Kuyper Christian School was started by families and exists for families. When parents enrol their children at Kuyper, we enter into a partnership where the school and the parents work together in the education of their children. Your school-age children will spend six and half hours a day, five days a week, for approximately forty weeks a year at school. With this in mind, it is important that there is regular, open communication between parents and the school. It was wonderful to see so many parents at the Meet The Team evening a couple of weeks ago. This was an excellent opportunity to start the communication ball rolling.
Regular communication is vital, but I do think that sometimes parents worry that they’ll be annoying their child’s teacher if they send them too many emails.
“Surely teachers don’t want to be reading lots of emails about what is happening in my child’s life …”
But they do!
Teachers want to partner with you. They want to hear the things that are going well, as well as the things that your child is finding difficult. They want to share in important moments and be prayerfully engaged in the messiness of family and school life. Nothing brings a teacher joy more than the feedback that one of their students loves learning, feels valued, and is eager to come to school!
But even more, consider this: no relationship will be healthy if it is built on the idea that one person will speak to the other only when they are unhappy about something. On the contrary, if you’ve sent five emails filled with encouragement and open sharing, then if you need to have a difficult conversation with your child’s teacher, you’re five times more likely to be satisfied with the result. The reason for this is simple: you’ve built a relationship, established a shared connection, and fostered trust that the teacher has your child’s wellbeing at heart.
If you haven’t already done so, drop your child’s teacher an email. Tell them a couple of things that are unique about your child. Share the things that most excite your child about the year ahead and the things that worry them. Let them know that you are praying for them. In other words, invest in a partnership that will bear fruit in the future.
Mark Ramsay
Principal