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Understanding the Past, Creating the Present, Imagining the Future
Understanding the Past, Creating the Present, Imagining the Future
“Tan, contact all of your parents within the first month of school. Just introduce yourself and send them your syllabus,” Sandra Angle, my supervisor (and now mentor), told me at the beginning of the school year.
It seemed like a lot of work, especially for a first-year teacher who was still completing his last year of a master program. I had never talked to a parent on the phone nor sent a parent an email. I did it anyway. I’m sure it wasn’t articulate nor eloquent, but it opened a dialogue with one of the most important stakeholders in my students’ education.
The benefits from that one action alone outweighed the time and effort required to write those emails or make those phone calls. Parents were surprised to see a teacher for the first time contacting them on a positive note; calls before were only for emergencies or for behavior issues. It created an immediate relationship between two of the most important people in a child’s life—parents and teachers. It also set a positive tone with everyone for the remainder of the school year.
Most teachers wait until there is a problem before they communicate with their students’ parents. This is a very reactive approach, and it almost never ends well. Being proactive and developing a line of communication with the parents (and students) alleviates a lot of negative issues that can happen throughout a school year.
I absolutely abhor running into problems. Most of what I do as a teacher is to think of things to do (being proactive) as to avoid having to resolve problems throughout the school year (being reactive). Whether it is communicating with parents, developing curriculum, or assessing students, I try to hedge as many problems as much as possible.
Academy of the Renaissance believes in a proactive approach to education.
The following chart shows some of the differences between a proactive teacher and a reactive teacher
|
|
Proactive Teachers | Reactive Teachers |
|---|---|---|
| Communication with Parents | Communicate with all parents within the first month of school | Only communicate when there’s something wrong |
| Norms and Expectations | Develop norms and expectations with students within the first week of school | Teach about norms and expectations when they are violated throughout the year |
| Rapport with Students | Get to know their students early on (interests, strengths, goals); create a community | Rarely know many of their students; class feels segregated into groups |
| Behavior Issues |
Give positive feedback to desired behaviors, minimize punishments
Work with students to correct behavior issues |
Do not recognize positive behaviors, only punish negative behaviors
Send students to office and wait until parent conference |
| Developing the student | Develop good academic habits with students before developing subject skills | Teach academic skills only when most students are failing far into the school year |
| Mental Preparedness | Motivate students before teaching content | Teach content immediately; motivation is not part of a teacher’s duty |
| Content Pacing | Ensure students understand each lesson before moving on | Review or reteach only if most of the class failed an assessment |
| Progress Reports | Give weekly progress reports to both students and parents | Wait for school-wide progress reports to be sent home |
| Curriculum Development |
Create a model project to set standards, expectations, and work out potential issues
Anticipate and address possible questions and challenges students may have with projects or assignments |
Create projects/activities without having done it themselves; fix problems as they arise
Answer questions and challenges as they arise throughout a project or assignment |
Proactive activities always seem like a lot of work. From my personal experience and from observing excellent teachers, the benefits far outweigh the effort and time to do them.
At the leadership level, we can see the two types of administrators: the one who invests a lot of time at beginning of the year to develop a positive environment versus the one who is constantly fixing problems throughout the year. Like teachers, there are stark differences between their approaches as leaders.
The challenge won’t be whether we can find staff members who believe in a proactive approach to education. Neither will it be with teaching students how to be more proactive because that will be embedded into the curriculum. The challenge will be teaching our students’ parents how to take a more proactive approach to education.
I have noticed that successful students often have parents who are proactive about education. These parents look far into their children’s future and help to ensure that all the right pieces and learning environments are in place. They understand the long-term benefits that education will have on their child as well as their family; they often make short-term sacrifices to attain long-term goals.
Developing workshops and making important information accessible to teach parents to how to form academic and career goals with their children will be important. Investing in this approach will have many long-term benefits for all stakeholders.
Problems will arise, but if we can minimize them then we will minimize the resources required to fix them. Academy of the Renaissance believes that the return on investment with a proactive approach to education will maximize our students’ potential to become exemplary global citizens.
