Establishing a Plan for Home-School Communication

By Jennifer Harber, Ed.M.

Transitions to the new school year are filled with changes for children, families, and school staff. New school teams mean new ideas, insights, and energy, as well as the need to build new relationships and understanding. In ideal situations, children and families have been in the transition process for some time before school begins: meeting the staff, orienting themselves to new spaces, and learning the new routines and expectations. Regardless of how much pre-transition planning has been done, a new school year and a new team are just that - new; and new implies an adjustment and transition period.

In order for children with social-cognitive deficits to be successful, a new school year requires that information be shared among teachers, parents and children. A new school year creates the need for these children to adapt to new routines, expectations, and structures. New is also a predictor of struggle for many of these kids. Yet, it is also an opportunity for new relationships, successes, and growth. Establishing a plan for home-school communication early on can ease this transition and set the stage for support throughout the school year.

Home-school communication is most beneficial when both school staff and families receive useful information. We suggest that families and school staff agree on what type of information will be shared on a daily basis. Is it based on factors that influence the child's learning or behavior or is it based on shared goals? Do families want a copy of each day's behavior point chart? Do they want to know the academic content of one or more subjects? Do they want to focus on the child's mood or energy level, or on whether the child greeted his peers? Does school staff want to know whether the child slept well or ate breakfast? Do they want to know if the child watched a video the evening before?

Home-school communication needs to come both from the home and from the school, it cannot be one-sided. It is often done through daily written notes. Written notes from the school can be completed during the school day as time allows and can be structured similarly each day; and unlike trying to catch up at drop-off and pick-up, written notes are likely to provide all the desired information. For older children, other modalities of communication may be more advantageous such as less frequent phone calls or emails or self-report forms completed by children.

Families and staff involved with YouthCare have told us how important it is for them to communicate with each other about the child. A parent, describing the importance of this communication with regards to her son's success at YouthCare, said "I also appreciate the opportunity to give my thoughts and ideas. The collaboration, I believe, benefited my son."

There is an endless amount of information that could be passed daily from home to school, and vice versa, but only so much is useful and reasonable. At YouthCare, we have found it is most effective to use an agreed-upon format for communication about limited content areas, rather than passing around a notebook of lines to fill without any guidelines. For older students, communication may be less frequent or the child may be the reporter of the daily or weekly summary.

Overall, home-school communication is a process, and it should change throughout the school year and between school years to meet current needs, expectations, and abilities of families and of school teams.

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