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This is my 3rd year teaching Science and I mostly have my classroom management and science instruction at a place where I am comfortable. This year's major obstacle is keeping up to date with contacting parents. What I have in place now is an e-mail list where I contact all parents that have provided their e-mail addresses to the school. I sent a letter on the first week establishing contact and sharing with them how to check their students grades online. Unfortunately, I only received 20 replies out of 110. My school requires that we call home on the following situations: 1) When a referral is written 2) When a student skips your class 3)When a student fails a major grade (project or test) 4)When a student is failing for a progress report and report card. I keep a folder to keep track of all the phone calls made and I try to keep organized, but I'm feeling increasingly overwhelmed. This year alone I've made over 100 calls home and I cannot keep up. Sadly, the next progress reports are coming out and I'm starting to panic before I even begin calling. My principal requires we submit our parent contact folder but I spend so much time contacting parents, I do not have as much time for other things I consider important. Help, what can I do?

This sounds like you have quite a problem!!! Have you discussed this with your principal? Can you email instead of calling? Could you get the majority of the parents' emails by sending home a written request again? Also be sure to send out positive remarks to parents first in some form because positive remarks makes parents more willing to hear about problem areas.

For written notes that I send home I give a few extra credit points - this seems to help for my students to bring back those letters of introduction that I sent at the beginning of the year. In that letter I request email, phone numbers, and the best way to reach them. Hope this helps!

Thank you for the suggestion. I have postcards I send home for positive comments, my students love them. Unfortunately, this is a new principal and she requires that the parent contact be by phone. I tried sending a report by mail for failures on tests and restricted the phone calls for failing the 9 weeks and or referrals, but I have been told they need to be phone calls. Thank you for the suggestion to send another general note home to update parent information. Not all of the phone numbers are up to date and I could start the second semester by offering extra credit to those students who bring them back.

I forgot to add a question: Is it a normal request to require that many phone calls be made? I've only taught for 3 years in this school and this is the first time I have been required to do this.

We're required to make parent contact a minimum of 3 times before referrals (unless it's a severe offense) and before progress reports/report cards to notify that a student has a D or F. I usually rely on e-mail for both of these with no complaints from admin. For progress reports I sent out individual e-mails detailing their grades and what they could do to fix them. I was overwhelmed before report cards last quarter because I had about 60 kids with a D or F. I ended up sending a mass e-mail to those parents (blind copied) with a general statement. Something along the lines of "Your student currently has a D or F in 6th grade science. As report card grades are due in a week there is not a lot that can be done to pull this grade up. Many of you were contacted prior to progress reports as well. If you would like to know why your student has this grade and would like to know what they can do to improve in the future, please let me know." I also send out a weekly e-mail to parents who signed up. I just detail important reminders, upcoming assignments/quizzes/lessons, and new information they need to know. They are not required to reply unless they have questions. I've gotten really positive feedback from the parents and it keeps them up to date. Hope this helps. :)

There are automatic calling systems you can subscribe to for a small fee that I have found to be helpful. I record a message, and then enter all the parents I want to be called with that message and I leave instructions for how to reach me if they would like to talk more about it in person. My school also has strict policies for how to reach out to parents, and this system has saved me lots of time. For me, my main struggle was time, so this has helped return time into my schedule.

In terms of general updates, I love using Remind101. It is a free web based application that parents can sign up for and you can send updates via text message. The best part is no parents will have your cell phone number! They give you a separate Remind101 number that parents cannot respond to. I also have an account that I use to send my students reminders about upcoming homework, quizzes, or tests. I have gotten great feedback from the students saying that they like when I send reminders right to their phone.

Thank you for everything you have been very helpful. I will try to use the e-mails for more than introduction and make them a little more personalized. Also Ali, do you know where I can find these automated calling systems? I still want to call some parents personally, but I think it will help the reduce the amount of work required for me at least for low test scores.

Thank you Samantha, I use remind101 for my students, but I did not think to use remind101 for parents as well. That sounds like a great idea. What kind of posts do you to send parents and how often?

Yetzul, I think the remind 101 is great for just that reminders. It is impersonal if you need to give them bad news. I am a preservice teacher but have twins in school and the teacher does use remind 101 for making sure we remember. When it comes to failing a test or behavior issues, i do think contact is necessary. If parents are not responding, you can give extra credit points and points towards a reward like a pizza party. Make students part of the process in asking parents to contact teachers. My friend has taught many years and she calls, sets up meetings and calls them again the day of the meeting since parents sometimes forget to show up. Never tell students what the meeting is about since they may not help if they think it is bad. Hope this helps, Tania Marrero

Yetzul, I can't imagine making the number of phone calls you must need to make. For every parent I am able to connect with, there are probably five that I must leave a message. Increasingly, especially with younger parents, voicemail is about as appropriate as a passenger pigeon! Most are not available during school hours, and few will return a call. I also had quite a few problems getting email addresses from parents - the students always complained their parents did not have email, but I think that was usually an excuse, even in a district with a significant population of free and reduced school lunch students. Most of the parents, like their kids, do much of their communication using texting. If you have a cell number, which is the primary number for a quite a large proportion, you might send a text to request a call back. I like the idea of having a number separate from your private cell phone. I do something similar using Google, and have a free number provided by Google. I can text from within Google, and the history is saved for me. Parents seem to be more likely to respond to a text. Most of the school districts in my area also have management systems that allow direct communication with the parents from the gradebook, assuming that parents have provided email addresses and actually check their email. Hopefully, some of these suggestions will help you out. Good luck with handling this less-than-satisfying part of your job.

Hey Yetzul Flores Werner, my name is Naddy Alcide.I wanted to suggest using the "Remind 101" system that Samantha Carney mentioned. It sounds like a great method to implement to get in contact with your student's parents. I never used that system before, but when I graduate next following year, I would be interested in using the "Remind 101" system with my students as well as their parents.