A Case Study in Parent-School Relationships: From Adversary to Ally

Rabbi Menachem Linzer

School leaders focus mostly on things like curriculum, teacher support and retention, student behavior, or fundraising. When it comes to parents, we usually do our best to tiptoe around them and only get involved when there is a crisis. At our school, we’ve made a conscious change of perspective and have been engaging in a process where we learned that healthy and positive parent relationships are, in fact, central to the success of the school on many levels and need to be embraced, not avoided. It is my pleasure to share with fellow school leaders how we came to this realization, what we did about it, and what we’ve learned so far.

Identifying the Problem

Over the past year, several factors started to converge, making us realize that our parent relationships aren’t where we want them to be. A major area of parental concern was around communication. Our parent survey showed dissatisfaction with communication from the school. In many conversations with parents we heard that parents felt out of the loop about their child’s progress, late to hear about concerns, and what was going on in the class in general. In one particularly challenging situation parents of a particular class sent a joint letter to the administration to share their concerns about the lack of communication around low reading scores, which seemed to reflect a general erosion of trust in this particular group. In addition, teachers and administrators were struggling with many contentious parent conversations where parents were crossing the line. 

In our leadership team meetings, as we reflected on the state of the school and the issues that needed attention, we started to connect the dots, and a pattern began to emerge. We noticed that many of these issues pointed to cracks in the critical area of trusting parent-school relationships.

It’s possible that this decline in trust began during the Covid years when health restrictions meant that parents were in school a lot less, and some of our systems and events were put on hold to attend to the urgent needs of the time. Anxiety increased and trust in all public institutions in general was questioned. Four years later, it seemed that this lack of trust was becoming a vicious cycle, eroding trust on both sides: the less our parents trusted the teachers, the more the teachers avoided sharing with or engaging the parents, which led to even less trust, etc. We needed to address this, and we decided to make it our school-wide focus for the current school year.

Crafting the Plan

In the spring and summer, our leadership team began to articulate the broad outlines of the key areas that would need to be addressed and how. It was important to us to ensure that the plan was manageable and realistic given all of the existing demands and responsibilities people had. At the same time, we realized that it was an important investment of time that, if done well, would pay significant dividends and make our jobs easier and more enjoyable!

When facing a challenge in a relationship, it’s crucial to understand that you can’t control how the other person or group acts or feels. In our case, we wanted the parents to trust us, but there was no magic wand we could wave to make that happen. Instead, we needed to find things we could do on our own that could move the needle on strengthening the parent-school relationship and catalyze a change.

We realized that if we had any hope of having positive parent-school relationships, we needed to make sure to start them on the right foot. To accomplish this, we focused on orientations, welcome emails, and welcome phone calls. But a strong start wasn’t going to be enough. We needed a plan that would maintain, support, and continue to grow these relationships throughout the school year. To do so, we focused on Nachat Notes, classroom updates, and reporting concerns directly and early. Additionally, to help get parents on board, we saw an opportunity to articulate and educate our parents in a shared vision for parent-school relationships. Finally, we needed to be sure that our teachers and staff understood our goals and the steps we would be taking to improve the parent-school relationship. 

Teacher Training

For any of this to work, we knew we needed to get teachers on board, not just with the plan but with the entire concept. We began with a summertime staff workshop called “Parents: Adversary or Ally?” The premise was that while it often seems that parents and teachers are on opposite sides, in truth, most of their interests are aligned. While they each have their considerations, in almost all cases, both parents and the school want what is best for the child. 

To give teachers tools for handling difficult parent conversations, we introduced language for turning those conversations into alliance-building opportunities and engaged in role-playing together. Developing the alliance concept and role-playing how to enlist parents into this alliance, even through difficult conversations, resonated with teachers. They were excited about the possibility of turning these relationships around and felt they now had the framework and language to start doing just that.

Before School – Orientations and Welcome Emails

To begin building the parent-teacher relationship, we wanted to ensure that every parent and student had a chance to meet their teachers face-to-face before the start of the school year. We invited parents and students for orientations with their teachers before school started, in conjunction with locker setup. Preschool-4th grade students met their lead and resource teachers, and middle school students met with their faculty advisors. After the orientations were over, we reflected on what went well and what we would want to change for the following year.

Each parent also received a welcome email from their child’s teachers before the start of school. This email contained information that included the best way to communicate with the teachers, some background information about the teachers, and key information for the first days of school.

Welcome Call in the First Month of School

In addition, we also wanted every parent to receive a welcome call from one of their child’s teachers within the first month of school. More personal than the email or the orientation, this call would invite parents to share any specific hopes, dreams, or concerns for their child for the upcoming school year. This phone call would advance the relationship beyond the friendly welcome stage to kickstart active collaboration between the parents and school. To make these calls manageable and keep things organized, we assigned students to specific teachers, each calling on the team’s behalf.

Checking In With Teachers

At our first faculty meeting of the year, we asked teachers to reflect on and share how the calls were going. While they were mostly going well, we learned that once we had completed a few weeks of the school year, some calls turned into mini-conferences and these calls took longer than anticipated, turning into a drain on the teachers’ time. We discussed the issue at the meeting and decided to allow teachers to send emails to the remaining parents on their list to create at least some touch points before the Chagim. While less personal, any connection was better than none. For next year, we decided it would be best for these calls to be made before school starts or within the first two weeks of school.

