5 ways video improves school-home communication

Increasingly, district leaders are incorporating video into school-home communication. Many districts that attempted video choices out of necessity throughout the pandemic are seeing the advantages that video can present for guardian engagement and are increasing video choices at the same time as faculties are again to in-person instruction.

Districts are discovering that utilizing video can enhance school-home communication by making the method of engagement simpler for fogeys. Video choices will help with:

• Removing boundaries to school-home communication.
• Providing educators with real-time connections with college students’ households with out the hassles of gathering everybody in the identical location.
• Reaching mother and father who is likely to be exhausting to have interaction in any other case. If a guardian is working two jobs, doesn’t have entry to transportation, or would produce other boundaries to coming to an in-person assembly, a video name could make the method simpler for a guardian.
• An general shift in people’ behaviors and technological expertise to depend on video instruments.

Here are 5 ideas for varsity leaders who need to incorporate video into their school-home communication methods.

1. Make Connecting Simple: Choose Easy-to-Use Technology for Parent Teacher Communication

The extra steps mother and father are requested to take to make use of new expertise in your district, the much less likelihood it’s important to get them to undertake it and use it to construct relationships. When providing video choices, make connecting so simple as attainable for fogeys. Avoid selecting a program that requires a separate app to obtain. Give mother and father the choice to hook up with video conferences with an easy-to-use hyperlink. Making connecting straightforward and user-friendly will assist result in extra constructive interactions and calls. When the expertise is tough to make use of or requires too many steps, it may result in destructive views in your district’s video choices and affect participation.

2. Leverage Data in Calls with Parents to Help Them Understand How Their Child is Doing and Set Shared Goals

During video calls, lecturers can have the coed’s file out there and might share it on the display to assist mother and father perceive how their baby is doing. Incorporating student-specific information might be helpful throughout the dialog to construct a bridge between college and residential and make mother and father really feel a part of the method as stakeholders. According to the Pew Research Center, many Okay-12 mother and father are involved concerning the pandemic’s affect on their youngsters’s schooling. In a latest survey, 61 percent of parents reported that they felt the first year of the pandemic had a negative impact on their child’s education. Sharing information and discussing it collectively will help mother and father perceive how their baby is doing and empower them to be a part of the educational restoration course of.

3. Use Screen Sharing and Visuals to Enhance Calls

Visuals will help improve school-home communication, and utilizing video can present extra flexibility for speaking info with mother and father. Video can permit an educator to share a display throughout a gathering with mother and father to clarify subjects like take a look at scores or a scholar’s educational progress, or attendance, or different information. Having choices for display sharing and visuals could make the assembly extra participating and productive for each mother and father and lecturers.

4. Enable Recording and Logging to Save Teachers Time on Documentation

Teachers are balancing lots on daily basis and are sometimes stretched skinny. Using video conferences can minimize down on the necessity for handbook logging and documentation, which saves lecturers’ time. Automatic logging of communication historical past can lighten the workloads of lecturers. Today’s video instruments can permit for an automatic guardian instructor communication log with recording and documentation, permitting lecturers to concentrate on serving to college students.

5. Meet Parents Where They Are: Use Video as Part of a Variety of Options for Communication

Video must be included as a part of quite a lot of choices for participating mother and father. Not all mother and father will need to use video chat choices. By incorporating versatile choices that meet mother and father the place they’re, reminiscent of calls, texts, emails, video, and in-person communication alternatives, Okay-12 faculties can construct and strengthen robust school-home relationships.

For parent-teacher conferences and different education-focused conferences, providing video conferences might be an effective way to have interaction extra mother and father in Okay-12 schooling. Video calls which might be routinely recorded and saved alongside scholar information and communication information also can make documentation of conferences simpler on lecturers, permitting them to spend extra time educating and serving to college students. Using video for school-home communication can assist faculties’ efforts to have interaction mother and father as stakeholders in serving to Okay-12 college students have higher educational outcomes.

Related:
How clear communication builds belief in our district
5 ways a extra equitable school-home communication system helped our district