use this resource to make learning a meaningful connection between the home and school. If teachers want to expected to update using technology then parents need to commit to looking at it and being a part of these updates. I update my website weekly but I am not sure that I have a flow of traffic to my site that makes the effort warranted. My questions are this:
1. Does an increase in online access make a difference in the education of our students if parents and students are not taking advantage of this up to date information and data?
2. Is the real concern that teachers need to be more communicative with our families?
3. Should all the burden of student progress be put on the teachers? I have many parents that e-mail me and vice versa which makes for a great home/school connection and those students find lots of success.
4. What are the basics for required information on the web? Won't there always be those that have a super website and therefore parents will expect that all have that.
My concern is that if we have a communication concern then that is the real issue we should be addressing. Is this issue solved by forcing all staff to have updated websites or by finding some guidelines for teachers to follow in order to ensure that quality communication is happening between parents and educators. Furthermore, I am concerned that depending on what the minimum requirements are, do we want our staff spending time updating a website or working on their lesson plans to give students a high quality lesson that is designed to meet the needs of our diverse students.
Lastly, when we discuss customer service, I have a concern that we may lose the focus that we are a learning community. When I think of customer service, I think of my experience at a restaurant. When I go out to eat, I have an expectation that someone will be there to bring me a drink, someone will cook the food, someone will make sure that I am taken care of, and that they are nice to me during my dining experience. But in a learning community I do not view it as a service I am providing but rather a partnership between the parent, the student, the administrator, and the teacher in which all of us play a role and need to have a part in the education of our children. If we are going to make a learning community then we need to have quality communication and follow through from all people in our community when the information is shared.
“The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.” George Bernard Shaw
We need to ensure that we are communicating but the avenue for that, in my opinion is still up or debate.
Scott makes many great points. To me the most important lies with his assessment of our profession. The hackles on my back go up every time a business (Nordstroms or any other) is used to compare teaching kids. I prefer the (more realistic) metaphor of building a community structure before the days of construction companies...like a menenite community coming together to put up a neighbor's barn or the Pilgrims building a church for their town. Everyone works together, all the key players are involved, working together to raise something from which all benefit, either directly or indirectly. For the most part, business models are Darwinian in nature, survival-of-the-fittest, the strong ensuring the destruction of the weak for the greater good of the species. How many parents want the smartest child elevated at the expense of the other 99%? What a horrible world it would be if children were reduced to widgets (I personally interact every day with some beautiful widgets in the "lower 99%").
What does this have to do with the questions in your post? As I see it, a fundamental philosophy underlies it all and keeping this Big Picture in mind (I believe) helps to insure the direction of the conversation stays true to our mission. Nuff said...for today.
I am all for communication.
I am fine with adding requirements for communication with parents, as long as you are then going to take something off of our plate to accommodate this new request and addition to our current workload?
Perhaps adding self directed time would allow this type of extensive communication. In Issaquah, teachers get two hours per week that is self-directed via late arrival on Wednesday's. I think we get one half day near winter break. Maybe that could be the day we "update" our SWIFT sites.
Teachers teach and run their classrooms in different ways. Later in life, these 21st century learners will learn that their bosses too are different and do things in different ways. Perhaps that “Nordstrom” level administrator could pass that along to parents. I am to busy here in Classroom 10.
I love having the electronic communication via skyward and swift. I have had so many more students stay on top of their assignments this way than ever before. With that said...it takes a LOT of time!! I update my swift site every blue day with class notes, class assignments, homework assignments, and test dates. My parents and students have come to expect that from me and I get emails from them asking me to update it if there is ever a chance I forget. I update skyward daily so parents can see if the daily assignment was completed or not. Again, my parents and students have come to expect this from me. Sending emails via skyward are nice but it is nowhere as fast as sending a traditional email.
THIS TAKES TIME and is only successful if we update it often and encourage our parents and students to use it. If this has become a new expectation of a successful teacher, then the district should provide us the time to do that. Just because we can do more than we could in the past doesn't mean we can do more in the same amount of time.
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