Nachat Notes

We instituted Nachat Notes as a key proactive way to continue building a positive parent relationship. Teachers were trained to write Nachat Notes, sharing a positive thing a child did, and they practiced and role-played together. Once again, we divided the student body amongst the school staff to ensure that each student would receive at least one Nachat Note and that the teachers would have a manageable load. To track the progress of each initiative, teachers were expected to log their calls and notes on a spreadsheet, which was reviewed regularly during team meetings.

Parents’ reaction to the Nachat Notes has been incredible. We’ve started to hear many nice, unsolicited comments of appreciation from parents. Parents are pleasantly surprised by these notes, and often, their comments are followed by how much they and/or their child really likes that teacher. The positive reactions from parents also fuel teachers (though some teachers report a low rate of parent response to their positive notes). At our upcoming in-service day, we will continue to reinforce and support the work teachers have been doing by sharing many of the positive parent responses (a teacher’s idea!).

Classroom Updates

A key piece of this initiative was to ensure that classroom updates were being shared with parents proactively and regularly. This would increase trust by keeping the parents informed about what their children were doing in school and would address one of the key pieces of feedback we were hearing from parents. While this may sound simple, with many teachers, many classes, and many communication platforms from which to choose, each with pros and cons, it was more complicated than we had thought. In the end, we decided to stick with the communication channels we’d been using already and see if we could improve the communication by tightening up the expectations and formats. We gave clear guidelines about how often teachers are expected to email or post updates and shared suggested templates to make it easier for teachers to prepare the communications.

Sharing Student Concerns Directly and Early

A less structured but equally important part of the initiative is for teachers to bring any student concerns to parents’ attention early with a phone conversation. In the past, many teachers had avoided making these calls due to a lack of confidence in how to handle the call or fear of backlash from the parent. Often, the call was only made once the issue became a crisis, giving parents more fuel to complain, as they felt they were being kept out of the loop. Other times, an email, carefully crafted and edited by a supervisor, was sent instead, which, despite best intentions, often resulted in spiking parent anxiety and misreading the tone, further damaging the relationship. At times, the administrator handled all the parent communication to ease the challenge for the teacher, which unintentionally resulted in further diminishing the parent-teacher relationship and eroding parents’ trust in the teacher.

To turn this around, we set out to empower, educate, and support teachers to be the primary communicators with the parents and to raise concerns directly and early and by phone. Now, when a concern about a student is raised at a team meeting, the administrator leading the meeting asks the teacher if they’ve contacted parents about it yet. If not, they coach the teacher on how to communicate the issue in a productive and alliance-strengthening way. While not perfect, teachers have been making these calls much earlier and more often than in recent memory.

Inviting Parents To School More

To continue to foster a positive relationship with parents, we’ve also prioritized programs to bring parents into the school earlier in the year. After the Chagim, we start our series of Open Classrooms for 1st and 2nd grade and a Yom Horim program for preschool where parents are invited on a certain day to join their child’s class for tefilla, morning meeting, and a special learning activity. With orientation and Open School Night, this was the parents’ third time coming into their child’s class since the start of the year. The atmosphere at these programs and the vibe between parents and teachers have been very positive and relaxed, reflecting a stronger and more trusting relationship. 

A Shared Vision for Parent-school Relationships

Finally, we articulated a set of Shared Core Beliefs and Commitments for the school and parents and invited parents to join us in adopting them. This language creates a vision of what a healthy and positive parent-school relationship can look like and to which we can all aspire. To make these beliefs and commitments part of our culture, we knew we would need to reinforce them repeatedly. We added them to the parent handbook, highlighted them in an email to school parents, and asked parents to sign a handbook acknowledgment before the start of school. At Open School Nights, I spent time reviewing them with each group of parents and elaborating on the background and rationale for this initiative. We created professional-quality posters of the Commitments and placed them strategically in the main office, our conference room, and the administrative offices for parents and administrators to see. These serve as a constant reminder when speaking with parents.

Next Steps

To keep it moving forward, we are committed to:

1. Encouraging teachers by showing them the amazing impact of their work.
2. Monitoring the initiatives and ensuring follow-through.
3. Making parent-school partnerships a part of everything we do. For example, our admin team came up with a great creative idea to create a bulletin board showcasing teachers’ personal interests to help parents and teachers connect personally around areas of common interest.

Later in the year, we will gather data from both teachers and parents and adjust the program for next year as needed. While we are only in the early stages of this initiative, we are encouraged by positive results so far, both from parents and teachers.

Rabbi Menachem Linzer is the Principal of Hillel Torah Day School in Skokie, Illinois. Rabbi Linzer is a collaborative leader who believes in empowering others to maximize their impact. In addition to mentoring his staff at Hillel Torah, Rabbi Linzer has a thriving coaching practice where he supports the growth and development of fellow Jewish day school leaders. Prior to Hillel Torah, Rabbi Linzer taught and led at SAR Academy and Ramaz. He is a YU graduate with a bachelor’s in physics, a master’s in education, and rabbinic ordination. He can be reached at [email protected]. 

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