Parent Contact 2

Hello to everyone! I'm finally here, Hope everyone is doing well in their classes.I have some very interesting parents with the type of student we have. We are required to make contact calls the first week and follow-up calls every week to insure good numbers and contact with our parents. At first I felt that was too much, but as time went on I found the calls easier to make. Calls don't always have to be on a bad note. We have five personnel in our class so it make for easy calling. We each have a small block of students. The calls themselves are sometimes very interesting. I have some parents who are very aware of the system and all the guidelines that need to be followed for special need students. On the other hand I've had a parent tell me not to ever call her again if we could not deal with her son she would just have him arrested and put away. I find tho in many cases a large number of my student are not well off at home and hate to get a phone call home. I have found it very good practice to find something or many things that are positive to say first before discussing problems. Parents in my opinion are more receptive to a problem after I have told them how well their child is doing in another area. After a while you become familiar with parents and how they feel and the do's and dont's. But you must keep in constant contact. If you only make the initial call and call only when there is a problem then to me that is a problem itself. Parents are our best Allitodealwith our students, well maybe not 100% of the time but even those parents must be informed. Another good practice is to keep a correct and accurate call log. If there were ever any questions about a conversation it can be reviewed. Our school policy requires us to turn in a call log weekly. I would record it if I could. It never fails I'll go to an IEP meeting and get misquoted and have to pull out the call log. Calling parents is definitely one of the most important jobs we have so don't neglect it.